Last year on a dare, I read a Barbara Cartland romance novel and did a Buddy Read with whoever wanted. It was last minute (for me) but it did go ok. Therefore I wanted to do another one but give a longer lead in time so more people could plan to join if they wanted to.
This year, as you can see by the cover above, I will be reading A Rainbow to Heaven. Cartland wrote it in 1934 and is one of her earlier works. It's 12 chapters and approximately 130'ish pages long. I hope to follow the same format as before, ie, three chapters a week in December with an update and then a final review of the book as whole in the first week of January 2026.
Once November hits, I'll do another Announcement post with more specifics. I will include a link here to Devilreads if you would like to check the book out. Devil Reads Will Devour Your Soul!
I enjoyed Love Saves the Day so I hope to be able to enjoy this read as well. If you'd care to read along, maybe you'll enjoy it too :-D
This is the blurb from Paperblanks: Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1818) is the author’s most biting and ironic work. In the novel, Austen gives us a satisfying love story while also turning a critical gaze on the kinds of persuasion enforced on young women. Here we have reproduced a rare surviving manuscript page from the story’s eleventh chapter.
I WAS hoping for something a bit more "authorial" than something so flowery but I guess it can't be helped. Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel, even while whichever novel of hers I am currently reading is always my "favorite", but it has held up to repeated readings and I see no chance of it ever falling out of favor. I do like the blue and gold a lot.
I was wondering about buying several of these and just using one after another, but upon actually seeing it, I think one flowery journal at a time is enough. Between the Pear Garden Journal and now this, I think I'm full up on flowery motifs. What I was hoping for was a Captain Wentworth holding a sword or something :-D
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Title: Conan the Relentless Series:
Conan the Barbarian #31 Author: Roland
Green Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre:
Fantasy Pages: 194 Words:
76K Publish: 1992
Roland Green is the next author I am
trying out who wrote Conan pastiches. I believe he wrote seven books
and I was able to get a hold of five of them. I wasn’t paying
attention and just added them willy-nilly to my calibre library and
thus when I began this book, by the references Green makes, it was
obvious this came after at least one other book of his. It didn’t
really matter though, so I just rolled with it. I did end up
re-ordering these Conan books by Green after reading this one, so
hopefully the future books won’t have any more of that “huh, I’ve
missed a story” feeling.
Overall, these was a slightly less than
average Conan story. Green knows how to include all the elements of a
good Conan story but like many of the writers of these pastiches,
just doesn’t have the same fire that Howard had with his words. If
I were to compare this to a food item, I’d say it’s kind of like
store brand rice krispies.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia
After the events of "The Lair of
the Ice Worm", Conan enters the Border Kingdom. Encountering a
group of bandits, he learns that the guards of a caravan they plan to
raid are led by Raihna, a female adventurer he had previously
encountered in Conan the Valiant. This news leads him to abandon
his inclination in joining the bandits and come to the aid of Raihna,
instead. Afterwards, the duo enter the service of Eloikis,
theoretical king over the restive and semi-independent lords of the
country, who needs their aid against a powerful count and two
demon-controlling wizards. The story follows their adventures as
Eloikis' troubleshooters, which ultimately concludes with their
rescue of both his daughter and grandson. But their partnership
dissolves when Rhiana decides to marry one of the king's guards, and
Conan resumes his wanderings, heading south.
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Title: Casebook of the Black
Widowers Series: The Black Widowers #3 Authors:
Isaac Asimov Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre:
Mystery Pages: 161 Words:
75K Publish: 1980
Another enjoyable set of short stories.
The secrets and mysteries involved here were much less “intense”
than in previous books, just a step up from cozy in my opinion and I
enjoyed the more laid back feeling.
Onward!
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
Every
month, the Black Widowers convene for sumptuous food, fine wine, and
a cosmically baffling mystery. Attended by Henry, the all-knowing
waiter, these gentle rogues ponder such imponderables as: * the
one-syllable middle name that represents what every schoolboy knows,
yet doesn't... * a murder by solar eclipse very far out in space... *
a Soviet spy's dying message utilizing a Scrabble set and a newspaper
sports page... * a satanic cult leader's Martian connection... * a
computer criminal's strange equation of Christmas and Halloween... *
an ancient symbol that provides the key to a woman's mysterious
disappearance...
Contents:
*
The Cross of Lorraine
* The Family Man
* The Sports Page
* Second Best
* The Missing Item
* The Next Day
*
Irrelevance!
* None So Blind
* The Backward Look
*
What Time Is It?
* Middle Name
* To the Barest
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Title:
A Collection of Letters Series:
---------- Author: Jane Austen Rating:
3 of 5 Stars Genre: Juvenilia short story Pages:
32 Words: 10K Publish: 1789
This was
tantalizing. Austen wrote 5 letters at the age of 14. Each letter is
not connected to the other and tells a very short story, or at least
lets us get a glimpse of a story in progress. Most of the names we
have come to know in her novels make an appearance here and I must
say, it was wicked weird for me to see “Willoughby” as a good
guy.
Part of me
wishes I had read this whole Juvenilia collection as a whole (I still
have more to go) but the other part is glad I am reading just bits
and pieces. It keeps it from blending all together into a one big
slurry.
★★★☆☆
From
The Internet:
A
Collection of Letters is an epistolary short story collection written
by Jane Austen when she was fourteen years old. Although the novels
Austen became known for were not published until she was in her
thirties, she was an active writer from the age of twelve, frequently
composing epistolary works such as A Collection of Letters. Austen
eventually compiled 29 of her early writings in three notebooks that
became known as the Juvenilia and that she called “Volume the
First”, “Volume the Second”, and “Volume the Third”,
including A Collection of Letters in “Volume the Second”.
A
Collection of Letters is set contemporaneously to Austen’s writing
and consists of a series of five letters, each written by a woman of
high society living in Great Britain. Unlike Austen’s later
epistolary works, A Collection of Letters is not a novelette; each of
these five letters tells a self-contained story, with no characters
appearing in multiple letters. Nonetheless, the collection is unified
in its lighthearted, humorous tone. Austen dedicated A Collection of
Letters to her cousin Jane Cooper, who married famed Royal Navy
officer Thomas Williams two years later and who died in a horse
accident before the end of that decade; Williams went on to marry
again twice, reputedly because his first marriage was so happy.
Ironically, there are multiple parallels between Cooper’s later
life and the second letter of this collection.
I don't know, that doesn't really scream "HOLY" to me, not at all. The horns, that's what doesn't really work for me on this picture, as well as the face.
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Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
Sacred Marriage Series: ----- Author:
Gary Thomas Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre:
Non-Fiction Pages: 324 Words:
83K Publish: 2000
I
am always on the lookout for Christian books that will help me in my
relationship to God, in my relationship to Mrs B and in my
relationship to everybody else. I am also always on the lookout for
non-fiction books that I can squeeze into my reading rotation because
I have such a hard time with non-fiction. One of the elders at the
Sunday church was talking about this book to me and was saying how it
really helped him change his perspective on his marriage and on how
God viewed his wife. It sounded very promising, so I hunted it down
and added it to my Calibre library. However, instead of just making
it be the odd duck out with the non-fiction tag, I decided that since
I wanted to read more non-fiction this year, I would actually read
more non-fiction this year. Not necessarily all deep works of
Theology or philosophy or Christian self-help, but just several books
that the ideas appealed to me. I spent several months coming up with
five other non-fiction books alongside this one. They range from the
celebrity bio to memoirs about a movie being made to shifts in
societal expectations of law and order. I have gathered them together
and put them into a Non-fiction folder on my Pocketbook and will now
be treating “Non-fiction” like any other series or author and
cycle through it each reading rotation. That is how I will read more
non-fiction each year. It’s going to be work to choose new ones but
just choosing one at a time over the months is something I CAN do.
With that out of the way, on to the review itself.
Yeah,
I wasn’t really impressed with this. I don’t know anything about
the author, but from everything he let slip, he’s either Roman
Catholic or some sort of Anglican (the protestant version of RC’s
just without the pope pretty much). His big beef was that through the
years and decades and centuries, Singlehood has always been viewed as
“more holy” than being married and he wanted to counter-act that.
Only the Roman Papists with their unbiblical call to being monks and
nuns take that view, as far as I know, so when I realized just what
the author was trying to accomplish, I felt like saying something
along the lines of “Brother, join the revolution! Luther had it
right.”
And
that is not to say that the author didn’t have anything good to
say. He did. He made some wonderful points about how being in a
marriage gives you chances to see yourself like God sees you, ie,
just how fallen you are and it gives you chances to express Christ’s
love more, ie, sacrificing your comfort to help your spouse. But he
was very big picture and big idea and I wanted some concrete ideas
that I could put into practice or at least try out, like in the book
Hedges
that I’ve read previously.
This
was not a waste of time at all, but this book did not help me like it
helped the Elder who had recommended it. That’s a big thing I am
finding with books like these. They do not and cannot help everyone
who reads them. So I keep on reading to find the books that ARE going
to help me more.
Finally,
this book was written explicitly to Christian men and women. If you
haven’t given your life to Jesus, this book will sound like the
worst kind of foolishness and will go counter to everything you hear
about taking care of yourself first. But if you are a Christian,
Thomas does an excellent job of showing just how marriage can bring
you closer to God and how it can make you more like God, even if only
in the abstract.
Last Saturday I woke up and in the afternoon went on a walk with Mrs B. I looked down the street and saw two stopsigns. I was seeing double. Got an eyepatch as the double vision was causing me some serious nausea. Sunday I was still dealing with double vision, so called the Eye Specialist. He listened to all my symptoms and recommended I go to the Emergency Room the next morning to get checked out.
Mrs B dropped me off at the ER at 5am Monday morning. I had all the the tests by 11am and then just sat in the ER waiting for the neurologist to go over my results. They moved me into the hospital proper at 8pm and I was in a room overnight for observation. Tuesday morning the head nurse and the Neurologist went over my results. Everything was fine. I hadn't had a mini-stroke, no clots or anything. Basically, my optic nerve in my left eye had "frozen' (it's common for type 1 diabetics). They scheduled a follow up with my Primary for Thursday and Mrs B picked me up around noon time. Wednesday was spent at home recovering and dealing with setting up more appointments.
Because of wearing an eye patch, I can't drive. I have almost no depth perception. So Thursday I walked to my primary drs' appointment. It was sidewalk the whole way, so it wasn't an issue, thankfully. She just confirmed that nothing had changed (or gotten worse) and wrote a dr's note excusing me from work until I saw the Eye Specialist. I am seeing him next Friday, July 11th.
During all of this time, our car is due for inspection. And the sensor to check everything out wouldn't work for the one garage, so they wouldn't even start the inspection. It would cost $400 to replace that sensor. I have to try to find another garage that will do the inspection BEFORE doing all the computer stuff. I'm not very hopeful though. Which means we're going to have get another car by the end of the month.
I am looking at some big medical bills, no money coming in as I can't work and then one of our cars won't pass inspection. Plus there's a bunch of other life stuff which just adds to the load. I am just incredibly stressed out, hence my lack of visiting you all. I am back to responding to the comments on my blog, that's a big step up from even a few days ago.
This exact same thing happened to me about 15 years ago and it took 4-6 weeks to recover. I am NOT looking forward to telling my boss I can't work for over a month. Even with a doctors note, it's just not going to be easy. Because it didn't happen at work, I'm not eligible for short term disability either. So I will probably continue to not visit you for a bit longer. I'll just be sticking around here.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at
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Title: The Heckler Series:
87th Precinct #12 Author: Ed
McBain Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre:
Crime Fiction Pages: 178 Words:
62K Publish: 1960
This
was barely 3stars. The idea of the Deafman and his plans definitely
put him into the Criminal Mastermind category and if the story had
truly just focused on that, it would have been great. But McBain
throws in a latino woman who doesn’t wear any underwear under her
work clothes and spends as much time describing her and the men
ogling her as he does telling the real story. It was cheap and
tawdry.We will see if McBain keeps writing that kind of stuff or not.
If he does, then I’ll be out of here.
This is definitely the first book where
a criminal really does some long con planning and makes it pay off.
Very different from the regular dimwit stupido criminals the 87th
Precinct is used to dealing with. I liked it.
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher
& Bookstooge
Spring
was intoxicating the city air, but the harassing anonymous telephone
calls planting seeds of fear around town were no April Fool's joke.
Crank calls and crackpot threats reported to the 87th Precinct by a
respected businessman were not exactly top priority for detectives
Carella and Meyer -- until a brutal homicide hits the papers.
Connections are getting made fast and furious, and there's a buzz in
the air about the Deaf Man, a brilliant criminal mastermind. Now, the
87th Precinct is buying time to reveal the voice on the other end of
the line -- as the level of danger rises from a whisper to a scream.
The
Deafman was planning to rob 2.5million dollars and in the process,
set the city ablaze to cover his tracks. Bombs went off, fires
started, it was all going according to plan. Until the factor of luck
hit the Deafman right between the eyes and a cop wanted an icecream
cone. Then it was curtains.
