The church I was attending at the time celebrated the 3 major feasts that are written about in the Old Testament in the Bible. It was a time to gather together, meet old friends, go to meetings (and boy howdy, there were a lot of meetings), and meet new friends. It was also one of the best times to introduce someone, as the grapevine was pretty alive. So everybody who knew me got to meet Miss Library. It really was obvious we were in love and that marriage was inevitable, but I was so introspective (too much so and still am) that I “wasn’t sure”. It really took me awhile to realize just how in love I was with her.
I was a library regular. Every weekend I’d go to the library and load up on books to read for the week. One of my big fears was running out of books to read during the week, so I always took a big stack. I became a familiar and knew the librarians and got to know the Head Librarian. So it wasn’t a big stretch to get them to open the Wadlicus up one Sunday afternoon so I could “show” Miss Library the library and spring the proposal. She tells me she had no idea. I believe her because she’s very similar to me in the subtlety regards, ie, we’re as subtle as hammers. But it was perfect. We both loved books and what could be more fitting than a proposal in a whole building dedicated to books?
Stay tuned for next week’s post-wedding adventure in… The Land of Snow and Ice!
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: Latency Series: Hunter Bureau #2 Author: Blaze Ward Rating: 2 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 197 Words: 62K
When I read and reviewed the first book, I mentioned that there were key words or phrases that usually only came from a political side that was completely opposed to everything I stand for in terms of morals, principles and guiding principles. So instead of either brushing it off or making a mountain out of a molehill, as I was reading, I just highlighted stuff that caught my eye. That’s mostly what this review will contain, is quotes from the book. I am not trying to provide context within the story or anything like that. I’m planning on hiding it all behind the Details code so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.
Location 147: (speaking of handguns)Greyson’s grandfather had had something like that, demilled when the aliens decided to make humans safer.
Location 378: Back when the US was a thing and had an army they liked to sic on weaker nations.
Location 611: be allowed
Location 726: And they hadn’t done androgynous in those days. Being less than stridently hetero in the late 20th Century was an invitation to get beat up. Fucking barbarians.
Location 793: The bits that were left were generally the ones the Army had found useful as tools. Deliberate cruelty. Premeditated self-defense.
Location 972: Universal Basic Income kept people from starving,
Location 1184: Mostly, ex-special forces, so knuckleheads who liked to solve problems with extreme firepower.
Location 1332: Honest men got no reason to bolt,
Location 1904: Superfast trains had already worked in other countries because the governments had been able to get right of way. In the old United States, NIMBY had delayed everything for so long that it was never economical to actually build. Not In My Back Yard. Then the middle-class bastards had the audacity to complain about bad roads and crowded….
Location 2135: Greyson was just old enough to remember the great awakening in this culture, when everyone discovered that there were more options than white-bread hetero. Folks like that had always been there, but for the longest time the power structure in his country had come down hard on anyone deviating from the strict party line, both legally as well as socially.
Location 2277: would still be the rest of his lifetime and maybe all of Rachel’s before the planet started cooling down again, but hopefully they’d managed to save it in time.
Location 2686: Back in the bleak days of a War on Crime that was a thinly-veiled War on Black People that had started before 1618 and never really been forced to subside until aliens landed and threatened to crack heads together.
Location 2849: Sandwiches he brought from home instead of lunch out.
Location 2927: where a young white boy like him had had no business being.
Location 2951: But then, most men didn’t know how to deal with a woman who was tougher than they were, and probably smarter.
Location 3206: If Greyson had shown some of his otherwise private political leanings with the places he had mailed his packages, that was between him and God. And God supposedly loved everyone, so Greyson figured he was on safe ground
I read to the end of the book and with all of those quotes decided that I won’t be reading any more by Mister Blaze Ward. Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to replace this series with. Choices, choices, choices.
This week my father asked me to get ChatGPT to write a two-page report on the efficacy of green leucaena seeds for controlling gastro-intestinal parasites (worms) in children. He could have done it himself but you how oldies are with new technology so I duly obliged. ChatGPT spat out a report that was very good […]
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: Mansions of the Gods Series: Asterix #17 Authors: Goscinny & Uderzo Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Comics Pages: 53 Words: 3K
Caesar has the VERY clever idea of surrounding the Gaul’s village with luxury roman apartments and thus subsuming the Gauls culturally. He sends his best architect and a whole galley of slaves (former pirates) to cut down the forest and build the Mansions of the Gods.
Of course, the problem is that the Gauls can regrow trees overnight, beat the stuffing out of the roman soldiers AND give magic potion to the slaves. Not even this though is enough to overcome Caesar’s plans and a mansion is built and tenanted (even if it’s that or the circus maximus!). When Cacofonix the bard empties the building of regular tenants, the soldiers move in and then the Gaul’s attack en masse and destroy the building. The architect gives up and the gauls replant the forest over the ruins.
I thought the idea was quite a workable one (culturally subsuming a small group of hold outs) but it can take generations. The Amish are a good example. They have held out (and continue to do so) against modern civilization, but as a group they are slowly shrinking and are being forced to make changes simply to continue to exist.
Goscinny and Urderzo make this a quick, funny event and everything turns out ok for the Gauls this time, but my cynical adult self realizes that what was proposed here is what would eventually happen if this were real. Since it is NOT real however, I can laugh at Obelix accidentally planting a magic acorn in the middle of Asterix’s house and them all eating dinner 100 feet up in the air 😀
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 City of Water, Water Seven Series: One Piece #34 Arc: Water Seven #3 Author: Eiichiro Oda Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Manga Pages: 230 Words: 10K
The Straw Hats win the Davy Back Fight and sail on to the island of Seven Waters where there is a whole city of shipwrights to work on the Merry Go. The shipwrights show their power and the Straw Hats convert all the gold into ready cash and immediately start having robbery attempts on them.
While the end of the Fight was stupid, the introduction to the shipwrights was as madcap as I could want in the One Piece world. And Luffy’s response was just what I would expect from him, as evinced by this panel:
I now have higher hopes for this Water Seven arc than I did when it started out. That makes me happy.
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 Defender Series: Conan the Barbarian Author: Robert Jordan Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 193 Words: 65K
This is a direct sequel to the previous Conan book, Conan the Invincible. More in terms of characters than in plot. Conan gets together with the prince of the bandits from the previous book and they go to some city and try to earn gold as guards. There’s a revolution brewing and a sorcerer is the prime mover and shaker and Conan works out said sorcerer is using the revolutionaries (who are the spares of rich royal families and thus have nothing to do) as patsies. When he reveals they get all butt hurt and toss him out. He goes to work for the king and runs across the Queen of the Bandits from the previous book. He also comes into conflict with the sorcerer and with wit and mighty thews bests him. Everyone realizes Conan was right about everything and peace reigns supreme. The end.
My goodness. Jordan knows how to write some pulp here. If I had been in a more scathing mood I’d probably have trashed this 6 ways from Sunday. But as I was rather raw inside at the time of reading, the simple hack, slash and bash of Conan outpowering everyone was like a balm upon my heart. Conan’s ability to literally cut his way through any and all problems is what I WISH I could do today. Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way. And it really doesn’t work that way for little chubby bald guys who don’t like people 😉
This stuff is pure wish fulfillment and I enjoy it as such.
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 Vicar of Nibbleswick Authors: Roald Dahl Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Childrens Fiction Pages: 6 Words: 1K
I have no idea how this story got to be on its own instead of being folded into some sort of collection. Be that as it may, this feels like a good ending to my Dahl re-read. Short and sweet and amusing.
The Vicar says words backwards and Dahl has a blast figuring out language tricks to make things sound not just nonsensical but actually correct grammatically while being totally wrong in what the poor Vicar is trying to say. One funny instance is him trying to tell the congregation not to “park” their cars alongside the front of the church but to use the back parking lot. I laughed, as it comes out like telling them to not krap in front of the church, hahahhaa. Good stuff!
Having started my Dahl re-read back in December of ‘21 with Matilda, which is close to being one of his longest books, like I mentioned at first, this short story felt like a great way to finish things up. I’ve enjoyed this almost year and a half journey of exploring Dahl all over again but I’ve realized that I probably won’t do it again on my own. I feel like Dahl has a magic circle that his books work in and I’ve simply aged out of that circle. They are still wonderful and amusing stories and I’ll remember them very fondly, but I am now done.
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 Return of Santiago Series: Santiago #2 Author: Mike Resnick Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 278 Words: 122K
So, a hundred or two years after the first Santiago book, some small time thief discovers the original manuscript from Black Orpheus and decides that he wants to become his successor, a Dante. So he realizes that he needs a Santiago to center the continuing poem around sets out to find one. With the help of some colorful characters he attempts to recruit various bigger than life characters to become Santiago only to realize that each one is pretty flawed each time. Eventually, with the help of his co-horts hitting him over the head with it, he realizes HE is the new Santiago.
Santiago was published in 1986 and was a completely standalone novel. Return was published in ‘03 and did a bit of fancy dancy stuff to make it possible to need a “return of Santiago”. While I still enjoyed this, it simply wasn’t in the same league as the first book and really felt like Resnick was trying to recapture the magic (and failing). Thankfully, he doesn’t recycle the same set of characters as was presented in the first book, so that was good. But none of them quite lived up the engaging’ness of the cast of characters we met in the first book.
If you liked Santiago, then I would recommend Return if you really need to be a completionist. However, I would strongly caution you to think twice, as this just isn’t as good. Not bad, but not as good.
After I had gotten permission to court Mrs B (Miss Librarian at the time), we decided it was time for her family to meet me. So we all (Mr and Mrs Parental Pod, Sir Grumpy, Miss Librarian and me) went to Hawaii for a week. The incident described above really happened. Mrs Parental Pod was driving us and I had nervous energy from being on the plane and me and my friends had always played the points game. Basically, you would describe how you would/could hit a pedestrian or bicyclist and we made up rules about how many points. Old ladies were worth the most but if you could convince everyone else in the car that you could make a bicyclist bounce or even double hit them (car doors were very popular in the game), you could get triple points, thus increasing your score very quickly. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a dark sense of humor, well, the game cross across as very macabre at best and downright psychopathic at worst. It was probably one of the worst blunders I made in our relationship and it had barely begun.
But it was Hawaii. So between the sunshine and everything, it was ok. We went traveling every day and packed in a lot of sight seeing. We visited the Polynesian Cultural Center one day and that is what the title is based on. They had these big man-made waterfalls with tiki torches all along them so you had fire and water all together and it was beautiful. I took a ukulele lesson and Miss Librarian sang “You are my Sunshine” while I bravely tried to accompany her on said ukulele. We visited Pearl Harbor, some beaches and the Dole Plantation. We also visited Admiral and Mrs Stamps, which was great. Admiral Stamps had been a freshman during my senior bibleschool year and we had a good bond. Throw in that Miss Librarian and I had met at their wedding and well, they had a lot of gratitude from us.
And that is our little adventure in the Land of Fire and Water. Stay tuned when we return next week with a life changing visit to The Libraricus!
