While Mrs B and I both aggressively work on keeping our lives from being overcome with busy’ness, sometimes an idea needs some concrete forms to crystalize. I found the following Sabbath email very helpful in that regards.
“Be still and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10
I was recently given a book with a very odd title: Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, by Tyler Staton. Mr. Staton is the lead pastor of a church in Oregon and the national director of the the 24-7 Prayer Movement in the United States. The book cover tells me that it will “open or reopen the lines of communication with your Creator,” and will show you how to “practice multiple positions of prayer, including silence, persistence, confession, and more. I want to share with you for this Sabbath message the first of the monks’ prayer postures—“Be still and know.”
Mr. Staton begins the second chapter reminding us of how truly difficult it is to “be still,” compared to the days before the invention of the clock, the light bulb, and the I-phone. For example, a 2019 survey found the average I-phone user was staring at his phone screen for over five hours each day! He includes an anecdote about the Christian philosopher, Dallas Willard, who was asked, “What do I need to do to be spiritually healthy?” After a long pause he answered, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life!” So if hurry, along with “busyness and overload,” crowds God out of many Christians’ lives, learning to “be still” is a good antidote.
For being still, Mr. Staton suggests that his readers try this method, and perhaps you would like to try it sometime this Sabbath day!
First, create a daily ritual. Choose an ordinary quiet place like your favorite chair in your bedroom.
Second, sit straight up with your two feet planted firmly on the floor.
Third, lay your hands in your lap, palms open, facing up.
Fourth, close your eyes and breathe in deeply and slowly three times.
Fifth, pray something simple and invitational like “Here I am Lord” or “Come, Holy Spirit.”
Sixth, be quiet. Be still. Wait!
Seventh, set a goal of at least two minutes before you open your eyes. Gradually work this up over a period of weeks to ten minutes.
When I tried this, I kept repeating to myself, “Be still and know that I am God” to keep out distracting thoughts. Finally, I decided it had been a good five minutes and opened my eyes. When I looked at my watch, it had only been two and a half minutes!
God help us all to learn to “Be still” in this hurried, frantic world of instant gratification. The Sabbath is a great time to practice this! Shabbat shalom,
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: Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future Series: Santiago #1 Author: Mike Resnick Rating: 5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 328 Words: 116K
Another re-read of an old favorite and thankfully, this time it stood the test. Like other “favorites” I had read this in highschool and Bibleschool multiple times and loved it. Read it again in ‘12 and loved it then too. But after my time in November of re-reading a couple of old favorites and finding them wanting, I went into this very hesitantly.
And wonder of wonders, it was grand and big and all space shoot’y and awesome and everything that I wanted in a Myth of the Far Future! It’s a simple story with simple characters and a simple universe. If you want massive backstories explaining every single detail, forget it. If you want characters with bio’s running from their childhood to the present, forget it. Use your own flipping imagination for once and Resnick will give you the ride of a lifetime here. I can see myself moving beyond this like I have the other books, but I am reveling in the fact that right now, it is still the same fantastic book as ever.
The other thing I’m going to talk about here are the various covers.
This is the cover of the mass market paperback that I read back in the 90’s. That orangey yellow is what made it stand out on the revolving book rack in the library. The guy with the funny haircut holding out the paper with the spaceship in the background promised mystery and adventure and cool stuff and boy howdy, I got all of that.
When Resnick turned his books into ebooks, I believe he had to use new covers because he didn’t own the rights to the originals. So he went with this stock photo (and he used it for the sequel ebook too) and overall, it works well. We’re dealing with Space and the farthest reaches of where mankind can go, so something haunting like this feeds into that idea.
This is the ebook cover this time around. Resnick is now dead, so I don’t know if he chose this before his passing or it ended up the decision of his estate. Either way, it’s rather blah and very homecomputer graphics looking. Why you would choose to read this book based on that cover is beyond me.
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: Eye of the Storm Series: Bone #16 Author: Jeff Smith Rating: 2 of 5 Stars Genre: Comics Pages: 22 Words: 1K
We get 22 pages of Gran’ma Ben, Thorn and Fone Bone running in the dark and rain away from a huge swarm of rat creatures and Gran’ma Ben being all angry about the red dragon. Fone hollers out for the dragon’s help, it comes and chases the rat creatures away, disappears and Gran’ma reveals that the dragon doesn’t always come and that’s why she is so angry at it. The issue ends with a big text “Next: Gran’ma’s Story”.
Gotta admit, if I had paid the cover price of $3 and this was all I had gotten, I’d have screamed bloody murder, called Smith some foul and uncomplimentary names and quit Bone and begin an Anti-Jeff Smith crusade to destroy him for taking my hard earned money and giving me nothing but this. I do not know how this comic survived, I really don’t! Smith is milking this like it’s a pregnant holstein cow (the black and white ones you always see in movies or cartoons giving milk) and he’s doing it shamelessly. I was actually tempted to just stop myself right now in a show of solidarity with my imaginary self. But of course I didn’t pay $3 for this and I am going to keep reading. But knowing that the next couple of issues will be prequel stuff about Gran’ma Ben means that not only has the forward motion of the plot (which we really haven’t had any of for quite a few issues it seems) stopped, but now we’re going backwards. Sigh.
That being said, while I really do try to keep the author out of the story in how I rate or review things, my opinion of Smith is about at its lowest so far. What he gave me could have been done in about 5 pages and the story line advanced a bit more. When I started reading this individual issue by individual issue I was wondering why there were so many (I believe there are 55 issues) and now I know.
I realize you might be wondering why I don’t just dnf this or read them all at once and call it a day. The truth is that I couldn’t afford comics until my later teen years and thus never had the experience of reading something on a monthly basis. That experience is what I am trying to capture by reading this series this way. While it is voluntary on my part, back in the day it wasn’t voluntary and I want to know what that was like, frustrations and all. So that is why. Whether it makes sense to you or not 🙂
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
I read the first volume of this back in 2007 but had just watched the original anime and it was so similar that I didn’t want to go over the same territory again. Of course, 15 years later the anime is a vague memory and I’d rather read the manga now than watch either the original or Brotherhood.
Ok, basic premise is a world with Alchemists who have “powers” and it’s all based on the laws of alchemy and equivalent exchange. We follow the adventures of the Elric brothers. Edward, who is the elder and the State Certified alchemist is known as the fullmetal alchemist because one of his legs and one of his arms is made up entirely of metal. His younger brother is Alphonse and he is nothing but a big empty suit of animated armor. Their condition came about when they tried to resurrect their dead mother and in the process almost died. They brought something back, but it wasn’t their mother and it doesn’t seem like it came back alive. So their goal now is to restore their bodies back to the way they were.
Within this world, some unnamed country has a very strong army and most of that strength is based on it’s cadre of Alchemists and their varying abilities. They seem to be in the middle of either building an Empire or consolidating one. But either way, nobody likes the Alchemists and the slang nickname for them is Dogs of the Army.
This volume had several standalone adventures about Ed & Al and introduces us to the idea of the Philosopher’s Stone. Said stone is able to bypass the natural laws and the Elrics hope to find it to restore their bodies. They find one, only it turns out to be fake and the guy who used it is being used by some inhuman appearing alchemists who go by the name Lust and Gluttony.
This was a very mixed volume of humor and super serious. It was odd but at the same time it worked for me. I think the following pix showcases that dichotomy rather well.
Ed has just knocked out a terrorist on a train and the two train drivers use the distraction to beat the everliving daylights out of the other terrorist with shovels. They they all give each other the thumbs up and the air is filled with “we are so awesome” symbols (the little stars). It’s ridiculous. But it is funny too.
I know some of my familiarity and non-confusion is because I watched the anime. I don’t know how the world building and character development would appear to someone reading this with no knowledge. I tried to view things through a lens of ignorance, and while I felt I did a pretty good job of that, some things were just impossible to not remember.
Overall, I had a much better impression this time around than I did in ‘07 and that gives me hope the rest of the series will turn out well too. I’m looking forward to diving into more of this as the months roll on.
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: Conan the Invincible Series: Conan the Barbarian Authors: Robert Jordan Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 205 Words: 69K
In this story, a young Conan is hired to steal some jewels, that, unbeknownst to him, are magical in nature. A rival sorcerer to the one that hired Conan ends up stealing them instead and so Conan decides to track them down because a pleasure slave was also kidnapped and he liked the cut of her gib. Hooking up with bandits who are led by a hot tempered woman warrior, Conan and Co take on snake people, army people and rival sorcerous groups. Lots of death happens. Lots of nudity occurs. In the end, everybody pretty much gets what they deserve.
I enjoyed this. It was on par with some of the better stories by Maddox (I know that’s his middle name, but John Roberts is SOOOO boring) and it gives me hope that what Jordan writes overall will be a notch better. I’m not expecting miracles, as this is Conan after all, but I do hope for more consistency.
One thing I was NOT expecting was the comeuppance that the warrior woman gets at the end. She’d been a real witch the entire book and was NOT a good person, so it was with grim humor that I saw Conan leave her to her fate as a slave at the end. She totally deserved it. The sorcerer getting eaten by the cosmic horror god was right in line with what I expect to happen to sorcerers in a Conan story so I was glad not to be disappointed that way too.
On a completely different note I found a list of around 100 Conan books listed chronologically. That’s a lot of Conan to go around! But it gave me some more authors to hunt down in regards to Conan. What I’ve read so far I’ve enjoyed and I’d like to read as much as I can. I have decided that I’m not going to try to number the Conan books I read but just leave them as standalone stories. I’ll simply read them grouped by author and call that good enough. So far, Howard, Maddox and Jordan have all told standalone tales and I hope any other authors stick to that formula. It works well.
The year in general sailed along for both Mrs B and me. We both ended up working more than usual (I think our average weekly was 42 or 43 hrs). Those extra hours made a big difference. Student loans are finished! So now we’re using that money to pay down extra on our mortgage. I’m hoping we can shave off 5-6 years off the loan life. That’s my next big life goal, to get that mortgage out of the way.
We helped out each month with super church (sunday school) and live streaming (so 2 sunday’s a month) and I’m finding my tolerance for the kids is waning. There is one parent who pretty much brings her kids to be babysat and they’re not disciplined at home so they’re not model kids. Thankfully, after having used the “nuclear option” once, (take them out of class and march them up the middle of the aisle and drop them back off to their mom in the middle of the sermon) they’re learning I mean business. They’re not bad kids, just unruly and undisciplined. But it’s exhausting and those Sunday’s I come home and flop on the couch. Streaming is easier but mainly because I refuse to treat it like a show. I use 4 camera angles and that’s it. I don’t zoom around, I don’t focus on people playing special music, etc, etc.
This year was just a blur. Not that good things didn’t happen, or bad things, but overall it went so fast that it was over before I realized what was going on. Which is fine when you’re concerned about who is elected to political offices, but not so fine when it comes to paying bills. Actually had one bill go to a bill collector because I completely forgot to pay it. Sigh, life moving faster isn’t necessarily a good thing.
One of the kids at church expressed interest in Magic earlier this year so I’ve been getting together with his Dad and him once or twice a month and turning him into a life long addict. Someone’s gotta do it, so it might as well be me 😀 Speaking of Magic, I began collecting the Mirage set from 1996. Along with 4th Edition, those cards are some of the iconic visual memories of my late teen years. Plus, collecting cards doesn’t take up nearly as much space as collecting books does, hahahahaa!
General Bookish Thoughts:
Looking at those numbers, man, did my book numbers go up! Part of that is because I was reading individual issues of comics all year (whereas I had only started doing that in July of 2021), but even that only accounts for about an extra 25, so I simply read MORE this year. The Pages and Words metric fully back that up. It didn’t “feel” like I had read more, but with not picking up any other new hobby, Reading picked up the slack.
The rating is down only a little bit from last year, but 2021’s rating was down from 2020’s, so I’m on a downward slide, albeit a very slight one. I think that is because I’m reading more. There are more crap books than fantastic books out there, so the more I read, the greater my chance of a getting a crap book. All it takes is ONE one star book in a month to drag the whole year down. And since I am so picky about handing out 5stars, well, it doesn’t surprise me. But as long as I stay above a 3star average, that means I’m enjoying the majority of what I read. I’ll try to be content with that.
With all of that being said, I only had FOUR 5star reads this year and all of them were re-reads. I had NINE 4.5star reads as well. On the other side, I only had TWO half star reads and NINE 1star reads. So I feel that I balanced everything out in the end.
With around 57 of the reads being re-reads (including ALL of the Bone comics), I’m still sticking around the 25% mark. I have a feeling that number is going to drop in ’23 as I am becoming more leery of re-reading my “old favorites” as I move into the phase of life (fully middle aged now) and all of my manga will be new to me as well. I am ok with this change.
Well, despite my issues with WP.com in 2021, I still came crawling back for more in 2022. To the point where I have a paid plan and Dotblog Site, sigh. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced some of the problems that I did last year, but I never count WP.com out of the problem fight. If they can’t make one problem get you, they’ll invent a whole new one, the wretches.
I have also realized that despite all of my complaining and grumbling, that I have nailed myself to WP.com. The finishing up of construction on The Hotel Bookstooge pretty much saw to that and the continued work on the Author Index is like putting up shutters on the windows. You only do that if you think you’re going to stay in the place for a while.
Between the paid plan’s upgrade to my storage, Dropbox and Caesium, space is not an issue for me.
The Churn continues apace with other bloggers slowing down, stopping or just moving on to other hobbies. I have also done my own share of unfollowing this year and finding new bloggers to follow. If I could have one blogging wish for 2023, I wish that things would stay stable in that regards. That’s a vain wish though, knowing how unstable the world in general is right now.
So the long and short? I’m here, I’m standing tall (well, kind of) and I’m not planning on leaving. But I’ll still be complaining.
Blogspot continues to be my review backup. Not in any meaningful way, as I didn’t do any work on the old reviews, so it’s as big a mess as my WordPress used to be. But it’s there for me when WP.com does something truly stupendously stupid (like they seem to do 3-4 times a year) and is a good safety valve so I don’t feel that WP.com is my only option.
Partway through the year (July to be particular) I stopped crossposting my reviews to Librarything. I had given up on the platform as a social site in 2021 and thus it was pretty inevitable that I stopped using them all together. Guess I’m more surprised it took me as long as it did than anything.
Calibre continues to putter along offline just fine. It is what I now use to check up on anything in particular. Now that it has full database searching abilities, I can look for almost anything and with enough patience, find it. I am currently using version 6.9 and will be updating as the creator puts up new updates.
Definitely Flashman. He lies, murders and rapes his way through the book and we’re supposed to find it amusing. I definitely did not.
PLANS FOR 2023:
Personal:
The Self-Study for my Level3 Certification didn’t work out at all in ’22. I think that really needs to be a top priority for this year. I’m just afraid that I’ll slack off again though and “do it next month” all year long.
The potential move to Georgia is now indefinitely put off. It’s going to take an emergency to get us down there and even then we’d have to think about it. It is going into a closet shelf in the very back of my mind for now.
Trying not to make many, if any, plans. Because situations are easier to handle when you don’t have expectations about them.
Drink a lot of Rockstar energy drinks. Because I can.
Blog:
Continue working on my author index. Continue my Magic cards each Monday. So it’s going to be business as usual. I haven’t had a creative idea for some time about a long running series of blog posts, so I might end up not trying to do any. Which is too bad because long running series of posts is always easier to write and schedule than anything else.
I am going to try to do some more “arty” stuff but we’ll see how that pans out. I would like it to work but the logistics might be greater than anticipated.
Movies are still completely up in the air. There are so many movie reviewers out there. Besides, I don’t watch new stuff and even when I do watch stuff, I don’t really watch it that well. More like “listening to it” with glances up at the tv when there’s no dialogue to tell me what’s going on.
This might end up being a very sloggy blog year :-/
Mrs B and I got sick near the beginning of the month but it wasn’t covid and it wasn’t serious. A couple of days out of work and we were good to go again.
Life was just busy from Thanksgiving til now. I think that contributed towards the sickness actually. One Saturday I slept for almost 12hrs.
I spent a lot of the month getting Mrs B’s Christmas present ready. It was a collaboration so I had to coordinate with some other people and one of them I had to collaborate through a 3rd party, so it was a lot of work to get things done that would have taken half the time and effort if I could have had direct contact. Oh well. It’s done now and turned out very well.
Plans for Next Month:
Well, just like always, I STILL have to deal with my upcoming Year in Review Post. I always leave it til last minute, always bemoan the fact in this final Roundup post and never actually do anything to change that. If I wasn’t so awesome, I’d be disgusted with myself 😉
I do plan on adding Manga back into my reading mix so that “open day” disappears. Might end up leaving Saturdays open for last minute silliness, we’ll see. I had talked about something, with somebody, sometime, for my next movie idea but I didn’t write it down and so have completely forgotten all the details. If that was you, would you mind saying what it was in the comments? Thanks. Otherwise, I might just let movies slide for a couple of months while I flail around looking for something suitable. Magic on Mondays will go on as usual.
Work continues apace on the Author Index and I’m in the P’s now. If I can keep up this momentum, I should be able to wrap this project up in 2023. Or I might stall out. It’s a tossup at this point.
See you tomorrow as I blab about the whole of ’22 then.
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: Uncle Fred in the Springtime Series: Blandings Castle #7 Authors: PG Wodehouse Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Humor Pages: 224 Words: 73K
I am not sure what it was about this book, or if it was this book in and of itself, that caused me to give it this 4star rating. Maybe it was because it’s been 2 months since I read a Blandings Castle story? Maybe I was extra tired that night and so “everything” seemed funnier? I don’t know why, but this hit my humor spot perfectly this time around.
The main protagonist is an Uncle Fred and he and his get down to Blandings Castle with the usual reasons (money, matrimony, pigs) and the typical chaos ensues. Thankfully, Uncle Fred isn’t as dimwitted as many of Wodehouse’s male protagonists are and thus, while he’s no Einstein, he doesn’t do stupid things, like try to steal his own pig (that’s for Lord Emsworth, the master of Blandings Castle, to do).
When I originally read this in ‘02, my main impression was how stupid everyone was. 20 years later I realize that was youth talking and thinking. Ahhh, callow youth. I’ve come to realize that just because I don’t like something, or how something is done, doesn’t make it stupid. It simply makes those who do things differently from me stupid, the actual action isn’t 😉 All of the various characters had their own reasons for doing what they did in this story and while none of it would have been what I would have done (and hopefully, nobody of sound mind), it wasn’t necessarily stupid.
It had also been long enough that I didn’t remember a single thing from my ‘02 read so it was like I was reading this for the very first time 😀 Sometimes knowing you’ve read something doesn’t trigger ANY memories. Isn’t that weird? Some things are crystal clear (like how I’ve mentioned things from when I read my old journals) and others (like this book) are a complete blank. That doesn’t frustrate me though, it simply intrigues me. I like seeing how my own brain works but I don’t want to deep dive and become a neuro-specialist. All I need to know is that my brain is awesome and I’m good to go.
You want more than that? Then I’m afraid your life is going to be filled with frustrations and break downs. Be content. Like Lord Emsworth, hahhaahahaaa. Give that man a pig and he’s completely satisfied. Not trying to say that my brain is a pig, mind you. Because I don’t even eat bacon.
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: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #12 Authors: Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Comics Pages: 39 Words: 2K
Everyone in the group is out having a picnic when some random student stumbles across them. He escaped from ‘hardcore survivalists who made him build them an atom bomb” so they could cleanse America. Said student is then shot by the leader, one Skonk, from 600 yards away using what appears to be an M16 machine gun. Casey and April take the super genius student to a hospital while Splinter and the boys take on the Good Ol’ Boys with names like Jess, Bubba and Skonk. Who want to set off a nuclear bomb (in case you’d forgotten). Donatello removes the plutonium from the bomb without any safety gear and suffers no harm and Kronk remote detonates it thinking it is still a nuclear bomb. In the middle of the woods. In their “bunker”, which is nothing more than a ramshackle old cottage with a dilapidated garage.
This had me rolling my eyes so hard. I was all prepared to show some righteous review anger but man, this was so bad that I ended up just laughing at it. 600 yards is about 900ft, or 600 meters. You don’t shot ANYTHING through the woods that far. It is mainly in urban environments or treeless areas that that is even possible. And you certainly don’t do it with an M16. Sniper rifles are precision tools with wicked long barrels and you pretty much carry them in a case, not dangling over your shoulder on a strap like a man purse. Then you have the “genius” student who builds an a-bomb. I am not even sure where to start in dissecting how stupid that is. Those plans are highly classified and no mere student is going to have the know-how to do any such thing. And then Donatello “simply” removing the plutonium. Awwwwwwwww come on! Seriously? That’s where I simply gave up and just laughed my head off. Next, you have Skonk setting off what he thinks is the a-bomb. In the middle of the woods, with no viable target and no plans for what comes next. That’s not hardcore, that’s just stupid, hahahahaa.
And here’s a picture of the deadly A-bomb. In the garage. Up on saw horses. How can you not laugh at that?
This was a prime example of how to tell a bad story within a framework of the readers already suspending their belief (mutant turtles that are ninjas, for goodness sake). I couldn’t suspend my belief because I happen to know a little bit about guns, about militias and about nuclear bombs. How things were presented simply don’t work the way it was shown. What it shows is that the author knew as much about those things as I do about alien triceratop warriors. Guns, militias and bombs were as real to the author as alien dinosaurs, so he just makes up whatever crap he feels like and runs with it. That’s exactly what bad story telling does. If the authors had talked to even 2 hunters, they could have corrected all of their ideas about guns. If they’d gone to the library and read up on militias (this was done in ‘86 I think?) they’d know that militia groups have to be organized and skilled to survive and are not just cults with guns. If while they were at the library they’d read up on nuclear weapons, they’d know about radiation poisoning or how almost impossible it is to obtain fissionable material. But nope, they sat in their little room and made crap up.
I had no idea going into this issue that I’d be going off on a rant like this. But come on, what else am I supposed to do? Just let it slide?
This was also the issue where Eastman and Laird decided to kind of split and each would do an alternate issue, thus allowing them to focus on other comic ideas they had. I’m going to just keep on listing both their names in my reviews and even when guest authors come in, simply ignore that. Keeping track of the whims of the Artistic Type is more than I want to deal with when reading a bleeding comic book.
I’ve also realized that several of the covers I have for these issues are the complete spread, encompassing the front cover and the back, which forms a complete whole. Instead of chopping them up like I have been doing and making the “usual” sized cover, I’m going to be using the full version. So the first part of the review will have all the data under the cover instead of beside it like is normal. And this review is now approaching 900 words, so it is beyond time to quit before I lose myself here.
