Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

The Demon Slayer Corps Gather (Demon Slayer #6) 3.5Stars

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Title: The Demon Slayer Corps Gather
Series: Demon Slayer #6
Author: Koyoharu Gotouge
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 195
Words: 9K

At the end of the previous volume, Tanjiro was facing down one of the Kizuki and apparently about to lose. Some of the higher powered Demon Slayers show up, clean things up and take Tanjiro, his sister Nezuko, and the Two Doofuses into custody. Tanjiro for allying himself with a demon (his sister) and Nezuko, for being a demon. The two doofuses are just kind of dragged along by association.

This is the volume where we find out a good bit about the hierarchy of both the Demon Slayers and the demons. I know we (as in Tanjiro and thus the “reader”) are finding all of this out for the first time, but for goodness sake, Tanjiro was trained by a former high ranking Demon Slayer and he was told NONE of this? This is a common trope in shonen manga, as that is based on the Warrior Mythos, ie, one man becoming stronger and stronger, all on his own! No help needed, thank you very much. It still bugs the living daylights out of me. Communication is King, you dumbasses.

We also get a special Training Montage chapter or three. Once again, it was all stuff that Tanjiro’s former master should have taught him before ever letting him even try to be a demon slayer. Arrrrghhhh, it’s fun to read about but at the same time it is frustrating as all get out as I can see ways to increase efficiency, decrease demon slayer deaths and work towards killing Big Papa Demon. The funny thing is, in the training montage sequence, Tanjiro does EXACTLY what I just said. He asks for help, and gets it. Once he masters an idea, the two doofuses see that it can be done and thus apply themselves and learn it too. I kind of hope to see Tanjiro change the Demon Slayer Corps for the better. Considering the kind of character he is, I bet that will be one of his story arcs, probably bringing him into conflict with a high ranking Demon Slayer in the process. In other words, the usual. I hope the manga-ka surprises me though and does something UN-usual. Like he has in previous volumes.

All in all, a well deserved return to a 3.5star rating.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia

ToC & Synopsis – click to open

“Against Corps Rules”

“Trial by Hashira”

“Master of the Mansion”

“Hmph!”

“Butterfly Mansion”

“Rehabilitation Training, Part 1”

“Rehabilitation Training, Part 2”

“The Nichirin Sword Returns”

“Cruel and Heartless”

After killing the daughter spider, Shinobu targets Nezuko with Giyū holding her back so the Kamado siblings can escape. But they are intercepted by Shinobu’s ward Kanao Tsuyuri, the girl who completed Final Selection with Tanjiro. Luckily, the Kasugai crows relay orders for the Kamado siblings to be brought before the Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the Demon Corps leader, and Hashiras, the Demon Slayer Corps elite. Despite the others’ objections, Kagaya vouches for Nezuko to be spared as both Giyū and Urokodaki vouch on her behalf promising to commit seppuku should she start eating humans. Despite his objection, the Wind Hashira Sanemi Shinazugawa relents when Nezuko refuses to attack him after he repeatedly stabbed her. Tanjiro then begins his rehabilitation with his friends at Shinobu’s Butterfly House and learns new breathing techniques while curious about the Hinokami Kagura he used on Rui. Meanwhile, Kibutsuji has Nakime summon the Lower Kizuki to the Infinity Castle. He deems them no longer necessary and kills all but one named Enmu. Enmu receives some of Kibutsuji’s blood to increase his powers and is instructed to kill the Hashira and Tanjiro. A month later, Tanjiro’s group is assigned to investigate disappearances on the Mugen Train.

Monday, November 25, 2024

Fog - MTG 4E

I tended to be a defensive player until I was familiar with the deck I was facing, so whenever I played green, I always jammed in a couple of Fogs to protect myself. Let your opponent attack with all his creatures, thus tapping them and then don’t block any of them with my creatures but play a Fog. Then on my turn I sweep in with my horde of creatures and because his are all tapped, he can’t block and I either do a massive amount of damage or I kill him. Once someone knows that you play Fog a lot though, it changes how you play the game. Which is the whole point of Magic, every game should be different.

Sunday, November 24, 2024

Book Recommendations IV

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

This will be a longer than usual list. People have really gotten into the spirit of things and so I need to up my blogging game as well.

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin was recommended to me by Film-Authority. While he had the temerity to suggest a Barbara Cartland romance novel in an earlier Book Rec post (thus earning himself the first diseased Chartreuse Flag), this was a serious recommendation. I hate Modern Lit and A Kiss is square in the midst of that time period. So I’m going to dive into it and see what I think. Added

The House on the Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson was recommended by Snapdragon. I have heard of Hodgson but never read anything by him. I’m totally up for trying out an old newtome author! And look at that cover? Is that just plain creepy or what? Added

The Mr Men series was recommended by Dave. Going to have to pass as I never experienced these as a kid and thus have no nostalgia factor to draw me to them. Pass.

Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud was recommended by Mallika. I’ve read this Trilogy and the Prequel back in 2009-2011.

The Stand by Stephen King was recommended by Firewater. Sadly for him, I’ve read that, back in 2008.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman was Mogsy’s recommendation. Now, you have to understand, Mogsy and I have a “history”, a book history that is. We read upon parallel SFF tracks and over the years have found that our tastes are VERY similar, but our bookish interests never quite converge. In fact, it’s become a running joke that if Mogsy absolutely loves something that I think sounds interesting, I’ll end up hating it. Because that’s how it has shaken out every single time. So this gets a hard Pass!

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Now we come to the part where I begin to wonder about all of you. Seriously.

Jilly Cooper’s Polo was recommended by Nic. Based on that cover alone gets Nic a Chartreuse Flag of Shame. Good job Nic, you earned that flag! 😉

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

Friday, November 22, 2024

My Week XVII

Last week I told you how Mrs B survived a blown tire and that we were also dealing with a dead starter. Turns out it was way more than just a dead starter. Our A/C compressor had seized up and was dead as a doornail. That is run on a serpentine belt, which means everything else running off of that belt needed the compressor to be working. So we had to get a new one installed, along with the new starter.

$1500.

Right before Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Folks, I am not feeling very thankful right now, I really am not. Not even a new journal could make me feel better at the moment. While we have the money, thank God, this is going to impact us for the whole of 2025. This happened on Monday, so I’ve been stewing about it all week. I’m like a stewed prune right now.

And just because, I also caught a bug that had been going around Mrs B’s work place, so I was out of work on Wednesday and Thursday, being very noisily sick.

Best. Week. Ever.

Thursday, November 21, 2024

The Amulet (Groo the Wanderer #34) 3Stars

Title: The Amulet
Series: Groo the Wanderer #34
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K

Back in Issue 26, Groo was tasked with finding half an amulet for a pair of witches. Who were in turn tasked by a powerful wizard. And of course Groo found half the amulet, only it was the half the wizard already had, and Groo completely messed up everything by throwing the half everybody wanted into a lake without them know it.

In this issue, things get resolved. In a very Groo sort of way of course.

The Wizard is in some sort of war with “creatures” and appears to be losing. So once again he tasks Arba and Dakarba to find Groo so as to find the lost half of the amulet. The Sage gets involved, as does his dog. Groo gets turned into a fish (which is smarter than Groo as a human), finds the amulet and the Sage steals the amulet and sends the Wizard and all his minions to another dimension.

That is all I really want from a 24 page comic.

★★★☆☆

All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Boundless (Lost Fleet: Outlands #1) 3.5Stars

Title: Boundless
Series: Lost Fleet: Outlands #1
Author: Jack Campbell
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mil-SF
Pages: 317
Words: 124K

After reading the prequel series The Genesis Fleet and not being very impressed, I was wondering how I was going to handle Campbell’s foray into the next Black Jack Geary Adventure. It has been 8 years after all.

Thankfully, Campbell does a great job of recapping things and bringing wayward readers like myself up to speed. Thus I dived back into the Lost Fleet universe and had myself a grand old time.

This was everything that previous Lost Fleet books are. You get Jack Geary being forced to walk that impossible line between doing the right thing while corrupt politicians do everything in their power to destroy him by hook or by crook. He’s given conflicting orders, hampered by stupid citizenry, surrounded by enemies as well as crew who border on hero worship of the worst kind.

There are space battles but thankfully that plays a smaller part than usual. I have had my fill of space battles from reading the Empire Rising series by Holmes. Sadly, with Campbell being a retired Navy officer, there’s not much space marine fighting described. It’s all ship to ship, sigh.

Overall though, I had a better time reading this than the Genesis fleet trilogy and that bodes well for the rest of the trilogy.

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher

click to open

Geary believed in the Alliance. Even when he uncovered overwhelming evidence that the highest echelons of the government and fleet command were involved in secret programs and prison camps, he believed it was worth saving. And that his duty was to see that justice was served even though some factions feared that revealing the truth would cause the Alliance to crumble.

But after narrowly surviving two assassination attempts when he brings evidence of the misdeeds to the capital star system, Geary realizes that some have decided the easiest way to make the Alliance’s problems go away is to get rid of him. He finds himself ordered to undertake a perilous new mission outside of the reaches of human-occupied space while the Senate clashes over the evidence.

Geary’s warships must escort a diplomatic and scientific mission across the dangerous, disintegrating remnants of the Syndicate Worlds empire. But even if he can make it to Midway Star System, the gateway to alien-controlled space, Geary will face former Syndicate officials who have rebelled and regard the Alliance with deep suspicion. And that will be the easy part. . . .

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

To Hell (Demon Slayer #5) 3Stars

Title: To Hell
Series: Demon Slayer #5
Author: Koyoharu Gotouge
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 192
Words: 9K

Ok, well, this just got gory really fast! I know there has been violence and blood before, but it just seemed to ramp up here. There’s a typical “sliced into pieces” scene that is familiar to fans of Cube to Resident Evil, so it didn’t make me sick to my stomach, but I wasn’t expecting such graphic’ness.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Gotouge (the mangaka) commits the cardinal sin of Tanjiro having mercy towards demons mean that they are just poor misunderstood humans who had some bad luck by being turned into demons in the first place. We have evidence that demons CAN refrain from killing humans (Tanjiro’s sister Nezuko is one, as is the Doctor and her apprentice from the previous volumes) and thus they need to be destroyed if they are killing humans. Mercy also doesn’t mean you don’t kill the thing you’re having mercy towards. It didn’t go quite that far in this volume, but suddenly, I am concerned it will. The reason it concerns me is that it means there isn’t evil, just misunderstood “poor babies’ who need just the right coddling and magically everything will be ok and all forgiven with no consequences. I’m not feeling very charitable at the moment so that attitude irks me to no end. Not sure it would actually bother me at another time.

Blaaaahhhhh….

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

ToC and Synopsis – click to open

“Scattered”

“This Is Bad!”

“Broken Blade”

“Real and Fake”

“Life Passing Before One’s Eyes”

“Hinokami”

“Shinobu Kocho”

“Behind”

“To Hell”

Zenitsu enters Mt. Natagumo and kills the brother spider but is poisoned. He is saved from the demon’s poison by Shinobu while Giyū dispatches the Father when Inosuke is overpowered. Tanjiro ends up facing the real Kizuki Rui as he was disciplining a demon he forced to be his sister, revealing that assembled the spider demons to create his own familial bonds and takes an interest in Nezuko. Tanjiro is overpowered while trying to save Nezuko, causing him to remember watching his frail father dance the Hinokami Kagura. Tanjiro proceeds to use Hinokami Kagura offensively, managing to behead Rui with support from Nezuko’s Demon Blood Art. Rui survives and nearly kills the Kamado siblings when Giyū appears and kills him, with Rui regaining his memories and closure with the parents he assume did not love him.

Monday, November 18, 2024

Flying Carpet - MTG 4E

Some cards looked cool, were spot on thematically, and were absolutely terrible, so much so that nobody used them. Then you had “bad” cards that somebody with a slightly twisted mind could find an ingenious use for that nobody had ever thought of. Sadly, I was not one of those players, so I just looked at Flying Carpet, said it was a bad card and moved on.

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Robust Blade (Demon Slayer #4) 3.5Stars

Title: Robust Blade
Series: Demon Slayer #4
Author: Koyoharu Gotouge
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 192
Words: 9K

Yeah, here we go, frenemies. Tanjiro has to fight the obnoxious boar guy and beats him down with his bare hands thus ensuring that the Boar Guy (he has a name, but who cares, really? He’s the Boar Guy because he’s wearing a boars head over his own) will faithfully follow him, trying to beat him at everything. Tanjiro tries to win him over with kindness, not realizing BG only responds to strength. Thankfully, Tanjiro has that in spades too.

All three of our heroes head over to a forest where a bunch of other demon slayers have all disappeared. Turns out there is a spider demon doing nasty things like turning them into half-human, half spiders or human puppets. It was pretty gross actually. I also thought that Coward Boy (the third part of the Trio) had killed the main demon, but the book ends with Tanjiro facing off against a wicked strong looking man with a monstrously fanged spiderhead. It was absolutely disgusting! Here, you judge:

That would give a tween nightmares for goodness sake. It would give ME nightmares if I saw it on the screen (one reason I’m not tempted to watch the anime).

We also get a sliver of information about the Bad Guy, but just a tiny sliver. It would appear he’s been around for close to one thousand years, so my first thought was “Well, why hasn’t the Demon Slayers Association made a concerted effort to wipe him out?” It doesn’t make sense to me to concentrate on the weaker demons he creates and ignore him. Use the lower level demon slayers to deal with the lower level demons and get yourself a squad or five (preferably seven or eight really) of super elite fighters and go after the wretched guy. Make it a suicide mission so everyone goes all out, forget about collateral damage and just kill him. That would stop the spread of new demons in its tracks. We’ll see if the manga-ka has an answer for me in later volumes. I’m sure he does, but I don’t know if it will be one that I can accept. Its the age old warrior mindset versus the soldier mindset. But there is a reason why the soldier mindset won out in the end in the real world.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia

Table of Contents & Summary – click to open

“Barehanded Fight

“Inosuke Hashibira”

“Urgent Summons”

“Mount Natagumo”

“Marionettes”

“Letting Someone Else Go First”

“Pungent Odor”

“Suffering and Floundering As You Move Forward”

“Robust Blade”

Following a fist fight between Tanjiro and Inosuke, they and Zenitsu are led by a Kasugai crow to a manor with a wisteria crest to recuperate. Hilarity ensues after Zenitsu learns Nezuko is a girl and becomes smitten with her. The trio are then set to assist other Demon Slayers dispatched to Mt. Natagumo. Tanjiro and Inosuke enter the forest to face a family of Spider Demons whose mother turned most of the demon slayers into puppets. Tanjiro manages to kill the Mother, who welcomed her demise while warning him that a member of the Kizuki is on the mountain. Soon after, Tanjiro and Inosuke get separated when attacked by the Father who the former suspects to be the Kizuki. At the same time, Giyū is deployed to Mt. Natagumo along with his fellow Hashira Shinobu Kocho.

Friday, November 15, 2024

[Journal] Amy Winehouse, Tears Dry or My Week XVI

He walks away, the sun goes down
He takes the day but I am grown
And in your grey, in this cool shade
My tears dry on their own
All I can ever be to you
Is the darkness we once knew
And this deep regret
I had to get accustomed to

This journal is one in honor of Amy Winehouse and based on her song “Tears Dry”. I included the lyrics just in case you couldn’t read them in the picture. That is the inside cover of the journal and is supposed to be a copy of the lyrics in Amy’s own hand writing. Talk about depressing.

But you know what? Sometimes the things we put in our journals ARE depressing. Life is not a bed of roses, and sometimes it feels like we’re forcing our way through nothing but thickets of thorns. So we write them down, exorcise them from our mind and continue on. And if we have to write them down every week, then so be it. There is healing in simply expressing yourself in a completely safe place.

My journals are my safe place.

Well, another week come and almost gone. Started things off with a bang! Mrs B was driving to work at 530am when one of her tires blew out. She was fine, but it was a thumb size hole and we have zero idea what caused it. Got that taken care of by Monday evening. Then on Thursday the starter went, so you’d turn the key and you’d just hear “click, click, click” but the engine wouldn’t turn over. So back to the shop the car went. I haven’t gotten my Christmas bonus yet, but it’s pretty much gone already!

Made my first batch of chili for the season. My sister recommended I try Kinder’s Wood Fired chili seasoning. In years past I’ve used other brands and it always felt like something was lacking. Apparently what it was lacking was Kinder’s seasoning 🙂 It is the best chili I’ve made yet. Put it over some jasmine rice and you’ve got yourself one delicious meal. Or in my case, about 8-10 delicious meals, hahahahaa.

With the weather finally getting colder, the days being shorter and Thanksgiving right around the corner, food has been on my radar quite a bit. I bought some corned beef hash and sliced red beets so I can make Red Flannel Hash on a less than busy weekend. I used to love that stuff when I was in my 20’s, so I want to see if my tastebuds have changed.

Neuromancer has absolutely destroyed my desire to read novels. I have been coming home from work and watching tv. It has made me feel disgusted with myself, dirty and dumb. I know I am harping about that book, but you have to understand, reading is what I do. This is like not being able to run after having been a marathoner my whole life. I read. I enjoy reading. I blog about reading. And this month I am barely reading. And I’m watching tv instead!!!! It’s like eating dog food. I will get over this and I will get better, I just don’t know how long it will take and I am not enjoying the process.

Thankfully, last night was also Date Night with Mrs B. Each month we go out to a local or semi-local restaurant (local for me is in town, semi-local is 30min away) and eat and chat and catch each other up on the things that matter most to us at the moment. Something about it is different than just chatting on the couch at home. I look forward to it immensely. Mrs B does too, but more for the food 😉 We went italian this month and I got the Chicken Alfredo with egg fresh fettuccini. I’m usually a fan of angel hair pasta (the thinner the better!) but I just wanted something different and it was a smashing success. The portions are HUGE too, so I never bother to get an appetizer and I still usually take leftovers home. The picture doesn’t do it justice, because that looks like a normal or small amount. I was only able to eat half of that, that’s how much there was.

My goodness, there was a lot of food in this post wasn’t there? I hope your happy, because now I weigh about 500 pounds (227 kilograms or 36 stones) and if you make fun of me, I’ll just waddle on over to your blog and smoosh you flat!