Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Groo and the Tale of King Sage (Groo the Wanderer #13) ★★★✬☆

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Title: Groo and the Tale of King Sage
Series: Groo the Wanderer #13
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K

The Sage, introduced in Groo #7, becomes the King of a small but prosperous country. Groo stumbles across said country and asks to be made a general of the armies. For some reason, the Sage can’t say no to Groo and thus makes him a general. To mitigate Groo’s “groo’ness”, he sends him off to guard the northernmost pass of the country. Along the way, Groo makes everyone become a farmer and thus brings discontent to the whole country. The Sage is deposed and beats Groo about the head to show his displeasure.

This was an amusing little story. AND IT ONLY COST 75¢. In comparison, Bone #16 cost $3, four times as much. And Aragones gives us not only an amusing story with a start, a middle and an end, but it is also in color. Now maybe the paper material itself was pulp and Bone was high quality paper? But let me tell you, if I had $3 in 1986, well, really, I’d probably spent it at the dollar bin at Bradley’s (a now bankrupt and defunct department store) buying star wars figurines, BUT if I were to spend it on comics, I’d choose 4 months of Groo over one month of Bone every single time. Even right now, I would choose the same exact thing, ie, star wars figures, then if you forced me, Groo comics, hahahaha 😀

I am also finding the ads just as fun as the stories. In this comic, there is an ad for Captain America: The Broadway Musical. I kid you not. And here’s the proof:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/e315pnzbj189mpg/groo13.jpg

Now, that is even better than the ad for the Jetson’s I saw in the previous Groo comic! I did a google search and sure enough, Marvel did try to get Captain American onto the stage and they failed. I hope you all join me in thanks for that failure. Nobody needs to see Cap tippity tappitying around. It did make me wonder though, what kind of parent would just send in their kids info to some complete stranger they saw in a comic book? And what kind of little girl is reading Groo? Probably not one who sings and dances is my guess 🙂

★★★✬☆

All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

A Requiem: Bookstooge, and Silent Smartfood Popcorn, Strike Back!

Near the beginning of October (my goodness, it feels like that was forever ago) I was Banned Again from the wordpress forums for infractions unknown. I of course did not let this deter me from haunting the forums and making smart remarks in my head about both the people asking for help and the supposed staff.

But I couldn’t have endured these cold, cruel months without my good friend and Food of the Gods, Silent Smartfood Popcorn.

Every weekend when my voice was silenced by the tyrannical powers of WordPress (boo! hiss!), Smartfood helped me to go on. He reminded me that he never had a voice to lose in the first place and that I was still his friend. He also had no artificial colors, artificial flavors or preservatives so he was good for me.

I just hope that someday each and every one of you can find a friend like Silent Smartfood Popcorn was to me. While it lasted, he was the best bag of popcorn a guy could want. So long Smartfood, you’ve left your mark on my life. You are not forgotten.
(and neither are your 10,000 cousins still in the grocery stores!)

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Mirrors (Hunter Bureau #1) ★★★☆☆

Title: Mirrors
Series: Hunter Bureau #1
Author: Blaze Ward
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 146
Words: 49K

Sometime in the future, when mankind has almost destroyed himself, aliens give us a chance at survival. At a cost. We are no longer our own masters or owners of our own planet. While not in vile slavery per se, we ARE in servitude. We are the playground for aliens who can shape change and thus is born the Hunter Bureau.

Normally shape changers work alone, but this time they got smart. A pair come to Earth and one of them tries to take over a Hunter, only to be foiled by his own inexperience. He then takes over a retired Hunter while his partner begins setting things up so they can play in peace for years to come.

The problem is, the Hunter is no weak minded fool and the alien shape changer finds himself being taken over from the inside out. In the end, they form a mutual symbiosis and decide to hide the fact that the worlds top Hunter is now an alien shape changer. For the good of humanity of course.

The writing style for this book. Staccato. Bambambam. Like a gun. Going off. Right. In your ear. Choppy sentences. Cut off like a machete was taken to them. It was like the author was skipping whole sentences because he knew what he meant but as a reader it was incredibly frustrating. There were multiple instances where I had to read several paragraphs several times to figure out what in the world was going on. That’s just bad writing.

There were also a couple of key words that I only see used by people of certain political persuasions that I vehemently disagree with. I’ll be the first to admit that I could be reading too much into things, so I’m not giving that much weight in my judgment for this book. I didn’t even bother to record what they were so as not to take that idea with me into the next book.

The story itself was pretty interesting though. Realizing that the main character ISN’T the main character we thought he was amused me and I have to admit, I thought it was clever. In many ways, this reminded me of Timothy Zahn’s Quadrail series and the protagonist, Frank Compton. That same dry voice, that same almost emotionless state of being, it just struck me. But thankfully Ward does a bit better at characterization here so it’s not quite THAT dry or emotionless 😀

Good enough for 3stars and giving the next book a chance. By no means a great book or world changing though.

★★★☆☆

Monday, January 09, 2023

Blood Lust - MTG 4th Edition

Sunday, January 08, 2023

Wintermint Dumpstagramm - Double the Fun

♪Double your pleasure♪
♪Double your fun♪
♪Double your dumpstas♪
♪Now you’re done!♪

Saturday, January 07, 2023

A Sabbath Letter #3

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,

Christ’s Blessing on you all this Sabbath.

Friday, January 06, 2023

Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (Santiago #1) ★★★★★

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.

And that should wrap things up. Cheers!

★★★★★

Thursday, January 05, 2023

Eye of the Storm (Bone #16) ★★☆☆☆

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 🙂

★★☆☆☆

All My “Bone” Reviews

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

Fullmetal Alchemist #1 ★★★✬☆

Title: Fullmetal Alchemist #1
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: Hiromu Arakawa
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 184
Words: 9K

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.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/mgkpi3171okmzut/fma1.jpg

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.

★★★✬☆

All My “Fullmetal Alchemist” Reviews

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

Conan the Invincible (Conan the Barbarian) ★★★✬☆

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.

★★★✬☆