Giant Spider - MTG 4E

 

Gross, gross, gross!

The Spirit Detective Saga (YuYu Hakusho) (1992 Anime)

 

Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Keiko and Botan (the Grim Reaper)

Title: The Spirit Detective Saga

Series: YuYu Hakusho (1992 Anime)

Episodes: 1-25

My Thoughts:

Another long series that I own on dvd. 112 episodes spanning 32 dvd’s. That dwarfs even Cardcaptor Sakura! Since CCS wasn’t working for me, I needed to try another way to watch anime, one that would work for me. Well, it turns out that watching larger portions in shorter periods of time worked a treat.

Yuyu Hakusho is split up into four story arcs. The first one is about Yusuke (pronounced Yous-kay) dying and coming back as a spirit detective, someone who hunts down demons in the human world. Hence the Spirit Detective Saga title.

This covers the origins of Yusuke becoming a spirit detective to several of his assigned cases to the final one where he meets the demon brothers, The Toguro’s, who force him into the next story arc. As an origin arc, we learn about Yusuke, the spirit world, the demon world. We are also introduced to several other key characters like Kuwabara (a human) and two semi-reformed demons who team up to help Yusuke. These four characters form the nucleus of this anime.

It’s a shonen anime, so the focus is on fighting. A LOT of fighting. Each time Yusuke is forced to face a slightly stronger enemy and he must either out-fight or out-think his opponent. Either way, his abilities and strength increase over each case and by the time he reaches the final case, he’s fighting fully fledged demon fighters used by the underworld. There is also the necessary old lady trainer and the training montage.

What I especially enjoyed was that there were no filler episodes in this story arc. Every episode stuck to the point and advanced the storyline directly. Also, the fights weren’t Dragonball Z level of people grunting and powering up and doing nothing. Yusuke and Co fought like the devil and either beat the snot out of the enemy or had the snot beaten out of them. Either way, you knew you had watched a fight. It was great.

I watched these 25 episodes over two weeks and that worked out very well for me. I had fun, I wasn’t bored and I actually wanted to immediately go watch the next arc, the Dark Tournament Saga. But I restrained myself, which bodes well for the rest of the series. I do have plans to buy the complete set on bluray once I finish this run through of my dvds.

Just for comparison sakes of how anime USED to be released, here’s a timeline. YuYu Hakusho was originally released in ‘92. It ended in ‘94. It wasn’t until 2002 that an english release happened. 8 YEARS of waiting. Now that is Old Skool. To put things in perspective, The Demon Slayer anime (I am reading the manga) came out in the fall of 2019. It was released in North America in the summer of 2020. Not even ONE YEAR. Kids can’t wait for nothing these days, sigh. They have no idea how spoiled they are. Of course, the tradeoff is that they aren’t getting awesome quality anime like YuYu Hakusho anymore. I feel bad for them.

Summary:

Yusuke Urameshi is nothing more than a 14-year-old trouble-causing-punk, who's always ready for a fight! But a single, selfless act results in Yusuke sacrificing his life for another person. Now, he's been given a second chance at life, instead of spending time in the afterlife. Put to work as a Spirit Realm Detective with amazing powers, he's tasked with tracking down demons and humans who desire to rule over the three realms of reality.

Yusuke's Ordeal

Yusuke Urameshi is 14 years old at the start of YuYu Hakusho. He is the toughest student at Sarayashiki Junior High School. He brawls with Kuwabara on a frequent basis. He is a stereotypical bad egg, with a bad attendance record and picks fights with other kids at school. In the manga, he is even revealed to be drinking, smoking and gambling.

While skipping school and being neglected by his mother, Yusuke wonders around the town. [1]Yusuke comes across a little boy playing in the streets and scolds him for it. This upsets the child, so Yusuke entertains a child by making silly faces. The little boy disregards his advice and walks into the street again chasing his ball and, you guessed it, a car comes speeding down the street and Yusuke shoves him out of the way. Yusuke is struck by the car, and killed.[4] As a ghost, Yusuke is greeted by an atypical version of the Grim Reaper; a bubbly, cheerful young woman named Botan.[5] She informs Yusuke that no one in Spirit World had expected him to die, risking his life to save the little boy. The boy would've survived; Thus, Yusuke's interference was unnecessary and only resulted in the kid having a minor scratch. They have no place for him in the afterlife because of his abrupt death. The Spirit World is also amazed how Yusuke, known for his bad attitude, could save a boy, and for these reasons, he was given the chance to live again. Botan remarks that Yusuke can return to life, but he initially declines.[6]

Yusuke's mind changes after he attends his wake, where people he knows pay their condolences to his mother. Atsuko(Yusuke's mother) is extremely distraught & borderline catatonic about losing her son. Keiko Yukimura (his classmate) sobs uncontrollably, yelling Yusuke's name. Kuwabara appears, angry and upset that Yusuke died before they could finish their battles. When two of Yusuke's teachers belittle him at the wake, Mr. Takenaka, another teacher, berates them for insulting him. He pays his respects to Atsuko and sobs at Yusuke's passing; only then, Atsuko reacts, collapsing in tears at the mention of Yusuke. Lastly, the child whom Yusuke saved and his mother show up, and when the child asks if he can play again with Yusuke, his mother cries and hugs him. Understanding that he meant more to others than they let on, he decides to come back.

Yusuke is given an egg by Koenma, acting lord of Spirit World (in place of his father, who often left to work in other places), and is told that it will hatch a Spirit Beast, which will help him get back to life. However, he must be a genuinely good person. If he is evil, the beast will devour him. While Yusuke only accomplishes two good deeds in the anime, he does a lot more in the manga due to the timeline of events being more stretched out. This includes helping a boy named Shouta get over his dog's death, helping a girl who had died get over her obsession with a boy, (who didn't really care for her) so she can move on, and also being temporarily revived to keep his body fresh so it won't die out. The last deed involves not allowing Keiko to know about this, though Kuwabara encounters him and Yusuke explains to him what is happening before he returns to being a ghost. Keiko, who had received dreams and messages from Yusuke's ghost telling her he would be returning to life, needed to take care of his body so that he would be able to return to it. However, a fire starts in Yusuke's home and his body runs the risk of being incinerated. Keiko runs into the fire to protect it, and is trapped in the fire. Yusuke gave up all the power gained from his good deeds after his death to have Koenma save her. Koenma used this to put out some of the flames and opened up a path for her to escape from the fire.

Due to this incident, with Koenma directly in contact with Yusuke's soul, [2]Keiko kissing Yusuke to resurrect him he figured that the wave cycle of Yusuke's power is extremely long and has to meet the right time to be resurrected or he would have to wait for another fifty-two years (fifty years in the Japanese version and English manga)[7] before the next chance and decided to let Yusuke return to life earlier even though the fire incident should have delayed the process since his power gained from good deeds were used up (In the manga, Yusuke had to go through one more good deed to be eligible for this by possessing an old acquaintance named Matsuo Suekichi to help him gain the confidence to achieve his dream of becoming a boxer). The only way for Yusuke to be resurrected is by a kiss from someone who is very close to him until midnight. Yusuke could tell, by dream, to three people he knew in order to do this, but he only told Keiko and Kuwabara since his mother started drinking and would not go to bed. Kuwabara did not believe the dream, due to its homosexuality, and Keiko got delayed by her mother's illness. Botan possessed Keiko's mother to leave a message saying Yusuke was in a more dire state than she was. Keiko manages to kiss Yusuke in time, and Yusuke is returned to life.

Artifacts of Darkness

After returning, Yusuke is surprised to notice a demon inhabiting the body of a street punk. Botan shows up and tells Yusuke that his experience with death allowed him to do these things. He is to become Earth's Spirit Detective, and protect the human race from demons by solving cases involved with the apparitions.

Yusuke engages in many difficult trials in his first assignments as Spirit Detective. The first is to recover three items bound by Hiei's Jagan Eye Curse stolen artifacts from Spirit World. Koenma trains him by teaching him how to fire his spirit energy, energy possessed by humans and spirits, as a weapon. This technique is called the Spirit Gun, and becomes the signature attack of Yusuke. Yusuke attempts to combat these three thieves: Goki, who stole a soul-stealing article called the Orb of Baast; Kurama, who stole a mirror called the Forlorn Hope; and Hiei, who stole the Shadow Sword. Yusuke was able to defeat Gouki the aid of Botan (anime only) and his Spirit Gun. Kurama willingly turns over the Forlorn Hope, as he only wanted to use its power to save his mother's life. Kurama intended to sacrifice his life for the mirror to save hers, but Yusuke selflessly asked the mirror to take his so Kurama can enjoy his mother's life. The mirror granted Kurama's wish, taking half of each of their life force, but killing neither, and Yusuke took the mirror. Yusuke and Botan then went to fight Hiei, who kidnapped Keiko and tried to turn her into a demon by slashing her with the stolen sword. While Botan staved off the transformation, Yusuke fought the extremely-fast demon, and managed to defeat him by reflecting his Spirit Gun off of the Forlorn Hope, intentionally missing Hiei to strike it and causing the arrogant demon to believe Yusuke missed. They found the antidote in the hilt of the sword to stop Keiko's transformation. After the ordeal, Yusuke turned over the three artifacts to Koenma.

Genkai's Tournament

Yusuke then was sent to the compound of Master Genkai, an aged, experienced fighter who was looking for a successor to her powerful Spirit Wave technique (Reikō Hadō Ken or Spirit Light Wave Fist in the original Japanese version). To decide her successor she decided to hold a tournament which Yusuke and Kuwabara enter. Botan warned Yusuke that a demon named Rando would probably try to inherit her technique and it was his job to stop him. Yusuke fought through her tournament and defeated Rando in the end, becoming her successor. For the next two weeks (in the Japanese anime, it is a month and in the English anime, it is six months), Yusuke undergoes tough training with Genkai. As a result, his strength radically heightens, push him from a D-class to a C-class.

The Beasts of Maze Castle

Yusuke was then sent to Maze Castle in Demon City to defeat the Four Saint Beasts and stop them from taking over the human race with demon parasites. Kuwabara decided to go with Yusuke, and Koenma sent Kurama and Hiei, who were on probation in the human world, to assist. Yusuke and the others fought their way to Suzaku, the leader of the group, and Yusuke managed to defeat him, but at the cost of his own life energy. Kuwabara, the only human of the group, saved him by transferring part of his own life energy.

Rescue

Yusuke teams up with Kuwabara (and Botan in the anime) to rescue a beautiful ice apparition named Yukina, to whom Kuwabara becomes smitten. However, Yukina is actually Hiei's twin sister, a fact that Kuwabara and even Yukina herself is unaware of. Yusuke fights all the way to the Toguro brothers. Yusuke and Kuwabara defeat them with awesome teamwork and rescue the maiden, but it turns out that the Toguros threw the fight on purpose. The Younger Toguro brother coerces Yusuke to join the Dark Tournament (Ankoku Būtsukai or Black Martial Arts Tournament in the original Japanese) and defeat him in a real fight.

[Art] Tainted Love

 

This is the dark side of love. There are times when the feelings of love simply cannot be. That is when you must decide what is most important to you: your feelings or what you know is right? I feel so bad for people caught in a web like that :-(

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (September 2012) 2Stars

 

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: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Series: September 2012
Editor: Linda Landrigan
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 122
Words: 45K

Yeah, no. This was no better than the previous editions of this magazine and the stories didn’t have any oomph, any chutzpah, any “grab me by the throat and choke me to death”ness. Landrigan either can’t get a decent set of short stories to publish, or she doesn’t know what a good story is OR, and this is my bet, what she thinks is a good story is so vastly different from everyone else’s definition that it’s impossible to get a good story here. So I’m done with this magazine. I’m going to hunt down as many of the old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” books as I can. At least those old stories had some guts.

Man, this just not my week for getting along with various series. DCI Roderick Alleyn got kicked to the curb. Then I savaged Conan, which just shouldn’t have been possible. Now I’m striking out with an ongoing publication that carries Alfred Hitchcock’s name. If it weren’t for me reading that Nero Wolfe book on Monday, this week would have been a complete reading waste. I haven’t had a week this bad in YEARS. It also means my average for February is going to plummet like the temperatures outdoors.

★★☆☆☆

Table of Contents:

Department: EDITOR'S NOTE: ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE by Linda Landrigan

Department: THE LINEUP

Fiction: THE VAUDEVILLE DETECTIVE by Garnett Elliott

Department: MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH

Fiction: BEEHIVE ROUND by Martin Limon

Fiction: BIG WATTS by Doc Finch

Fiction: FOOL'S GOLD by Dee Long

Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

Fiction: BRUTAL by Robert Lopresti

Fiction: THE BEST LAID PLANS by Jim Ingraham

Mystery Classic: NIGHT AT THE INN by Georgette Heyer, selected and Introduced by Jane K. Cleland

Department: THE STORY THAT WON

Department: COMING IN OCTOBER 2012

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Conan the Hero (Conan the Barbarian #22) 2.5Stars

 

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 Hero
Series: Conan the Barbarian #22
Author: Leonard Carpenter
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 220
Words: 77K

I’ve been in a “mood” recently and I can tell it has made me much judgier about the books I’m reading. There has been no mercy dropping gently from the hands of Bookstooge. Instead, there’s been angry imprecations and authors scotched. Carpenter isn’t getting scotched like Ngaio Marsh did yesterday, but he’s on probation for sure.

Carpenter just doesn’t write Conan like Conan. He’s not indomitable or incredible or anythingable, he’s just a big guy with a sword who gets lucky a lot. In both senses of the word. I don’t like that. Conan should be larger than life. Instead, he’s just stumbling along like a normal Joe. I get that Carpenter doesn’t want to write Conan like other pastiche authors, but he’s not even writing him like Howard did for goodness sake.

The adventures too just kind of happen and Conan is along for the ride. Instead of being the subject of something evil and fierce, it’s boring old politics with a dash of ho-hum magic thrown in to keep it “fantasy”. It is like Carpenter doesn’t “get” Conan at all. Even Steve Perry with his disgusting monster girl love interests and stupid 500 year old wizards wrote Conan as Conan better than this guy. Carpenter is a loser as far as I’m concerned and if anyone has said anything good about the Conan books I’ve read of his so far, they are liars and fatheads. But because I’m so magnanimous, I’m reserving judgment on the rest of his Conan books until I read them.

I should get an award for being so nice...

★★✬☆☆

From Wikipedia

Conan and his friend Juma, both soldiers in the army of Turan, are stationed in the far-off jungles of Venjipur to defend its beleaguered royal family against the rebellious Hwong tribe. Both comrades are dissatisfied; they and those under them have been doing all the fighting, and see no chance for advancement, as their timid superior officers never risk their own lives in battle. In one skirmish, Conan rescues a girl named Sariya from being sacrificed by Mojurna, an evil shaman. This subsequently leads to trouble, when one of the Turanian officers attempts to rape her and is killed by Conan.

There are orders for Conan's execution, but he is the hero of Yaralet and a man whom King Yildiz has his eye on. However, Yildiz's captain devises a plan to get Conan out of circulation for a while by sending him deep into enemy territory. Conan's unit is ambushed, and he calls for reinforcements, only to have his request denied by one of the officers who has it in for him. His men defeat their attackers on their own—barely. The wounded Conan is carried back to camp by Juma. Meanwhile, his enemies plan to have him disposed of by their corrupt Venjipoorian allies. Accordingly, Conan is drugged and brought before the duplicitous Pheng Loon, leader of a Venjipoorian tribe the Turanians are supposedly there to help. Despite his hallucinations induced by the drug, Conan is able to throw off its influence and escape.

In segments interspersed with those detailing the main action, it's revealed that King Yildiz in Agraphur has his eye on Conan almost literally. His court wizard has kept Yildiz up-to-date on events in Venjipoor by scrying through a magic mirror. Also, the king's known enthusiasm for Conan has both fanned and inhibited his officers' machinations against the Cimmerian. Soon, Yildiz's intervention partiality results in Conan being summoned back to Agraphur for a ceremony. However, bureaucratic delays in his orders give the officers once last chance to try to get him killed. Again, Conan and Juma's forces are sent deep into rebel territory, where they're ambushed by numerically superior foes—but again they turn the tide and win. Their enemies now have no choice but to allow them to return to the capital.

After a long journey, Conan and Juma reach Agraphur, where King Yildiz gives Conan a medal and names him a Hero of Turan. Days of feasting and revelry ensue, to lead up to an official presentation ceremony. During these festivities, Conan works to uncover the identities of his enemies. Everything comes to a head at the ceremony, where Yildiz is menaced by a carnivorous vine sent by Mojorna. Conan and Juma defend the king against the plant, but delay destroying it long enough for it to consume the corrupt officers whose incompetence has cost so many lives in Venjipoor. Apprised of their plots and soured on foreign conquest, Yildiz commissions the Cimmerian to take over the Turanian forces in Venjipoor and set things right. Back in Venjipur, Conan shuts down the Turanian mission there. He is aided by the fact that Mojurna died when his plant was destroyed, but this development effectively denies him Sariya, who has taken the shaman's place as leader of the Hwong.

• The “Essential Conan” Trilogy

• All of My “Conan” Reviews

Death in Ecstasy (Roderick Alleyn #4) 2Stars

 

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: Death in Ecstasy
Series: Roderick Alleyn #4
Author: Ngaio Marsh
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 209
Words: 73K

Whereas Rex Stout wrote about an oversexed man with a love cave, in Too Many Clients, and whereas Rex Stout wrote it in such a way as not to be prurient, I am forced to compare yesterday’s book with this one.

Mrs Marsh writes about a love cult that deals in drugs and sex. Mrs Marsh writes pruriently even while not being graphic at all. Mrs Marsh writes about the subject in such a sordid manner that it disgusted me.

There are the two comparisons. I didn’t read or review that way on purpose, it just happened. But I am glad it did. Because it has brought to light just how vile Mrs Marsh is in her writings. There has been something “off” in every book and the comparison brought what it was to light for me. Mrs Marsh seems to delight in writing about evil, almost gleefully and clapping her hands about it, while making sure no one could point to any one particular scene and say “This is graphically vile, you should be ashamed of writing that.”

After four books of things feeling “off” and making this conclusion, I think I am done with the Inspector Alleyn series and with Ngaio Marsh as an author. Not how I wanted things to go, but I refuse to read things that make me feel like these books do.

★★☆☆☆

From Wikipedia

Journalist Nigel Bathgate lets curiosity get the better of him when he decides to attend services at The Temple of the Sacred Flame. He sneaks in and witnesses the ceremony. One of the initiates, Cara Quayne, has been chosen to be the Chosen Vessel. As part of the ritual, Miss Quayne drinks from a goblet of wine, seemingly enters ecstasy and falls down dead.

Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn is called in to investigate. Nigel relays everything he witnessed. All of the initiates drank from the goblet with Cara Quayne having done so last. Father Garnette blessed the goblet then passed it to the initiates who drank from it with their eyes closed. A partially dissolved scrap of paper is discovered in the goblet, leading Alleyn to believe one of the initiates dropped the cyanide into the goblet in that manner. Moreover, Alleyn finds an old book in Garnette's quarters that opens up to a page on how to make cyanide at home. The book belongs to Samuel Ogden who claims it went missing some days or weeks earlier.

Alleyn's questioning reveals very little. Several initiates have a god complex for Garnette and many are clearly jealous over the attention the wealthy Cara Quayne received from the priest. Miss Ernestine Wade claims she overheard Miss Quayne arguing with someone the afternoon of the murder where Quayne threatened to expose someone. Alleyn suspects this is about some missing bonds Miss Quayne donated to the church but were stolen from the priest's safe.

Alleyn's attention moves toward Maurice Pringle, an initiate who is addicted to drugs. Maurice is in love with fellow initiate Janey Jenkins who befriends Nigel and tells him about Maurice's addiction. She believes Father Garnette is the one responsible. Alleyn begins investigating the finances of the church and learns Ogden has a very large financial stake in the church because he provided most of the founding capital. Garnette receives a certain percentage of the income and M. Raoul de Ravigne receives a much smaller percentage. Cara Quayne's will leaves much of her vast fortune to the Church of the Sacred Flame.

Alleyn arrests Garnette for drug smuggling and Samuel Ogden for murder. Ogden is a well-known figure wanted for drug smuggling and murder in Australia. He has also partaken in a number of schemes such as the Church of the Sacred Flame. He murdered Cara Quayne because she knew he stole the bonds from the priest's safe and also because he would receive the bulk of her estate through his own stake in the church. Ogden was the last person to drink from the goblet during the ceremony, which gave him the most advantageous position to slip the poison into the wine.

Too Many Clients (Nero Wolfe #34) 4Stars

 

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: Too Many Clients
Series: Nero Wolfe #34
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 156
Words: 57K

Quite enjoyable. Wolfe doesn’t want to work but Archie realizes he needs an injection of cash. Archie gets a case and it escalates dramatically, from a simple shadowing job to discovering a murder to yet another murder. Wolfe solves the cases in such a way as to not piss off too many people, still keep his word and more importantly, get the fat paycheck at the end.

This was a seamy story about a married man who had a secret love nest where he carried out his many assignations with his many mistresses. But unlike last week’s Faust by Turgenev, which left me feeling ill to my stomach, Rex Stout writes about this subject in such a way as to not titillate, not dirty the reader nor does he make it seem “well, that’s just how it is”. The guy deserved to die. But even better, the guy who killed him did so not out of any sense of outraged justice, but out of base motive for advancement in the company they both worked at/co-owned/whatever. One scumbag killing off another, and he proceeds to commit suicide when Wolfe gives him the alternative of dragging everything out into the public light of a court case. So two scum bags dead, dead, dead. I’m a big fan of that.

I just like Rex Stout’s writing.

★★★★☆

From Wikipedia

A man who identifies himself as Thomas Yeager, head of Continental Plastics, asks Archie to ascertain whether he is being followed when he visits a certain address in one of New York's worst neighborhoods. When the real Yeager's body is found at an excavation site in the vicinity of that address, Archie crosses the threshold and finds a fantastically appointed love nest where Yeager secretly entertained many women. The case becomes more complicated when the daughter of the building superintendent is later killed; her novice attempts at blackmail provide Wolfe with critical evidence needed to solve both murders and earn a large fee, shoring up his low bank account balance.

In short order, Wolfe and Archie find themselves beset by prospective clients:

• the Yeager imposter, who allows himself to briefly be thought of as a client and who sparks Archie's interest

• the building superintendent and his wife, who want Archie to keep the police from harassing them (and, later, to catch their daughter's killer)

• an actress, who offers to pay Archie to get her cigarette case out of the love nest

• the directors of Continental Plastics, who want to keep the existence of that room from becoming public knowledge and causing a scandal

• Yeager's widow, who expects Wolfe to solve her husband's murder even if it embarrasses the company

• All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Giant Growth - MTG 4E

 

What a great card! Magic cards had varying "speeds" of cards. That basically meant that if a faster card was played, you couldn't play a slower card in response. The speeds were (from fastest to slowest) Interrupts, Instants, Sorceries, everything else. So this was an instant speed, which meant it could be played on your opponents turn (sorceries and slower could only be played on your turn). That set things up for shenanigans during the Combat phase. You could defend with a smaller creature and your opponent would think he'd won and SUDDENLY, OUT OF NO WHERE, your creature gets Instant Growth'd and BAM, your opponent's creature dies and he is left sobbing in the dirt like the chump he really is. Moment's like that are why people like me play Magic the Gathering ;-)

Book Recommendations VI (The Penultimate Edition)

 

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

Firewater made a suggestion of Ghost Story by Peter Straub. It's obviously horror, so I'm noping that like nobody's business.

Joelendil recommended Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain by Adolfo Martinez. He compared it to Despicable Me and Megamind in his review, so I am totally adding this to my TBR!

Joelendil also recommended a non-fiction book. He even reviewed The Siege by Ben Macintyre. All in vain. Because that's a hard no-a-rewski!

Snapdragon recommended To Journey in the Year of the Tiger by Heather Dickson. I wasn't sure what to I was going to decide. Then she reviewed it (Here) and I realized it was dealing with anthropomorphized animals and I decided on a "no".

Lashaan suggested the comic book series Tintin by Herge. I read these in my tweens and teens and have often wondered about re-reading them and recording my thoughts in a review. However, after my attempt at doing just that for the Asterix series, and having it whimper out, I have decided to simply let Tintin stay in my memory, for good or bad.

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Orangutan Librarian "recommended" (knowing full well what she was doing) the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. If you don't know, ol' Cassie used to write Harry Potter fan fiction, BAD harry potter fan fiction. Then she decided to publish it with changed names, etc to be a "new" series. There was a lot of outrage, especially at Devilreads and she was one of the bitches who clamored for censoring of reviews, shelves, tags, whatever it took, of the reviewers because they were just stupid peons and not a giant intellectual like herself. She specifically got the P2P shelf automatically deleted from users accounts, with no justification by the staff at GR. P2P "can" mean "pulled to publish" and refers to people who write terrible fanfiction trying to go legit and pretend they are real writers and not just total scumbag losers. HOWEVER, P2P has a lot of other meanings but that didn't matter to Cassie. P2P was deleted from GR and if you complained, your account was put under review and your reviews were 'hidden'. I dislike a LOT of writers and authors as people, but Cassandra Clare can burn in hell for the role she played in '13 in the censoring of reviewers on Devilreads. And I'm going stop there before I start writing things I will regret later. But suffice to say, she is one of the lowest of the low in my opinion and is an enemy to free speech.

The Most Important Part

Well, as you might have noticed in the title of this post, I am going to be winding this "series" of posts down with the next one. Honestly, when I started this I figured I'd get two or three posts out of it, but here we are, approaching seven. I am as pleased as punch about that and want to make sure I thank you all for your needed participation. I literally couldn't have done this without you. I'll be thanking you all again in the next and final post.

Because the next one will be the final post for this, if you have any recommendations, please limit it to just one in the comments here. I'd rather not have to add 33 more reactions all in one post :-D 

[Poem] Would It Be Ok?

 

Would it be ok if I took some of your time?
Would it be ok if I wrote you a rhyme?

Would it be ok if I opened my heart?
Would it be ok if I took on the part

Of being your man and showed you a view,
One that only a real man could do?

Would it be ok if I could make you smile?
Would it be ok if I held you awhile?

Would it be ok if I kissed your face?
Would it be ok if I were to replace

All the men in your past that just wouldn't do
And vow to be faithful and always be true?

Would it be alright to look in your eyes?
Would it be alright to never tell lies?

Would it be alright to find a way?
Would it be alright to long for the day

To pull you close and whisper in your ear
And tell you our feelings are nothing to fear?

Would it be ok if I took some of your time?
Would it be ok if I wrote you a rhyme?

To tell you there's nothing I'd rather do
Than spend my whole life loving only you...

(Ryan Stiltz. "Would It Be Ok?." Family Friend Poems, February 10, 2016. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/would-it-be-ok)

Happy Valentines Mrs B!