Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Ipiccy

Showing posts with label Ipiccy. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

September '26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 9 ↓

Short Stories - 2 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.63 ↑↑

Pages - 2897 ↓

Words - 874K ↓

The Bad:

Groo 55 - 2stars. The first time Groo has let me down. I was devastated.

The Good:

The Possessed - 5Stars!

I, Asimov - ALSO 5STARS!!!!

Movie:

Monsters Inc was a fun movie, but definitely for the kids. Glad I rewatched it on dvd so I won't waste any money upgrading to bluray. I don't plan on ever watching it again.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

First off, can we just stop for a moment and appreciate that I read TWO 5star books, in one month? That is practically hitting the book lottery. and that bumped my monthly average up to 3.63. Talk about moving in the rarified circles of Bookdom!

September was yet another discombobulating month. Work was topsy turvy, what with my coworker being out for 2 weeks due to his wife having their first kid. Throw in a new crew chief getting trained for our Northern office and everyone wondering when SlowBoy2.0 was going to get the axe and well, we came in each day not knowing what the day held. It must have been hellacious on the office manager as he had to schedule all that chaos!

Mrs B and I celebrated 18 years of marriage and ate like there was no tomorrow! We have had our various ups and downs during those 18 years, but I wouldn't trade a day of them if it meant it was with someone else.

Of course, 2 weeks later we both were sick, with different things. I had some sort of seasonal allergies and exhaustion going on while Mrs B ran a temperature and was throwing up. That made for a thoroughly miserable couple of days. But we got through it and that was that.

Some summers September is very summerlike. This time around, it was leaning into the whole Autumn thing. It was much cooler than expected, it rained a bit more, the leaves started changing colors and the ragwort was pollinating all over the place (hence my seasonal allergies this year). I would like Autumn a lot more if Spring came after it ;-)

Cover Love:

Those Without Mercy definitely takes the cake when it comes to cover love this month. Grim and creepy!

Plans for Next Month:

October is the Pumpkin Festival. I plan to have a post on that the second Saturday of the month.

Now that we are approaching the end of the year, it is time I begin catching up on my book reviews, so expect Wednesdays to be filled again. In fact, I suspect that my calendar will be full up to make sure I am all caught up by year's end. That means you can expect more book reviews each month. Aren't you so lucky!

Monday, August 31, 2026

August ’26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 11 ↓

Short Stories - 1 -

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.27 ↑

Pages - 3591 ↑

Words - 1216K ↑

The Bad:

The Night Land - 1.5stars of boring boring'ness

The Good:

In Joy Still Felt - 4stars of Asimovian'ness

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

The month started off on a rough note for work. We were working at a site an hour and half away, so a lot of driving was involved to and from. That really cuts down on your production time. Then my coworker cut his leg pretty bad with his machete on that job, so that put the kabosh on working late and trying to make up time. Plus, now "I" had to do all the driving and I hate that. One of the few perks of being the crew chief is controlling the radio (it stays OFF) and making the other guy chauffer me around. Those work van seats are not comfortable and they aren't meant to be. Plus we had had a rain day at the beginning of the week, so we didn't even make it to 40hours. So it was a very long "short" week. Not really how I wanted to kick August off.

Then I had a pinched nerve in my back/neck. At first I thought I had pulled a muscle but after a week of it not getting any better, and my tricep spasming, I went to the doctor and he confirmed it was a pinched nerve. Gave me some muscle relaxant (smallest dose for the shortest time, 5 days) and said physical therapy would be the next step. So I looked up exercises on youtube for pinched nerves and started doing it on my own. That affected the rest of the month for work though. I'm better now, but everything was twice as hard and the jobs really seemed to be factually worse, so by the time the month ended, I was toast.

Bookwise, things were pretty stable. While the number of volumes I read was down, that's because I read some bigger books and that helped push up the page and word numbers. Also, my average rating got a modest bump up, which is always nice.

On the blogfront, the bot views seemed to have have stopped about midmonth. My numbers returned to normal and for that I was extremely thankful. Of course, my China views aren't decreasing and that whole Dictator Xi Jinping Humps a Goat post is only increasing in views (I guess they have a morbid fascination with that horrible picture). Well, I feel like I am doing my part to bring democracy to the poor benighted countries of the world. Take that Dictator Xi! Freedom Fighter Bookstooge will kick your butt. Sadly, during the last week of the month I had an absolute onslaught of china bot views and so my "return to normalcy" was cancelled. I wish things would settle down permanently.

Plans for Next Month:

I'm really hoping to get back into the Movie groove. I'm undecided if I want to do a standalone movie or start another series like I did for Resident Evil. I'm just spoiled rotten for choices! I could do the Die Hard series or the Final Destination series or even Terminator and as for standalones, I'd have to go looking to see what I own.

Keeping Wednesdays and Saturdays free from posting really is working for me. There are times I "want" to post something on Wednesday, but then I hit a big old fat tome and my desire to write dries up. So leaving them free helps a lot more than hinders.

Looking at the schedule, there will be a few more than normal visual posts. Mrs B has done several art pieces, so those along with my seasonal "Maiden of the Season" post and the Magic Cards will keep your eyes entertained. And Groo. You will be entertained by Groo. Or else.

Other than that, I'll just keep on doing what I've been doing. They don't call me Young Reliable for nothing you know ;-)

Friday, July 31, 2026

July '26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 ↑

Short Stories - 1 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.07 ↓

Pages - 2858 ↑

Words - 1005K ↑

The Bad:

The Witchwood Crown - 1star dnf

Mask of Fu-Manchu - 1.5star of total stupidity

The Joy Makers - 2stars of the kind of SF I hate

The Good:

Henry and Eliza - 4stars

The Father Hunt - 4Stars

Movie:

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was a decent send off for the series, despite the shaky cam and a LOT of quick cut footage during the fight scenes.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Mrs B went on a vacation for a bit over a week to visit her family and I worked. One day Canada's smoke from their 100's of wildfires made down to us and the above picture is what the day looked like at 10am on the jobsite. For work, I had to take a refresher course for my Hazmat certification and that took me about 6hours total. So I did that online after regular work the week Mrs B was gone. Pulled in a 50hr week that week.

Speaking of work, we are back up to 3 full field crews. One of our gun guys was promoted to crew chief and he's training the newest guy. He hates being crew chief but it is good for him and is pretty much the only way he'll learn more, by being forced to. Dictator Xi humps goats. The office people are keeping them on the small jobs to see how they shake out, but it does mean that we are once again going gangbusters for work. Now they need some more office people to keep up with the flow of work coming in.

I read a lot more this month than in June, but man, I really hit the basement when it came to reading crap. Fu-Manchu is on life support and if the next novel I read in that series has the characters acting as stupidly as they did this month, well, that'll be it. The Joy Makers was a "Misc" book and the last in that category on my ereader, so it's time to load up a bunch more standalones and hope I don't have such bad luck. I also got rid of the Osten Ard stuff, so I'll need to pick a new series to replace it with. No idea what that will be. To be honest, by the time I get around to doing that, I'll probably have forgotten why I was doing it in the first place :-/

Plans for Next Month:

Same old, same old. I won't be reviewing a movie, but I do have a piece of artwork that Mrs B did for me, so that about breaks even :-D

I have another wave of Magic cards for Mondays, but I'm not sure I'll be saying anything about them. Might be going old school for this month and just post the picture and leave it at that.

I have a post about AI and one about other bloggers. Both are just in the idea stage at the moment, but they are solid ideas, not just nebulous, so I would expect to see something about those in August too.

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

June '26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 6 ↓

Short Stories - 2 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.17 ↓

Pages - 1898 ↓

Words - 725K ↑

The Bad:

Dragons of Autumn Twilight - 1.5stars of dnf'ing of my youth

The Good:

The White Rose - 4stars of Black Company goodness

Movie:

Resident Evil 5: Retribution was an absolute action packed blast of a time.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

This was a busy work month. I had more 10hr days this month than I've had since January. I am not a fan of this. If it continues, and given the work load and how the office people are pushing I suspect it will, I will be having a talk with Human Resources. Just to air my concerns. We (Mrs B and I) will be able to pay off our condo by year's end I believe and once that happens, I am going to be looking long and hard at this whole 45+hr work thing. So that has been in the back of my mind all month.

I pretty much used up all my creativity with the Imperatoris Chronicorum IV post, so I just didn't have much else to say this month outside of book reviews. It did feel good to not blog as much, but that was a general words malaise thing, as my journaling time plunged too. I'm going to blame it on work though. When I'm exhausted, the words just dry up and they stay as stillborn thoughts inside my head.

Reading wasn't bad this month, but DNF'ing Dragons of Autumn Twilight really did a hatchet job on my rating average and page numbers. With only 9 books that had a lot more weight than it would have if I'd read closer to 15. Thank goodness July is a new month with a new start!

Plans for Next Month:

This past month was a nice break from the frenetic hurly burly of blogging. However, my reading is picking up, so then must my reviews. Which means I'll probably be doing more posts in July. I'm planning on going back to taking Wednesday and Saturday's off. I know I've been changing my posting days each month and I'd like to thank you all for putting up with that.

I will be making my annual announcement about the Barbara Cartland Buddy Read this coming Thursday. After last year's little dustup, I've made sure there won't be a repeat. So please look forward to that announcement where I spell everything out. So pull out your favorite pair of dice, buy a sealed deck of cards and get James Bond on the phone because we're heading to Monte Carlo this year! And that's all I'll say about it until Thursday.

Sunday, May 31, 2026

May '26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 10 ↓

Short Stories - 1 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.71 ↑

Pages - 2031 ↓

Words - 698K ↓

The Bad:

NONE! Wow, first month in I don't know how long where I didn't read a bad book.

The Good:

Spellbound & Warbound were both 5star re-reads by Larry Correia

Mrs Pollifax Pursued was the best Mrs Pollifax yet and I gave it 4.5Stars. On the first read.

Movie:

Afterlife (Resident Evil #4) was a good time. Alice was back to being human, which is as it should be.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

This was a fantastic reading month. My average was 3.71. That is stratospheric for me. It helped that I finished up the Grimnoir trilogy re-read :-) I did read less, but I need to get out of the mindset of just mindlessly consuming books.

Wordpress has always had "Achievements" for big milestones like anniversaries of your start date, or getting to 500 followers, or getting your first 100 likes. Things to help new bloggers feel motivated and some things for more seasoned bloggers. Well, part way through this month Wordpress really amped up that idea. If you visit "https://wordpress.com/reader/users/ME/achievements" you can see all of the Achievements you've accomplished so far and the absolutely monster list of more accomplishments you can achieve. It's the gamification of blogging and it stinks like horse manure. THIS is the kind of content WP is spending it's time on? This is why nobody is available on the help forums? This is why basic blogging functions are now behind "premium" paywalls? swearswearswear. Why doesn't most of that effort go into customer relations and customer service? I hate to use the following word, but this is the quintessential example of "Enshittification" and it's happening on Wordpress.com. It represents the idea that Wordpress thinks empty, useless shiny things are good enough while destroying, hiding and lying about core functions like notifications, subscribers (getting randomly unsubscribed from people or having them randomly unsubscribed from me is still happening, albeit much less) and basic statistics like actual "views" instead of allowing hundreds or thousands of bot views to be recorded. Ok, vent over. Except to say that:

Free Speech has consequences and I'm willing to accept those consequences - click to open

Matt Mullenweg can get Luigi'd and I'd not shed a tear. I might not dance with joy but there would be no sadness in Bookstoogeville that day. I am also willing to say this with the full knowledge that WP the fascists might very well close down my blog.

I took last week off from work. I've been needing that for several months and I made the most of it. I'd thought about doing a separate post about it, but with this Circum et Pervagatus post so adequately placed on the last day of my stay-cation, I figured I'd just talk about it here. I do have to go back to work tomorrow after 9 days of not even having to think about work, so this is my last hurrah! ;-) I basically walked to one of several coffee shops each morning, had an iced chai, read a book and took notes on it in a separate notebook from my journal. It was wonderful! The weather even cooperated so I could do the walk (it's about a mile away) and sit outside. Ahhhh, good times.

Cover Love:

The Ghost Pirates by William Hodgson. Not a recommended book but a truly fantastic cover.

Plans for Next Month:

I did a really good job of keeping Wednesdays and Saturdays post free. So for June I'm going to experiment with going post free on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I haven't hit a words wall in my blogging yet, but I'd like to prevent that if I can and slowing down my blogging is the best way to accomplish that goal.

It helps that I've started reading Isaac Asimov's autobiographical trilogy, which starts with In Memory Yet Green. I'll be reviewing that later this week, but it has slowed my reading waaaay down. It's a dense chunkster of a tome.

Thursday, April 30, 2026

April '26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 -

Short Stories - 0 -

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.25 ↓

Pages - 2955 ↑

Words - 1088K ↑

The Bad:

Tower of Terror - 2.5stars of snoozefestapalooza!

14 of My Favorites in Suspense - 2.5stars of wallowing in the gutter

The Good:

Hard Magic - 5Stars of really good urban fantasy

Shadows Linger - 4stars of pretty good re-reading

Movie:

Resident Evil: Extinction, the third in the RE film series, really amps up the tension but falls down pretty hard in most other areas. Decent but my least favorite of the series.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Paid our taxes. We have the minimum taken out, so we usually owe some at year's end. I began doing that a long time ago when someone told me that "getting a refund" from the Feds was just giving them an interest free loan with MY money. I've never looked at the "refund" the same again. Took me about an hour, as I had all the paperwork necessary on hand. Just glad it's over with for another year.

Spring is here and we're already in drought conditions. I really don't understand that, what with all the snow we got this past winter, but that's what the weather people say. Considering how early it is for that, I foresee a very uncomfortable summer with lots of ticks.

The bot views are back, with a vengeance. March had kind of tapered off and I was hoping maybe I could use April though the end of the year, but nope, after the first week I kept getting hit. 600-1200 views a day is NOT normal for this blog, especially when I see the same posts getting hit day after day 10 times a day. Makes me wonder what Wordpress is doing, besides absolutely nothing I mean.

My Devilreads experiment is going decent but no better. Not doing reviews has kept me out of reach of the wokescolds and other such finger waggers there. The feed is atrocious though. I can't customize what I actually see so I end up with a lot of garbage as people "update" the percentage of the books they are reading. Overall, the site is not conducive to someone as words oriented as I am or who wants one on one interaction.

Cover Love:

The Tower of the Elephant, a Conan novella by Robert Howard. While not quite accurate, it really does portray the situation very well. And it's just plain cool looking :-)

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

March '26 Circum et Pervagatus

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 ↑

Short Stories - 0 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.32 ↑

Pages - 2667 ↑

Words - 934K ↑

The Bad:

Grunge - 2stars of REALLY bad theology

The Hero and the Crown - 2stars of teen girl cringiness

The Good:

The Doorbell Rang - 4stars of Nero Wolfe, fightin' da mahn!

Drumindor - 4stars of returning to a beloved franchise

Movie:

Apocalypse, the second in the Resident Evil movie franchise, was fun. I like these movies :-)

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

We have a saying here in New England: "In Like a Lion, Out like a Lamb". This is in reference to March's weather. You can also reverse it. So if March starts off, say, by dumping almost 2feet of snow on you and then continues to snow every week, well, that's coming in like a lion. It means we're supposed to get gradually better and ease into April with warmer temps and smaller amounts of moisture. Ha! Ha I say. March came roaring in like a lion and dragged our carcass all over the place the entire month and then we got ticks from that lion when he left. Boooooo!

Work has changed a bit. We had one of the crew chiefs (we have 3 crews, each consisting of 2 men) leave end of February, beginning of March and one of the other instrument operators (not a crew chief) left last Friday. So we are down to 2 crews, just as the spring is coming and our busy season is starting to ramp up. Not that we haven't been busy before, mind you. There is a lot of work and we don't have the manpower to handle it. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that problem in the office.

The medication that Mrs B has been taking for close to 15 years now for her crohns disease is no longer effective so her GI dr (gastroenterologist) is trying to switch her to something else. We'll see how that shakes out with insurance. It'll be the same battle as her old medication but on a new hill, sigh. I'm also dealing with my own insulin changes but without the help of a Endocrinologist, just my family practice doctor. It is just going from name brand to generic, so it's more about the doctors office filling out the prescription correctly so the insurance accepts it. Let me digress for a second...

(Health Insurance is the worst thing to happen to our medical system here in the US, ever. There have been times that I have wanted to off every single Health Insurance CEO and their entire board of directors. They will burn for their crimes in the afterlife, for sure!)

Mrs B and I were introduced to the card game Munchkins last year and for Christmas we got 7 of the expansions to the game. We've been playing a game a couple of times a month and it's been fun. It is a simple game but with just enough complexity to keep me interested while not being so complex that Mrs B throws up her hands in despair (like Magic the Gathering). I like it enough that I'm even considering getting the Munchkins: Warhammer 40,000 version :-D That would all depend on whether Mrs B will play that or not.

Finally, since I changed the boring "My Week" posts to the sizzling and exciting "Imperatoris Chronicorum", I decided to latinize these Monthly Roundup & Rambling posts as well, because nothing says sizzling and exciting like a re-branding of the same exact product ;-)
Ave, Caesar Bookstooge, morituri te salutant!

Cover Love:

Nothing was good enough to take the effort to put a full size picture in my dropbox account, create and edit the dropbox link so that WP will accept it and then put it here. Sometimes it is worth it and sometimes not. This was a "Not" month.

Plans for Next Month:

RE: Extinction will be reviewed next week.

Magic cards every Monday! Whooowheee ;-)

Exactly the same as this month. I'm still fighting the (losing) battle to keep Wednesdays free but I'm not giving in completely.

FREEEEEEEDOM!!! (to not blog if I don't want to)

Friday, February 27, 2026

February '26 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 9 ↑

Short Stories - 1 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 ↑

Average Rating - 3.00 ↓

Pages - 1603 ↓

Words - 622K ↓

The Bad:

Small Gods - 2stars of bad and lazy theology

The Good:

The Black Company - 4stars of solid re-read

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Compared to last month, I read about half in terms of pages and words. In book numbers, I read "more", but since I had 3 novellas and 1 short story, well, the other numbers don't lie. I was ok with that though. Easing back into reviewing was good for me. I don't expect this situation to repeat itself very often though.

Real Picture, taken Saturday February 21st

February was its usual brutal self here in New England. We got dumped on by snowstorm after snowstorm, which meant working regularly in snow almost up to my knees. It was also very cold until the middle of the month, so conditions were just about as bad as it could get. All "that snow" also meant all "that shoveling" at work. I was taking extra strength tylenol (acetaminophen) to deal with that. My right forearm felt like someone had sandbagged it every day.

I also was diagnosed with Adhesive Capsulitis, or frozen shoulder. I had it 10-15 years ago, so I was aware of the symptoms and got to the doctor to get it taken care of. I'm taking aleve (yet another pain reliever, inflammation reducer) and doing home physical therapy exercises. If it isn't better in a couple of weeks I'll probably have to get a cortisone shot in the shoulder (I had that last time) and then PT by a licensed physical therapist. That's expensive, so I'm hoping aleve and home PT are enough. Plus, the needle they use to inject the cortisone is about as long as a football field. It's scary as all get out and I don't want that if I can help it. I get enough needles in my body already, thank you very much.

I've also had to admit to myself that the stats at Wordpress.com are now useless, completely and utterly useless. I was getting scraped in January and I had hoped that would do it, but nope, it has continued through February. Not the 10's of thousands of views that some have reported, but one day I did get 1100 views. The rest of the month varied from 100-700 views a day. I can't even blame it on the ChiComs, as the majority came from the US. While I don't care (that much) about stats, what it means is that the whole section of my annual review at the end of the year is rendered useless. Any stat that I relied on "views" to populate that section are now so untrustworthy that they can't be used. That makes me sad.

Cover Love:

Frederic & Elfrida by Jane Austen. Cover Love indeed...

Plans for Next Month:

Book etc reviews, Magic cards and the next Resident Evil movie. And dealing with the time change :-(

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

December '25 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels - 15 ↑

Short Stories - 1 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.11 ↑

Pages - 3453 ↑

Words - 1229 ↓

The Bad:

A Rainbow to Heaven - 1.5star DNF

Ethan of Athos - 1star DNF

The Good:

Witches Abroad - 4stars

Dune - 5stars

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

December was quite the month. I was still fighting off the sickness from November and while I felt better in many regards, I could tell I was still on the edge. It didn't help that we had our first snow storm right at the beginning and got around 6-7inches, which is enough to stick around for the entire season. Getting into the routine of working in the snow is always a week long chore. And then Mrs B and I came down with the flu typeA this past weekend. We're out of work for the whole week and we're doing our best to stay hydrated and taking tylenol to reduce the fever. Mrs B started Friday night and I started Sunday night, so she is just rounding the corner on recovery while I'm still in the throes of it all. Life is just grand at the moment.

Things were just busy too. With work Christmas parties and extra stuff going on at our churches, even if WE wanted to slow down, there was so much going on that we were swept along. Since most of the things were people oriented, it just wore me out even faster. There was one Friday where I attended a Land Surveyors Association annual meeting and there were over 250 people there. Just sitting in a room with 60+ people for 2hour stretches wore me out.

Short Round (thanks Spalanz!), the new guy at work, has settled in very well. He still talks, but it's not non-stop, all the time, go-go-go. Now it's just whenever. His plan is to eventually get licensed. I sure hope it works out for him. I have my doubts however.

In regards to books, I reviewed a bunch more than in November but I think most of that was me trying to get stuff all caught up before New Years hit. Even though I like to schedule stuff out 3-4 weeks, I don't like saying I read a book in January if I actually read it in December. The DNF's hit again(!!!!) and man, I must say, that really screwed with my ratings and my feelings. Especially since one of them was supposed to be the Barbara Cartland buddyread that I had plans for all month long. It was cut down in one post, sigh. And besides dnf'ing the book, I had to deal with letting down the people who had agreed to do the read-a-long for the month. I hate being disappointed by other people and I really hate disappointing others and letting them down. At least it happened in the first week so I had a chance to get over it ;-) On the plus side, ending the month and the year with reading Dune was fantastic. That book has so many facets that every time I read it, I see something completely different.

Cover Love:

I read the Dune: Deluxe Edition and man, that cover is fantastic. It is clickable if you want to view it full size.

Plans for Next Month:

I have my annual Year in Review post coming up on Thursday the 1st and then on Friday the 2nd I have a post dedicated to my plans in January.

See you January 1st!

Sunday, November 30, 2025

November '25 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels - 9 ↓

Short Stories - 0 -

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 2.85 ↓

Pages - 3385 ↑

Words - 1250K ↑

The Bad:

Resolve of Immortal Flesh - 2star dnf of plain old fashioned bad writing

Rise of the Warrior Cop - 1star dnf of a lying scumbag drug junkie

Tower Lord - 1star dnf of moral perversion

The Good:

Stone of Farewell - 5stars of Fantasy Done Right

Tower of Silence - 4stars of Fantasy (almost) Done Right

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Oh hurray, another guy has started at my work place. I am calling him Short Guy, because he's only 5'4", which means he's my height, which is great for working. He has previous Land Survey experience and is in his late 20's, so those are both big checks in his favor. After my last disastrous experience with the Tattle Tale Guy who told my boss everything I said to him, I am reserving judgement AND keeping my lip buttoned up a lot tighter. Short Guy doesn't seem like a whiny complainer Gen Z'er, but fool me once. I remain hopeful though. But just in case you think it is ALL peaches and roses, he talks. We had a job 75 minutes away from the office one week. He talked the entire time there AND the entire time back. Non-stop verbal diarrhea about everything. All I had to do was say the occasional "uh uh, yep, oh that's interesting" and he just kept on going. How is it physically possible to even talk that much? I am hoping that my natural close mouthedness will rub off on him, once he runs out of original things to say. My fear is that he'll turn into one of those people who tell the same stories time after time because they just have to have words coming out of their mouths. I'll know for sure by New Years either way.

The Time Change at the beginning of the month took me a week to adjust to. I kept waking up at 4am and my body wanted to fall asleep by 8pm. It was not a fun week. Thankfully, once "I" got the message, things settled right down into the new time routine.

Partway through the month I came down with the flu, possibly covid. Either way, it was fever, headache, sore throat, muscle and joint pain and enough snot to make even Slimer go "ewwwww". I was out of work for 3 days because all I could do was lie on the couch, taking pain reliever and drinking hot tea. Once the fever and aches went away, I had to deal with a lingering cough. That sucker kept waking me up during the night every 30-90minutes. It was a 2 week process from start to finish and just tore me down to the foundations.

This past Thursday was Thanksgiving, and since I also had Friday off, meant I had a four day weekend this weekend. I really needed it just to finish up my recovery from being sick.

Went out to a Mexican/American place for Date Night with Mrs B. Had a good time talking and she gave me her thoughts on my taking a break from blogging in January. That was extremely helpful to me, as it gave me a place to work from. I've been feeling burnt out on blogging and several weeks of not writing seems like what I need most. How exactly that will work out is still to be determined, but I have the "big picture" now, which is already helping me.

Bookwise, my reading slowed down a lot. It wasn't helped that I had 3(!!!!!!!) dnf's this month, which totally tanked my average rating. April was the only month this year that has a lower average book rating than this one :-( With that said, my page and word count still went up because I read some big ol' chunksters and even taking the dnf's into account, I still read a lot of pages. The stress of "reading more" was taken care of by not posting on Wednesdays. That really helped a lot and is one of the factors that made me realize I need to stop blogging for a bit. I have a feeling my reading numbers will drop in December, but I'm really ok with that at the moment.

I did manage to participate in SciFiMonth2025 this year with a non-review post. Thank goodness for the Friday Five theme posts! I really wish I could have participated more, but the reading cards said "no" and who am I to disagree? Hehehehe. At least I got to use the cool banner, which is the main reason I wanted to participate in the first place :-D

Cover Love:

The Hand of Fu-Manchu is deliciously creepy. Sadly, this was the best and largest version I could find online.

Plans for Next Month:

READ LESS SO I DON'T HAVE TO WRITE REVIEWS. I know, that seems obvious to you, right? Well, it doesn't to me because I read so much (usually) and I record everything I read. So my goal is to deliberately cut down on my reading in December. Which I'm hoping will lead to a few more creative posts. Which actually leads into my next paragraph very well.

Let the Barbara Cartland Buddy Read begin! The schedule for A Rainbow to Heaven is as follows:

Chapters 1-3 discussion post on Friday, December 5th
Chapters 4-6 discussion post on Friday, December 12th
Chapters 7-9 discussion post on Friday, December 19th
Chapters 10-12 discussion post on Friday, December 26th
Book Review post on Friday, January 2nd 2026

Which means you have this week to read the first 3 chapters and write a post about it. I think this is what is going to monopolize most of my time in December. Given how November went for reading, having some light romance to browse through each week is something I am looking forward to. Unencumbered, uncomplicated and a happy ending. Please be sure to add the tag "Barbara Cartland Buddy Read" to any posts to make it easier for anyone else to find your posts on the WP Reader.

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RIP: Guac Croc

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