And thus ends that particular aspect of our story. Before we were lovers, we were friends. Before we were friends, we were Christians. Our foundation was Jesus Christ and that allowed us to put everything that has come into our lives since this time into its proper perspective. No matter the pain, no matter the circumstances, whatever life throws at us, we both know that Jesus has saved us from our sins and that we will see Him after death. That is why we know we will have a truly Happily Ever After.
I don’t mean to preach here, but how can I not when the center of both of our lives is Jesus Christ? Mrs B and I are side by side, marching towards the same goal.
Wishing you all a blessed Sabbath day as I wrap up this particular series. It has been fun to share it with you all and I hope you enjoyed getting to know some of our past history.
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: Blitz Series: Checquy Files #3 Author: Daniel O’Malley Rating: 2 of 5 Stars Genre: Urban Fantasy Pages: 622 Words: 250K
Long, bloated, two storylines that didn’t actually have any impact on each other and worst of all, boring. I was bored. The first storyline is dealing with London and World War II and the bombs being dropped on London. The second story involves a woman (who is married to a cop and has a daughter who is a toddler) who joins the Checquy because she can discharge electricity and it is in the present day.
I enjoyed the present day storyline. She was an engaging character with just the right amount of feistiness to keep me from rolling my eyes and she was SMART. She used her brains. Then I would just groan in spirit at the next chapter when we would go back to the stupid idiots who I was forced to read about during WWII. It was nothing more than a boring history info dump about the Checquy and I didn’t care two squats for it. Unfortunately, it seemed to play the bigger part and sucked the life from the entire book.
I actually feel rather generous giving this 2 stars. But it wasn’t bad, so I don’t feel like I can really go any lower. But I certainly won’t be reading any more in the Checquy Files if O’Malley writes any more. I hope he doesn’t because this was bad and I’m going to pretend The Rook and Stiletto are just a duology. Blitz has no business sullying the good literary name of the Checquy Files.
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 Casebook of Sherlock Holmes Series: Sherlock Holmes #9 Author: Arthur Doyle Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Mystery Pages: 309 Words: 84K
A bunch of short stories to round out and end the career of Sherlock Holmes. While nothing was really good, nothing was bad and I feel like this book sums up my overall experience with Holmes.
I’ve always thought I was strictly an idea guy when it came to stories and that the characters were simply meant as bones to hang the “idea” on. Well, reading Holmes has made me realize that I’ve changed and I like a good, fleshed out and relatable character. Holmes and Watson are none of those and so it makes it hard for me to enjoy these. Of course, it might just be the era that Doyle wrote in. Then I realize that Dickens didn’t write like this, at all, so I think it was all on Doyle. When I’m reading a collection of short stories like this, I don’t expect great characterization, but none of the previous novels have ever given that to me either, so I can’t even rely on that.
While I am glad to have finally read the entire Holmes canon, I don’t foresee myself ever wanting to re-read these. I want something more than they offer and I don’t think the future me is suddenly going to want that “lack” and thus desire to try these again 😀
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: Dreams Series: Bone #18 Author: Jeff Smith Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Comics Pages: 22 Words: 1K
From Bookstooge.blog
Thorn realizes that all of her dreams have been memories and gets all butt hurt at Gran’ma Ben for not telling her all these years. Gran’ma goes stubborn and won’t talk, Thorn goes all stubborn and won’t talk and Fone is stuck in the middle. Meanwhile, at the bar Lucius reveals the bet between him and Phoney and when things start going bad for Phoney, he wishes that Fone’s Dragon was there. This leads everyone to start questioning him, rather threateningly.
Finally, the various Bone characters start getting on track into one plot. With Phoney’s reveal to the town folk that he knows about a dragon, and Gran’ma Ben revealing Thorn’s history, everybody is about to be on the same page.
But you know what? Not. Quite. Yet. Because Smith is a bonehead and spends 3 pages showing us what should take a mere panel. There are several pages where he re-uses the same art but changes how an arm is resting or where a character is looking and we get about 10 words of text. It is beyond blatantly obvious that he is either puffing things up or is floundering and trying to give himself some operating space.
It is amazing to me seeing how a story, spaced out in monthly installments, shows such a markedly different set of weaknesses from the collected story. This is why I am not a fan of serial fiction either. Even if the author knows exactly where they are going, it is still a big pain in the butt to read on THEIR schedule and not mine. Maybe that had as much to do with me not reading a lot of comics as much any economic reasons.
Like I have stated before, I’m going to read this comic, issue by issue, even if it kills me. It just might too, hahahahahaa 😀
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
In so many ways this reminded me of the Mapp & Lucia series by EF Benson if there was only Lucia with a daughter. In this story, Mama is trying to get a rich match for her daughter and a rich, but old, sick and partly crazy, Prince is the target. The Mama has the entire village under her thumb and they chafe and so do what they can to upset the plans. And the daughter is horrified but goes along and the other, younger suitor, acts like an idiot and hurts the feelings of the daughter and thus extinguishes his own chances. Eventually, the Prince, thinking it is all a dream, escapes from the village and the Mama is a laughing stock and the daughter eventually marries some high ranking politician.
I guess this was a commentary on the people of the times. Of course, that’s not much different than the people of today. Selfish, back stabbing, irresponsible, greedy, etc, etc. Thankfully, Dostoyevsky uses humor so it’s not grim and horrible but by the time the story was done I was ready to leave that little Russian village.
Unfortunately, February was not much of an improvement over January. No ER visits and Mrs B is feeling ok, at the moment, but that could change at a moment’s notice and so we’re pretty much living on tenterhooks and taking life one day at a time.
Weatherwise, February was fantastic. Made work a real treat but the end of the month showed that March is probably going to be a brutal winter lion month instead of a gentle lamb spring month. Ahh well. Winter is here 🙁
Plans for Next Month:
I’m going to start watching the Shrek franchise for my movies so I’ll be doing one a month for a bit.
There will be double posts every Monday and Thursday’s. Just wanted to give you the heads up. I know I’ve been posting a lot and it looks to be continuing for March. Wednesdays will be all manga, as I’m ready to start reading more each month of both One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist.
Hoping to do several posts about journaling too. I’ve got 5 posts in mind about journaling, so as long as I can get my butt in gear and get them written, that will take up Saturdays and be some of the double posting I am planning on do on the weekdays.
Goodness, it sounds like a lot when I type it all out like that. But really, if I wasn’t planning those things, I’d be planning something else. I’m just an inveterate planner, for good or bad, so I just roll with it until I burn out and then I plan my convalescence 😀
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: Lay the Hate Series: Forgotten Ruin #4 Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Military Fantasy Pages: 209 Words: 76K
The Ranger-Roos are off on a big bad mission to kill somebody. Only, they get side tracked and kill somebody else and the stupid narrator, Talker, who is like the most important person to the group for his linguistics skills, jumps into a dimensional vortex/rift thingy to save another ranger so he pretty much is dead.
Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!! No more blathering idiot going on about coffee or blabbing about wanting to be a real Ranger-Roo. I actually did a fist pump when it was revealed that he was dead. It was very carthartic for me.
Of course, we’ll have to see if the next narrator is any better. I have a bad feeling Anspach and Cole (the authors) are just going to use some other nitwit to journal instead of, you know, actually writing an exciting adventure novel. Aaaaaand I just went on Amazon to see how many books were in this series and wouldn’t you know, one of the later books has Talker as the narrator again. Tarnation!
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 Mugger Series: 87th Precinct Author: Ed McBain Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Crime Fiction Pages: 149 Words: 49K
Oh, this not a cozy crime novel and I’m realizing this series is not even going to be “comfortable murder solving 101” like with Nero Wolfe. Not being a “crime fiction” aficiando, I think I would call this True Crime. It’s certainly dirty, gritty and violent enough. I added the ultra violent tag because a 17 year old is killed and she was pregnant, by her brother in law. I felt dirty just writing that.
The whole Mugger thing is a separate storyline and McBain plays the reader like a violin in how he interweaves them and makes them appear as one. It was fantastic. There are times I like being manipulated as a reader and McBain did that masterly in this book.
At the same time, the whole pregnant 17 year old thing was extremely disturbing. She had fallen in love with her brother in law and he used that to his own advantage. It was the grossest violation of adult power that I have read about in a long time. Realizing that people can be, and are, like this really depresses me. As a Christian I know that humanity as a whole is fallen, ie, no longer perfect because of sin. But knowing something and seeing something are very different things. I’ve talked about this with a friend of mine, and that dichotomy of knowing that humanity is the worst while still expecting the best of them, is something most Christians seem to have to live with. So while this kind of behavior is rather normal, unfortunately, it still shocks me.
I do hope this kind of thing isn’t going to be the norm. That would be too heavy a burden for me to deal with I suspect.
For me, this was a very big issue. Moving from the West Coast to the Northern East Coast was about as much of a change as you could get and I was afraid it might be more than Mrs B could handle. One of my former Bibleschool classmates was from Georgia and she had married an alumnist and moved up north. And she was absolutely miserable, to the point of seriously wondering if she’d made the wrong choice in who she had married. I saw all of that and while it resolved just fine, the poor guy was made miserable for quite a time. I was concerned I would have something of the same experience.
Ha!
That first winter, we had a horrible icestorm, one of the worst since the 90’s. EVERYTHING was covered in ice and people lost power for weeks. And Mrs B loved every single second of it. She loved going outside and making a snowman (she still does this at least once a season even now). She loved driving to work while going half the speed limit. While she wasn’t a huge fan of the cold, she did like that she could cuddle up to me for warmth and I wouldn’t push her away. I tend to run a bit hot and in the summer, another body next to mine is just too much for me but during the winter when it’s cold, it is just fine. So she quickly learned to take advantage of the season while she could, hahahaa. We went snowshoeing, we went sledding. We never went ski’ing but that had more to do with both of us not being the athletic type or enjoying that kind of thing.
So, our first winter set the tone for the years to come. Mrs B was happy and I was happy that she was happy. It has worked out pretty well so far, so I’m not inclined to mess with the formula 😀
Next week will be the Happily Ever After ending, so please look forward to it.
