Black Ward - MTG 4th Edition

Lucia’s Progress (Mapp & Lucia #5) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Lucia’s Progress
Series: Mapp & Lucia #5
Authors: E.F. Benson
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Humorous Fiction
Pages: 289
Words: 84K

So Lucia takes center stage again. Mapp, having married the Colonel, is now trying to domesticate him AND still be the preeminent woman of the town. She fakes being pregnant, runs for Town Council (and loses right along with Lucia) and generally continues to make a nuisance of herself. Lucia meanwhile, works in the background and pretty much succeeds at everything she does. While she also loses the election for Town Council, she wheedles her way into it after the fact and by the end of the book is probably going to be the first female Mayor. She also marries Georgie, of all people. Talk about an Odd Couple.

I think I enjoyed this book a little bit more than some of the previous ones. Most of it was because the drama, while “big”, was handled in such a way that it was almost matter of fact and not raising my blood pressure.

I also had to practically chortle over Lucia and Georgie getting married. He’s as fuddy duddy and yet dandy’ish as you could ask for in a middle aged gentleman who still thinks that nobody knows he dyes his hair. He likes to knit and do water colors too. He just wants a comfortable life and for someone else to do all the driving. Lucia is more than glad to take charge and considering she and Georgie play the piano together and do almost everything together, them getting married was more of a convenience thing than a passionate midlife crisis thing. Like I said, it made me laugh and that was good.

While I did say I enjoyed this more than most of the previous books, there were still some things that bugged me so I couldn’t really give it 4stars. My main issue remains how backstabb’y, petty and plain vindictive both Mapp and Lucia are towards the other. That is not how people should be. Even if you were to feel like that towards someone, you fight against it and don’t give in to it. It is wrong and to see that wrong’ness marginalized is what bothers me.

There is only one more book in this series and after that I think I’m going to have to go search out some more stuff by Edward Benson. I have enjoyed these very much and so I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy some other stuff by him. Of course, that assumes he did actually write other stuff. I have zero knowledge about that and I guess I’ll be finding out in a couple of months.

★★★✬☆

• All My “Mapp & Lucia” Reviews

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PSA: How To Read 100+ Books A Year

I was “exploring” on WordPress the other month and came across Ahaquir and his blog, Books of Brilliance. He had done a post on how many books an average person in the UK or the US read and I found it interesting. I left a comment, as I usually do and he asked me if I would be interested in writing a guest post detailing how I manage to read 100-150 books a year. If you follow me (and if you don’t, here’s a Quick Primer on Me) you know I have been able to keep this kind of reading pace up for years. I was looking at my Calibre Library (which is a great way to manage your reviews offline if you are so inclined) and noticed that I started reading 100 books in 2006 and haven’t looked back since.

In the interest of “fairness”, because there are people out there who are picky and will be quick to discredit anyone, anytime over any issue for any reason, I must note that I include individual short stories if I read them as standalones and not part of a collection (say from a writer’s website) as well as manga and individual comic books. To compensate for this, I also track the number of pages read as well as the number of words read. So that gives me 3 metrics to measure by, That’s a lot of work and not something most people are going to do, but I wanted you to know how I do things 😀

My method is Simple, but it is not Easy. It is not for everyone and if it is not for you, then you need to be strong enough to admit it. Otherwise you will beat your head against the wall and cause yourself nothing but frustration and possibly anger and that defeats the whole purpose of reading for fun. So without further ado, here is my magic list of how to Read 100+ Books in a Year.

• Make Time For Reading
  -You can do this by the following:
• Turn off the tv
  -seriously. If you watch movies or shows on your laptop, turn that off too. Or your phone.
• Delete your Social Media accounts
  -not just don’t use them, but delete them. If you have trained yourself to go watch kitty videos on Communist-tok or Youtube, that temptation will be too great to overcome. You will have to go cold turkey and it will take time to re-train your brain to accept activities in chunks of time greater than 5 minutes. This is not a diss to those who do such things, but a cold reality.
• Reduce time spent on your other hobbies
  -Do you knit? Play video games? Play card or board games? Cook? Realize that you have to juggle all of them and if reading is the most important hobby to you, give it the time it needs
• ALWAYS carry reading material with you
  -In the spring through fall, I carry my kindle Oasis everywhere I go. When I walk out the door, I check that I have my wallet, my keys, my phone, my insulin pump/meter and my kindle. For the 6 months of winter we have here in New England, I make sure I have a paper book that I can read at a moment’s notice anywhere, anytime.
• When in a social situation, always choose reading over people.
  -People come and go but you only have that year to read those 100 books. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
• Finally, hang out with readers
  -You are influenced, for good or bad, by those you spend time with. Choose people, whether online or in real life, who will help you towards that 100+ goal and not hinder you.

Now, while this has all been slightly tongue in cheek, reading 100+ books a year is completely up to you and within your power. It is not for everyone though. Some people are just too social and they NEED more interaction with people. I have been blessed with an introspective misanthropy, so that’s not a problem for me. But maybe you are one of those poor benighted people who is just full of sunshine and rainbows and loves being around and interacting with people. Then you need to admit that weakness to yourself and accept it. Just like I accept that when I go grocery shopping, I can’t reach the top shelf. There is no shame as long as you accept responsibility for your own shortcomings.

Whether this post helps you to read more or not, I hope it has opened your eyes to the fact that reading is completely within your grasp. There is no magic short cut. You have to put in the time. But you can do it. So go forth and read!

And a big thankyou again to Ahaquir for giving me the shove needed to write this out.

• All of My PSA Posts

Judgment at Proteus (Quadrail #5) ★★★☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Judgment at Proteus
Series: Quadrail #5
Authors: Timothy Zahn
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 415
Words: 163K

Let’s get the important issues out of the way first. For this re-read I have been complaining about the covers and how Frank Compton and Bayta look like some 2D design from a spastic 10 year old. So of course the final cover doesn’t have them and it bugs the ever living daylights out of me. I want consistency in my covers, even if the odds are against that. While I HATE the new covers for this series (they have all the artistic merit of a 2year old in the middle of a bout of diarrhea) they at least follow the same formula for every cover. I just can’t win.

And speaking of not winning, Zahn doesn’t really win here either. It is a satisfactory wrap up to the series but it’s so monotone. I feel like Frank Compton’s voice is coming from a drivethrough for a fastfood franchise and he’s a bored teenager who doesn’t want to be at work or helping you. The supposed acceptance of a relationship between Frank and Bayta had all the warmth and humanity of a cold, dead space slug. A GIANT cold, dead space slug in fact. It is the kind of relationship I would want to see between my grandparents (may they rest in peace).

This re-read has solidified in my mind that I am done with Zahn, old or new. I will probably re-read Cobra next year just to see if it holds up or fails like some of the Old Guard did for me in November (Galactic Odyssey, Sentenced to Prism) but other than that, it is time for me to accept that I need to move on.

Getting older sucks, you know that? All of these books and authors that were the foundations of my literary world are suddenly becoming completely irrelevant to me now. It is like if I was a Red Sox fan in 1920, when Babe Ruth moved to the Evil Empire, the Yankees. Babe Ruth who? Timothy Zahn who? Exactly. These changes are new enough to me that I’m not inured to them yet. That will happen, thank goodness, but until it does, it’s just low level misery. It’s like getting a flu shot and suffering for the weekend.

Overall, a decent story and a decent series. Just not for me any more.

★★★☆☆

• Night Train to Rigel (Book 1)
• The Third Lynx (Book 2)
• Odd Girl Out (Book 3)
• The Domino Pattern (Book 4)
• Judgment at Proteus (2012 Review)

Groo Meets the Thespians (Groo the Wanderer #12) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot, by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Groo Meets the Thespians
Series: Groo the Wanderer #12
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 23
Words: 2K

Groo ends up with a group of actors without realizing they are actors and saves the evil king in the play. This sends the audiences into stitches and Groo becomes famous. After many, many, many attempts, the actors finally get across to Groo that it is all fake and he’s just supposed to stand there as a guard and not do anything.

So what happens next?

They go to a kingdom ruled by an evil king, where two of the actors have been hired to kill the king. Groo thinks it is all acting and even when the evil king says he’ll give Groo one third of his kingdom, he just stands by. So the actors kill the king, the two noblemen who hired them then turn on the actors to cover up their part in the plan and Groo turns on everybody when he realizes it was real and he could have been rich, rich, rich. I had to laugh even while wondering how someone this dumb could survive on his own 😀

There was also an ad for some cartoons. Maaaaan, that brought back some memories.

While we didn’t watch tv on Saturday (that was part of how we kept the Sabbath) and our tv during the week was strictly limited, the times I’d go over to a friends house (usually my friend Jimmy) I’d binge. Or, binge as much a kid could who had too much energy and needed to get outside and moving 😀 I do remember the Jetsons though. Poor George getting yelled at all the time by his boss and I can remember even having a crush on Judy, the teenage daughter. Ahhh, those were the days. The halcyon golden age of childrens television. Then Barney and the Teletubbies came along and ruined everything.

★★★✬☆

• All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

The Game (Victor the Assassin #3) ★★★☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Game
Series: Victor the Assassin #3
Authors: Tom Wood
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 405
Words: 115K

Victor, now working for the CIA, kills a fellow assassin, who had taken out an American. Can’t let that kind of behavior stand, so Victor does the deed. Only for the CIA to find out that this merc had been recruited to pull off a “big job” and without him, they have zero leads. So Victor has to pretend to be the merc and find out what’s going on and to stop it if necessary. We get a new CIA liaison for Victor and I must say, she was simply incompetent and improbable. Every time she meets up with Victor she’s all worried about him and bemoaning that she placed him in “such a dangerous situation”. I think the author was trying to show that she wasn’t a ruthless scumbag like Victor’s previous handler, but man, it came across the wrong way.

So Victor has to join a group of mercs but he doesn’t know what the job entails. It gets to the point where he’s about to walk out the door because of the lack of details and suddenly the criminal mastermind reveals that he has kidnapped a woman and child who he thinks are Victor’s (as he is pretending to be another man), so as to blackmail him. As soon as Victor didn’t kill everyone, I knew where this was going and once another mercenary was killed by the top mercenary, I knew where THAT was going. Everything turns into an electric boogaloo doublecross, only Victor goes all noble and saves the wife and kid. And the big bad plot? To kill a russian security officer. It was kind of disappointing that it wasn’t a nuke, or a plague or something!

So nothing bad here, just a mundane action/adventure story. I think that’s how the whole series is going to be and so I need to adjust my expectations accordingly.

★★★☆☆

• The Killer (Book 1)
• The Enemy (Book 2)

Writing Prompts - How to Disable Them on Wordpress

In yet another totally incomprehensible and bone headed move, WordPress.com, in all its wisdom, decided that we needed “writing prompts” whenever we started a new post. As far as I know, nobody asked for this. No blogger needs this. If they do, they should go to some other social media where being completely brain dead is the norm. I was so angry (surprise, surprise) that I immediately fired off a patent pending “Angry Bookstooge” email to support to find out just what in hecker freckers was going on. They replied with their usual pablum and non-reasoning and so I figured I was stuck with this abomination of stupidity.

Patent Pending “Angry Bookstooge” Email

I received an email follow up from WP.com late last week informing me of an “update” where I could opt out of this filthy, disgusting and utterly vile practice. Here’s the steps so you can opt out too if you so choose:

• My Sites
• Settings
• Writing

Then you can toggle off the “show writing prompts”. Just make sure to save after doing that so your choice is saved.

I hope this has been helpful. As WP.com changes things, randomly, for no reason and against all good sense, expect more little posts like this as I navigate the minefields of trying to stay here while simultaneously wishing every person at WP.com was being worked over, and good, by Pinhead.

Black Vise - MTG 4th Edition

The Madness of Cthulhu Vol. 2 (Cthulhu Anthology #6) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Madness of Cthulhu Vol. 2
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #6
Editor: S.T. Joshi
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 194
Words: 74K

The Table of Contents will be under the Details arrow, click if you want to expand it.

20,000 Years Under the Sea by Kevin J. Anderson

Tsathoggua’s Breath by Brian Stableford

The Door Beneath by Alan Dean Foster

Dead Man Walking by William F. Nolan

A Crazy Mistake by Nancy Kilpatrick

The Anatomy Lesson by Cody Goodfellow

The Hollow Sky by Jason C. Eckhardt

The Last Ones by Mark Howard Jones

A Footnote in the Black Budget by Jonathan Maberry

Deep Fracture by Steve Rasnic Tem

The Dream Stones by Donald Tyson

The Blood in My Mouth by Laird Barron

On the Shores of Destruction by Karen Haber

Object 00922UU by Erik Bear and Greg Bear

With this collection, Joshi steers the boat back into the Cosmic Horror side of Cthulhu instead of the Weird Fiction stream he entered with Madness Vol 1. I much prefer Cosmic Horror (as I’ve said before and I’m sure I’ll say again).

I’m realizing, as I read more of these anthologies, that a good grounding in both classic literature AND the original Cthulhu Mythos by Lovecraft make for a much richer, fuller read. The first story, 20,000 Years Under the Sea is about Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, from Jules Verne’s story 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. While Anderson does a good job (I’m surprised I’m saying that about him, as I usually think he does slip shod and crappy work) of giving us all the details we need to know for this particular story, if you know the original story it adds some depth to the characters, etc. In the same way, A Footnote in the Black Budget deals with the shoggoth and the fallout from Lovecraft’s story The Mountains of Madness. Again, you are given everything you need for this particular story, but knowing the history just adds more to your enjoyment.

I also find that the horrible works better than the strictly weird. The Dream Stones is a perfect example. That is an interview at a police station with a person who appears to have gone insane after murdering 6 couples. But if you believe in the mythos, you see that they have been driven insane by something so vast that it simply broke their mind. Why does that appeal to me? I have no idea.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with this collection. There was no snobbery or pretentiousness to ruin the stories and we went from the time of the Vikings to the Far Future, so it wasn’t all the same setting. At the same time, I gave this the same rating as Vol 1 because none of these stories quite rose to the occasion. So while I enjoyed the Cosmic Horror, it wasn’t as good as I was hoping for.

★★★✬☆

• Cthulhu Lives! (Book 1)
• Cthulhu Lies Dreaming (Book 2)
• The Madness of Cthulhu Vol 1 (Book 3)
• Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 1 (Book 4)
• Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 2 (Book 5)

Journal the 17th - Cervantes: Letter to the King

Last April, I showcased my latest journal, The Tesla Journal. Usually, it takes me a year or more to fill up a journal. Well, I have been racing through that one and filled it up and started another this month. So of course I’m going to show off what version I got this time 😀 Paperblanks Embellished Manuscripts have become my favorite journal and they come out with new ones every year. It is worth the money.

So without further ado, here are pictures of the journal, which is titled “Cervantes: Letter to the King”.

Just to put things in perspective, it took me 11months to fill up my 15th journal. Then 7months to fill up the Tesla one (the 16th). We’ll see how long it takes me to go through this one. I’m already salivating about getting whatever the 18th journal will be. Does that mean I have a problem? Hahahahahaa! Well, whatever the case may be, you can be sure that I’ll keep on posting whenever I get a new journal. yum yum yum!