Book Recommendations IV

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

This will be a longer than usual list. People have really gotten into the spirit of things and so I need to up my blogging game as well.

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin was recommended to me by Film-Authority. While he had the temerity to suggest a Barbara Cartland romance novel in an earlier Book Rec post (thus earning himself the first diseased Chartreuse Flag), this was a serious recommendation. I hate Modern Lit and A Kiss is square in the midst of that time period. So I’m going to dive into it and see what I think. Added

The House on the Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson was recommended by Snapdragon. I have heard of Hodgson but never read anything by him. I’m totally up for trying out an old newtome author! And look at that cover? Is that just plain creepy or what? Added

The Mr Men series was recommended by Dave. Going to have to pass as I never experienced these as a kid and thus have no nostalgia factor to draw me to them. Pass.

Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud was recommended by Mallika. I’ve read this Trilogy and the Prequel back in 2009-2011.

The Stand by Stephen King was recommended by Firewater. Sadly for him, I’ve read that, back in 2008.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman was Mogsy’s recommendation. Now, you have to understand, Mogsy and I have a “history”, a book history that is. We read upon parallel SFF tracks and over the years have found that our tastes are VERY similar, but our bookish interests never quite converge. In fact, it’s become a running joke that if Mogsy absolutely loves something that I think sounds interesting, I’ll end up hating it. Because that’s how it has shaken out every single time. So this gets a hard Pass!

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Now we come to the part where I begin to wonder about all of you. Seriously.

Version 1.0.0

Jilly Cooper’s Polo was recommended by Nic. Based on that cover alone gets Nic a Chartreuse Flag of Shame. Good job Nic, you earned that flag! 😉

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

• Book Recommendations I
• Book Recommendations II
• Book Recommendations III

Book Recommendations III

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

MarzAat recommended The Joy Makers by James Gunn. Just to be clear, this is NOT the same James Gunn who directed some of the MCU movies. I have not read anything by this Gunn and so it was Checkaroo on this. Have added it to my “new books” folder which eventually will make it into Calibre and be categorized within my TBR list. So I’ll get to this in the next year or two.

Firewater had several recommendations, but I’m going to choose just one for this post. He recommended Legend by David Gemmell. Lo and behold, I have already read it! Gave it 3.5stars back in ’19 too. Sadly, I was only able to stomach up to the third book in the series, where the faux-philosophy became too shallow for me to continue. I think I would have loved Gemmell a lot more if I’d read his stuff about 20+ years earlier.

Joelendil recommended Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini, a Scarlet Pimpernel knockoff as far as I could tell. It is going to get a “Not interested” as I’m not a big fan of reading about the French Revolution, period.

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Unfortunately, you all have let everyone down. No one was brave enough to face the shame of getting a Chartreuse Flag and everyone played it safe. In one sense that is ok but really folks, people come to see Bread and Circuses and it’s hard to do so without some outrageous suggestions by you. So I need you to step up for next time and make some suggestions that you KNOW I’m going to excoriate you for. Don’t think of yourself and your sense of shame, throw all that out the window. Think of your fellow bloggers for goodness sake!
~ wrings hands~
Won’t somebody think of the children?!?

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

• Book Recommendations I
• Book Recommendations II

A Serious Post About A Serious Subject...

….that I will take VERY seriously and so should you. This post will explain why you should take it seriously and why, if you don’t, you are a filthy commie and not even worthy to be devoured with bbq sauce by starving Chilean soccer players.

Cheesecake. Yes, cheesecake. That delicious confection that will leave you dying in delight!

Mrs B and I happened to recently celebrate our 16th Wedding Anniversary. As is our wont each year, we travelled to the bowels of Hell itself to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. We always eat well, we have plenty of time to talk about the past year and the upcoming year and then we order 4 slices of cheesecake to go.

Banana Cream Cheesecake

Lemon Meringue Cheesecake

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Each slice averages between 1100-1300 calories. So we eat our meal at the restaurant, eat one slice the next evening and then eat the final slice the following day. One visit lasts us 3 days. It’s a Miracle 😀

And that’s why you should take it so seriously, like me.
*cracks fist
or else.

Book Recommendations II

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

Beaton recommended Murtagh by Christopher Paolini. Now, I have read the previous books in the Inheritance Cycle, but I’d rather cut out my eyeballs with a pickle than read another book by Paolini. But just to be clear, in case you missed that subtle context, that is a N-O-.

Snapdragon recommended Merlin: The Lost Years. She was upfront that it was Young Adult. So I gave it an extra 5 seconds of thought but decided that I just wasn’t up to facing YA at this point in my life. So no-go.

Lashaan recommended the comic book Batman/The Shadow: The Murder Geniuses. Given my penchant for reading the ultra-pulpy, ultra-awesome Shadow novels, this was a no brainer. YES!

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Now we come to the S-A-D part of these Book Recommendations posts. The part where someone has recommended something so egregious, so outlandish, so beyond the pale of good taste and common decency that I am forced to respond with the Nuclear Option. No, not banning them from my blog, but something even worse. I give them the shameful Chartreuse Flag. This flag of infamy will affect future generations and possibly destroy worlds. It’s that bad.

And Jennifer Mugrage has more than earned it. She not only earned it, she brought three shovels, one for each hand and a one for her mouth, to dig her own grave. She had the unmitigated gall to suggest I read a Miss Marple Mystery, knowing how I feel about them. For those who don’t know, Miss Marple is a small town busy body who sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong and solves crimes, without even being a real part of the story. She’s almost as bad as Poirot.

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

• Book Recommendations I

Bookstooge VS Predator or My Week VIII

Bookstooge Pros:

Ego big enough to repel a Star Destroyer.

Extremely good looking.

Reads a lot, so knowledgeable on many subjects.

Looks dashing in a cloak.

Predator Pros:

Invisible.

Has a spaceship that can kill you. And you. And you. All at the same time.

Likes to kill things, like you.

Bookstooge Cons:

Not a real person (that’s actually pretty big if you want to get nit picky).

Muscles aren’t as big as basketballs.

No spaceship (not a deal killer but it does give the high ground to The Pred)

Predator Cons:

Plug Ugly!

Can only read weapons manuals (no poetry for you ol’ softies).

Also not real.

---

So, who would you bet on in:

A) A pizza eating contest

B) Cultivating a flower garden for the summer

C) Performing an interpretive rain dance

The fate of the free world rests on your decision dear reader, so vote wisely!

---

Obviously,  with me being able to pump out garbage like that, I’ve had a good week!

Sabbath was a very relaxing, restful kind of day. It was just what I needed to finish off last week.

Sunday was our church’s annual picnic.  It’s the one time a year I get to play volleyball and I enjoy every second of it. I pay for that enjoyment the next day, as diving to the ground to save the ball hurts a little more now. But just to be clear, the ground has gotten much tougher, I’ve not gotten softer 😉

That guy would be 100% more awesome if he was bald

I’ve been looking forward to playing some casual volleyball ever since March. So what happens? It decides to rain. It didn’t rain all morning. We set the tents and tables and chairs up between 10-11am and while cloudy, no rain. We started the 3 grills around 11:45 and no rain. People start showing up at 11:55am, and voila, it starts to sprinkle. Then it starts to rain. Everyone huddled under the tents, but they weren’t rain proof and they started leaking. So everyone got umbrellas, under the tents. Funny thing is, the harder it rained, the better my mood! After we’d all eaten and hollered at each other (nobody was doing more walking than they had to), all the young people decided that playing volleyball in the rain was the thing to do. So they did. That is when I realized I’m fully middle aged. I was not even tempted the tiniest bit to go out there and play. So I watched and enjoyed myself.

Middle Age Level UP!

It is good to be reminded of where I am in Life. It is also good to be reminded where others are too. But I’m still going to judge them for not being the Ultimate Pizza Slayer like yours truly.

10 Things Only TRUE Bookstooge Lovers Understand or My Week V

This post is inspired by one I saw entitled “X Things Only True Book Lovers Understand”. While I am a book lover, apparently I’m not a TRUE book lover. I felt so ashamed.

So what better way to hide that terrible shame than by making all of you ashamed for not being a True Bookstooge Lover? I will now list the 10 Ways to prove you are a True Bookstooge Lover.

Please leave a comment sharing with everyone how much you failed at this and how ashamed you are. That will make me laugh AND will be cathartic for everyone else. There’s no shame in being a loser and feeling ashamed about it.

1. Bookstooge is always right, even if I think he is wrong.
2. If Bookstooge told me to commit seppuku with a clod of dirt, I would do it, successfully!
3. Short, stocky bald men are the most attractive.
4. I hate doing yard work too.
5. Pizza is the greatest food that has ever existed or will ever exist.
6. Who needs a life when you can blog instead?
7. I enjoy telling all my friends about Bookstooge’s latest posts
8. When I get up in the morning, my first thought is “What would Bookstooge do today?”
9. When Bookstooge says “Jump”, I don’t need to ask “How high” because I already psychically know.
10. I like boots too.
11. Damn commies! (that’s a bonus for y’all)

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What monks who eat nothing but rice look like.

After last week where I ended up in the ER for 9hrs to no avail, I was eating like a monk until about yesterday. Rice for breakfast, plain toast for lunch, rice chex (breakfast cereal) for dinner and applesauce for dessert. And wonder of wonders, my gut got better. No more pain or tenderness. So now I’m going to slowly ease myself back into a more regular dietary habit. If it wasn’t so hot out I’d go eat pizza. Cause that’s the epitome of “easing” back into things 😉

Tuesday we had some serious thunderstorms and rain move through in the evening. It poured so hard you could hardly see anything out the windows. Windy too. We ended up losing power for about an hour, but that wasn’t bad as some of our friends around town ended up losing power for 7-8hrs.

Thursday was one of those work days. We were working in Madison, which is about 2 1/2 hrs from the office. So half the day was spent in traveling; kind of cuts down on the work you can get done, you know? I did get a 10 1/2hr day out of it though, so that’s going to be good for the paycheck.
*insert happy trombone music

Other than the food thing, this was a pretty normal week. I really needed that. After how busy life has been for us the first half of July, I’m super duper ready to get back to my normal routine.

I hope you have a good Friday!

Top Dog! (For A Day Anyway) or My Week II

This past week I’ve been getting a very steady trickle of Google search hits for my reviews on the Metaframe War books I’ve read so far. It was enough that I decided to investigate and see what was going on. Most of the time when that happens it’s because I’ve pissed somebody off and they’ve cried to their mommy about it and that sends the drones my way. Thankfully, it was nothing like that.

Mommy Drone in Attack Mode!

As you can see in the first picture, my site pops up Fourth in a google search for Metaframe War Review. Most of the hits after that are from various bookstores, etc, much like the Amazon hit shown.

I didn’t show it, but my review for Traitor’s War (book 2) is at Fourteen. So I’ve got 2 frontline eyeballs for anyone curious about the Metaframe War. Of course, in about a week I’ll have sunk to the 100th page and I’m ok with that.

But for right now, I’m basking in my own notoriety and the power that comes from being A Book Reviewer. I am the power behind the throne. Dreams live, or die, at my whim. Hope and Despair live within my gaze and I turn it where I will, much like the Eye of Sauron! Mwhahahahaha!

Yeah, ok, I’m giving myself a Chartreuse Flag for an out of control egotrip. But it was worth it, every single second!

Hopefully you’ve had a good week too? Probably not as good as mine, but that’s ok. Not everyone can be the Mad Chartreuse Emperor of the known Universes after all. But just to show you how much I care, I will actually read any comments that are left and if you’ve been a really good boy/girl, I might even respond. Wowzer, talk about incredibly generous! That way you can tell your grandkids that you actually talked with someone who was on Google. But wait, there’s more!

Oh, no there isn’t.

Have a good Friday and I’ll see you in the comments. Or on your blog. Or on Whatsapp. Or email. Or text. Don’t think that just because I’m ending this post means I’m stopping talking. No sirree bob. There are words to be said. Many, many, many words. Like “extra large bottle of bbq sauce”.

`dragged away by the men in white coats carrying a strait jacket

ps,
If you don’t find this amusing, don’t worry. I am amused enough for everyone.

Tastes Like Chicken!

Behold, the Power of BBQ SAUCE!!!!!

The other Friday Mrs B and I went over to a childhood friend’s house of mine. He and I had literally grown up together and were best friends until my family moved away when we were tweens. We were baptized together. We went to summer bible camp from 1st grade through 12th grade. We attended vacation bible school. The little redheaded girl I liked was infatuated with him. We attended our freshman year of Bibleschool together. Then we went our separate ways. He ended up in the State Department, becoming a globe trotter for years at a time while I became a land surveyor and stayed within 20 miles of where I had grown up 😀

We would meet and catch up over the years. We really caught up at his sister’s wedding but our relationship was still “Oh, we knew each other, that’s nice”. Then she succumbed to Cancer in 2017 and during that time leading up to it, we reconnected as solid friends again. Ever since, we have made it a point to keep in touch and when he is in the North East, to visit for a couple of hours and catch each other up on what’s going on in our lives.

So Friday was such a time. He invited us over to his Mom’s house. I have many wonderful memories of playing at their house and it was great for a 10 year old boy to be out of a suburban area and way into the country. There was a rock by the side of their driveway, that probably came up to just past my knees. But to a 10 year old, it was humongous and we called it “Big Rock”. We played with Muscle Men and GI Joes and had adventures like you wouldn’t believe.

When you are 8 years old, Muscle Men were the coolest thing EVAH!

Then there were the two bad memories. The first one is humorous. I was 5 or 6 and was spending the night away from home for the first time. This was a BIG deal and I was so proud of it. Then that night we had a massive thunderstorm and I was so scared that I couldn’t stop crying and I practically made his dad take me home. How a 6 year old did that, I don’t know, but I suspect a LOT of screaming and fear. The second bad memory was of one of his dogs. I had gone over for the weekend and Saturday we had driven to Maine so his dad could scout out potential Christmas tree sellers. We were gone for like 12hours. We get home and us 3 kids (him, his sister and I) all get out at the bottom of the driveway so we can stretch our legs. The parents drove to the house and let the dog out. Now, this dog absolutely loved him. He was the light of the world to that dog. So to be gone 12hrs was pure hell for that dog. He came tearing down that dirt drive, running as fast as he could. Unfortunately, that dog was particularly stupid too. It was going so fast and only had eyes for his master that he didn’t see me until he was 5 feet away from me. In his defense, he tried to stop, but on a dirt driveway, it wasn’t happening. He bowled me over completely and dragged me a couple of feet. I got a massive cut on my upper leg from a rock cutting into me and I still have the scars from it to this day. I’m kind of surprised I didn’t end up in the Emergency Room. But in those days, you didn’t go to those unless you were dying, or dead. It was too expensive for people like us. So those are some of my memories of the house itself.

We had a wonderful time visiting. We had great food (grilled bbq chicken, light and heavy bbq sauced, grilled chicken sausages, grilled vegetables, potato salad, cole slaw, watermelon and cool drinks) that really hit the spot and it just facilitated us talking. Mrs B and he had never met so it was good for them to see the other. While I don’t talk about him a lot, he still influences my life. And obviously, I DO talk a lot about Mrs B 😀

And now he’s gone globetrotting again. Thankfully, we’ve connected via Whatsapp, so our communications should be more frequent than once every 2-5 years.

To close out this maudlin post, just remember, BBQ Sauce makes everything taste like chicken, even racoon 🦝 Hahahahahahaaa.