Who Bookstooge Is, According to AI

 

I was visiting Veselin on his blog the other month and saw this blog post (Not Sure About That) where he was searching for something on his blog through google and the AI gave him a summary instead of just giving him a link. That was creepy.

So what do I do? I go to google and bing and search "who is Bookstooge" and the answer I got from the AI summary scared the crap out of me. It is one thing to know your site has been scraped and that some computer somewhere is churning through your data, but to see it summed up, that's just different. It just reaffirmed my decision to not use my real name or picture online. I thought the AI summary was pretty accurate, but I'll let you all be the final adjudicator on that decision.

Bookstooge is a book blogger known for his reviews and commentary on literature, particularly through his blog Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road.  He is recognized for his eclectic reading choices and engaging, often humorous, reviews. His blog features a mix of personal reflections, readalongs, and in-depth critiques of various genres, including romance, fantasy, and manga. 

One notable example is his readalong of Love Saves the Day by Barbara Cartland, where he engaged with fellow bloggers and readers, discussing the book's plot, style, and the intriguing context of it being part of the posthumous Barbara Cartland Pink Collection—a series of 160 unpublished manuscripts published after Cartland’s death. His commentary often includes sharp observations on writing style, historical accuracy, and genre conventions. 

Bookstooge has also inspired other bloggers, such as The Orangutan Librarian, who cited him as a key influence in her own blogging journey.  His work has been featured on platforms like LibraryThing and shared across multiple blogs, highlighting his active role in the online book community.

Bookstooge, whose real name is not publicly disclosed, is the pseudonymous author behind the book blog Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road.  He is a prolific reader and reviewer, known for reading over 100 books annually. His blog serves as a personal platform where he shares candid, in-depth, and often humorous reviews across genres like science fiction, fantasy, classics, and mysteries. 

Key Aspects of Bookstooge

1. Blogging Philosophy
   Bookstooge values authenticity and freedom in reviewing. He left Goodreads (which he now calls "Devilreads") due to its restrictive policies and censorship, particularly during the 2013 "Great Censorship Debacle." He believes reviews should be personal expressions rather than formulaic book reports, stating:"A book review is simply a blog post with my thoughts... My book reviews are tiny little snapshots of me as a whole person, glimpses into my soul." 
2. Personal Background
   • Identifies as a devout Christian, with a blend of Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist beliefs. 
   • Works full-time as a land surveyor in New England, often outdoors year-round. 
   • Married to Mrs. Bookstooge, and describes himself as not a "people person," often needing recovery time ("chicken fingers") after social interactions. 
3. Reading Habits and Technology
   • Prefers e-readers with physical buttons for comfort during long reading sessions. 
   • Recently transitioned from a Kindle Oasis to a Pocketbook Era due to Kindle's declining usability and locked-down software. 
   • Criticizes modern e-reader trends, especially touch-only interfaces and proprietary ecosystems.
   • Uses Calibre to manage his digital library, prioritizing ownership and backup of e-books.
4. Influence and Community
   • Recognized and appreciated by fellow bloggers like The Orangutan Librarian and Out of Babel Books.
   • Participates in readalongs, such as his well-known readalong of Love Saves the Day by Barbara Cartland, which inspired others to join and blog about the experience. 
   • Avoids mainstream social media, maintaining a presence only on WordPress, Blogspot, and LibraryThing. 
5. Writing Style and Themes
   • Reviews are lengthy, reflective, and deeply personal, often weaving in life experiences, faith, and philosophical musings.
   • Advocates for reading outside the mainstream, urging readers to "STEP OUT OF LINE AND READ SOMETHING NONE OF YOUR PEERS ARE READING!!!"
   • Uses a GPL 4.0 license for his blog posts, asserting his rights to free expression and redistribution. 

Bookstooge remains a distinctive voice in the book blogging community—unapologetically opinionated, deeply committed to literary freedom, and dedicated to the joy of reading as a transformative, personal journey. 

The above is the amalgamation of both search engine summaries cut and pasted into one summary. Thank goodness it is relatively positive. This could put wikipedia out of business! What do you think, is it semi-accurate and are you concerned about yourself being summed up like that by an algorithm?

The Protector (Groo the Wanderer #49) 3.5Stars

 

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: The Protector
Series: Groo the Wanderer #49
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 25
Words: 2K
Publish: 1989

In Issue 48, Groo sailed on a ship and didn’t sink it. This brought him to a land where nobody knew who he was. Unfortunately for Groo, this meant nobody knew how great he was at fray’ing, so he has to get a job as a miner. He hears of a village that is in search of a protector and takes off to there. He attacks a group of bandits and wins the town’s approbation. The bandits are smarter than Groo though and slowly take all the town’s goods using a variety of disguises. Groo eventually leaves and comes across another town. This town won’t hire him because it already has a protector, and it is apparently someone Groo knows from the past. I guess we’ll be learning more in Issue 50.

★★★✬☆

• All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

Hell Fist (Warhammer 40K: Astra Militarum) 3Stars

 

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: Hell Fist
Series: Warhammer 40K: Astra Militarum
Author: Justin Woolley
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 26
Words: 8K
Publish: 2023

This was a story about some orks discussing the legendary Hell Fist, a jungle warrior able to appear out of thin air and disappear at will in a swirl of smoke. One of the orks is a Kommando, trying to train the other ork to also be a Kommando. The senior ork tells the younger one about a battle where he ran into Hell Fist and survived. The younger ork disbelieves everything he says and tells him he is a coward and that he (the younger ork) would totally krump Hell Fist. So of course Hell Fist shoots the senior ork dead and then punches the younger ork dead with his mechanical arm.

This was kind of funny, because the orks are so argumentative but at the same time, they are more deadly than most of the other foes that Humanity faces simply because they produce from spores, so the only way to truly cleanse a world of them is to burn it to bedrock. Scorched earth tactics are not a viable long term solution. I’ve often wondered how the orks deal with the Chaos gods and how a clan of Chaos Orks would act. Not wondered very hard, mind you, but just a little.

Anyway, this was a fun little read and with the humor, it wasn’t grim at all. Unless you count both the orks dying at the end “grim”, which I totally don’t.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher:

Two orks discuss the legendary Hell Fist, a mythic Catachan Devil who appears as if by magic and fights as if possessed… To them, he represents the best fight they'll ever have, but will he give them the fight they actually want?

• All of My Warhammer 40K Reviews

The Doorbell Rang (Nero Wolfe #41) 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: The Doorbell Rang
Series: Nero Wolfe #41
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 141
Words: 53K
Publish: 1965

Wolfe gets into national politics by taking on the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. The mystery part of the story was a good Nero Wolfe mystery, but I have to admit that the politics (of the day) didn’t appeal to me at all. If the author could have used the FBI as a foil (as he did) without so much of the politicking, I would have liked it better.

Having Wolfe match wits with an entire organization was fun and it really changed the parameters, which made for a “new” type of story. I really enjoyed that novelty. But I hope it stays a novelty and isn’t repeated.

What was also unique, and once again made for a good story, is that Wolfe and Archie are helped by the police and help them, instead of their usual adversarial roles. The cooperation was nice to see and it made me realize that I wish both parties would have cooperated more in the past. That’s not how it was, and once again I suspect it won’t continue. But it was a good change up.

I guess that sums up how I felt about this overall, it was a good change up.

★★★★☆

From Wikipedia

Rachel Bruner, a wealthy Manhattan widow, has recently incurred the wrath of the FBI. After reading a book called The FBI Nobody Knows, a prominent critique of the many unethical practices of the Bureau, she has mailed 10,000 copies of it to prominent figures across the country. Having endured several incidents of harassment and prying, she offers to hire Wolfe to persuade the FBI to leave her alone. Although initially hesitant of making a powerful enemy, Wolfe is persuaded over Archie’s objections when Bruner offers a $50,000 retainer and then doubles it to $100,000, as well as a fee and any expenses he may incur. He is also sympathetic to both Bruner’s plight and the arguments made in the book, and decides not to withdraw in the face of what he sees as heavy-handed and bullying opposition tactics.

As the FBI put Wolfe and Archie under surveillance, Wolfe plans to gain examples of FBI malfeasance and use it to persuade the FBI to back down. To defeat the FBI bugs, Wolfe & his speaker agree to occasionally say false things but raise their finger when doing so; as the bugs are sound-only, the FBI listeners will not know if a statement was true or false. Archie’s initial investigations prove fruitless, but he soon receives an anonymous message from Dr. Vollmer, Wolfe’s physician, asking for a clandestine meeting. Although initially suspecting an FBI trap, Archie is astonished to learn that the message is from Inspector Cramer. Cramer reveals that the FBI are attempting to have Wolfe and Archie’s private investigator licenses revoked. He also reveals that he suspects that FBI agents may be involved in the murder of Morris Althaus, a freelance journalist who was researching an article critical of the Bureau, two months earlier. Althaus was found shot to death in his apartment, but the fatal bullet was never recovered; in addition, his research notes were also missing. Cramer, who is opposed to the FBI’s efforts to sabotage Wolfe and stonewall the police's homicide investigation, offers to write a report favourable to Wolfe and Archie if Wolfe proves that the FBI are responsible for the murder of Althaus.

Wolfe instead decides that it would serve his purposes better to prove that the FBI had no part in the murder. He also devises a plan to trap the FBI. Acting on the suspicion that the FBI have secretly bugged Wolfe’s office, Wolfe gathers the key suspects in his office and publicly claims that he is gathering proof that FBI agents murdered Althaus and are covering it up, while directing Archie to conduct his own investigation.

Archie discovers that Sarah Dacos, Bruner’s secretary, lives in the same apartment building as Althaus and claimed to have seen FBI agents leaving the apartment on the night of the murder. When Wolfe and Archie question her, Dacos claims only a casual acquaintance with Althaus, but Archie remains suspicious of her. Acting on a hunch, he breaks into Dacos’s apartment, where he discovers proof that Dacos and Althaus were engaged in an affair. He also discovers the gun that was used to kill Althaus. Archie realises that Dacos murdered Althaus after he broke off their relationship to marry another woman, and that he needs to leave the gun behind. He moves it to a new hiding place, but worries that Dacos will dispose of it before Wolfe and Archie can prove her guilt.

Meanwhile, Wolfe has been preparing his trap for the FBI. Publicly arranging a dinner with his old friend and fellow orchid lover Lewis Hewitt, he privately hires two actors resembling himself and Archie and has them smuggled into the brownstone, along with his operatives Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather. The actors are sent to Hewitt’s dinner posing as Wolfe and Archie, while Wolfe, Archie and the operatives secretly remain in the brownstone. Having spread his public suspicions of the FBI and his plans for the house to be empty, Wolfe suspects that the FBI will use the opportunity to break in and steal any evidence he has that FBI agents murdered Althaus.

Two agents break into the house that night, only to be held at gunpoint by Archie and the operatives. Wolfe confiscates their credentials, having obtained conclusive proof of the FBI's harassment of a private citizen and conduct of illegal activities. The next day, Wolfe meets with senior FBI official Richard Wragg and offers a deal, with Bruner watching through the office peephole. Wolfe refuses to return the credentials, but offers to abstain from pressing charges and publicly embarrassing the FBI, in exchange for the FBI ceasing all surveillance and harassment of Bruner and those connected to her, including Archie and himself. He adds that he can prove that FBI agents were not responsible for Althaus' murder.

After Wragg agrees to Wolfe’s terms, Archie approaches Inspector Cramer and gives him a lead on Dacos. After the police search her apartment and find the gun, Dacos is arrested for the murder. Wolfe then gathers Wragg and Cramer in his office and negotiates a deal between them. In exchange for Wragg handing over the missing bullet that will prove Dacos' guilt, taken by the FBI along with Althaus' research notes, Cramer will conceal any involvement on the part of the FBI. Wragg and Cramer reluctantly agree to Wolfe’s deal.

The novel ends with Wolfe and Archie receiving an unidentified but important visitor, implied to be J. Edgar Hoover ("the big fish", someone Archie has never seen before, but of whom he has seen plenty of pictures). Speculating that this visitor has come in person to collect the FBI credentials, Wolfe refuses to let him into the house, leaving the visitor to keep ringing the doorbell.

• All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Library of Leng - MTG 4E

 

Daniel Gelon, the artist, certainly "gets" the fantasy library vibe. This is exactly how I imagine a mystical library looking. And the old galoot looks like the kind of guy who I imagine inhabits such a library :-)

And AI generated art could learn a lot just by looking at the guy's hand. It has 5, count'em, 5 fingers! It's really not that hard AI, you stupid dunce. 

Murder Trail (The Shadow #26) 3.5Stars

 

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 WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Murder Trail
Series: The Shadow #26
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 159
Words: 49K
Publish: 1933

I liked the parts where The Shadow shoots it out with mobsters and is investigating Crix (any name with an “X” in it is automatically cooler than a name without), but the premise for the story rubbed me the wrong way.

You have a French guy who is going to collect 20million buckaroos from Americans, and is going to use that money for World Business Blah Blah Blah. In Europe. Blast it, we were subsidizing losers a hundred years ago. Boo to that. So that bit bugged me, but not enough to stir the rating needle down even half a star. It did make me wonder, did the author actually think this kind of philanthropy was viable? Especially in Europe, with Hitler on the rise? Some part of American society certainly thought so, or it wouldn’t have been in a pulp novel like this.

Reading The Shadow stories can be really odd. They are simple pulp stories that I enjoy, but later, when I go to write a review, all sorts of things pop into my head that I wasn’t thinking of when I read the story. It’s like my brain is a crock pot and The Shadow is a big batch of chili, just cooking away in the background.

Harry Vincent, The Shadow’s top agent, was in this story and amazingly, he didn’t get bopped on the head even once, or kidnapped or put in mortal peril. He was actually competent. It was how he should be :-D

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher and Bookstooge

A European philantropist was sending a secret emissary to America to collect money for the good of mankind. But where money was involved, no secret could be kept from the overlord of crime! The emissary himself was the first to die. Then followed cold-blooded murder after cold-blooded murder -- and with every innocent soul who died, more millions of dollars heaped up in the dark coffers of the underworld. The police were baffled -- for this was the work of an archvillian who called himself only "Crix," a criminal genius so adept at covering his tracks that no man alive could discern them. But The Shadow can, and does. Discovering that one of the so-called philanthropists is Crix, The Shadow and his agents confront Crix and kill him. The stolen money is recovered and naive, optimistic philanthropy can go on!

• All of My “The Shadow” Reviews

[Art] Maiden of Spring 2026

 

While the trees aren't leafed out like in the drawing, the sun is stronger, the grass is growing and the temperatures are warm enough that I don't need multiple layers. Spring is a magical word here in New England. It means you survived Winter and now can be warm again. I really like this picture because it shows a mature Spring at the height of it's power, just before Summer moves in.  

Heart of the Mountain (Saga of the Forgotten Warrior #6) 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: Heart of the Mountain
Series: Saga of the Forgotten Warrior #6
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 319
Words: 111K
Publish: 2025

A good ending to the series. I was satisfied with how things turned out and wasn’t disappointed in anything.

That being said, this Forgotten Warrior series just didn’t click with me overall. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it but the desire to ever re-read it is at zero. It didn’t grab me and “make” me want to read the next book. I’m going to re-read Correia’s Grimnoir trilogy next and I’m hoping it stands up to a re-read and doesn’t slide into the territory currently occupied by this series, ie, good but not memorable.

Good but not memorable really sums things up for me for the whole series. Take from it what you will.

★★★★☆

From the Publisher

What happens after the War of the Gods?

The answer lies in the Heart of the Mountain…

Ashok Vadal was chosen by a powerful weapon to be its bearer. As a Protector, an elite roving law-enforcer, his path to leader of the Sons of the Black Sword has been anything but straight.

Thera Vane, a child of privilege, has become the reluctant prophet of an illegal and forgotten god—whose prophecies are proving all too correct, if frustratingly unclear about the war between demon and man.

Ashok’s erstwhile sword brother, Lord Protector Devedas, was meant to be a puppet king, but he and his wife, a court scholar, have other plans. And possibly even access to the lore that will let them triumph.

Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan is a man of ambition. He’s set in motion all that was necessary to destroy the current order and install Lord Protector Devedas as a tyrant. But Vokkan has a vision beyond control of the continent. He would challenge even the gods. . . .

It seems the time of prophecy and the Age of Law is over: it is time the prophecies will be fulfilled.

The Daughter of Fu-Manchu (Dr Fu-Manchu #4) 3Stars

 

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 Daughter of Fu-Manchu
Series: Dr Fu-Manchu #4
Author: Sax Rohmer
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Pulp Mystery
Pages: 190
Words: 61K
Publish: 1931

Some times I read a series and it stays at 3stars and I end up getting dissatisfied and wish it would get better. I usually stop those series even though they have been getting 3stars consistently. However, there are other times where 3stars is just right and continues to be just right as the series progresses along and I enjoy the 3star’ness of said series.

Dr Fu-Manchu has fallen into the latter category, thankfully.

Dennis Nayland Smith, the foil to Fu-Manchu, and in this novel, Fu-Manchu’s daughter Fah Lo Suee, continues to be a bumbling idiot. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that England produced Sherlock Holmes as a character and yet also produced Smith. It is just pure happenstance and luck that allows Smith to counter Fu-Manchu at critical points, and in this story, it is Fu-Manchu working with Smith in a very limited fashion against Fah Lo. None of the British characters represent very well and come off as bumbling idiots time and again. It allows the story to proceed and makes the danger that much greater, but come on Rohmer, if you have to dumb down your protagonists to make your antagonists seem more deadly, you’re doing it wrong.

The Yellow Threat is only referenced once here. That was nice not having that continually shoved down my throat. The focus was also more on the Russian and Asian part of the world, as Fah Lo had a russian mother and thus wanted to start her own empire by taking over Russia, etc.

The mystery is why this gets 3stars AND why I plan on continuing to read the series, right? Well, it is just pure fun. It is that simple. If it ever stops being fun, then all the issues I have will doom this series to the infernal pit of forgotten history, but until then, I’m enjoying the ride.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher

Here is another astonishing adventure of Sir Denis Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard--in which he matches wits with the she-devil daughter of his old antagonist, the infamous Dr. Fu Manchu. Now the signal has gone out from the Tomb of the Black Ape, and chiefs of the murderous cults of the East will meet at a hidden oasis to carry out the evil scheme of Fah Lo Suee. And Smith will discover an incredible ally--Fu Manchu himself.

• The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu

• The Return of Dr Fu-Manchu

• The Hand of Dr Fu-Manchu

Running Scared (Non-Fiction) 3.5Stars

 

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: Running Scared
Series: Non-Fiction
Author: Edward Welch
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Christian Counseling
Pages: 240
Words: 84K
Publish: 2007

This was the book that I should have read before diving into the little book “When I am Afraid”. Most of the same things apply to this book that applied to WIAA. Specifically, this was written TO anxious people, not being written ABOUT anxiety. More importantly, it is explicitly Christian in it’s world view, it’s solutions and its discussions. If you are not a Christian, but suffer from anxiety, I don’t see this helping you one bit.

And that actually plays into some of the points that Welch makes. One is that most anxiety is not some medical disorder that drugs can “cure”. He states that unless there has been injury that can be scanned, analyzed, etc, the issue of anxiety is purely a spiritual matter. He doesn’t say anxiety doesn’t exist or that the sufferers of it are making things up, but he states that while they can kick the can down the road with feel good, positive thoughts, or even taking medication, the best they can hope for is to contain the anxiety. That’s not what he’s going for when talking to Christians and I’m glad of that. Welch himself suffers from diagnosed anxiety and that made a lot of what he states much more believable to me, as a non-anxious layman.

Because this was not about Anxiety (and one of the traps Welch mentions is that anxious people think ‘information’ will help their anxiety), it wasn’t as helpful to me as I was hoping. But I pretty much knew that from reading WIAA the other week. Knowing that, I decided to see how it could help me, as a Christian. We all suffer anxiety of some sort and at differing levels during our lives, so why not get some help before I need it, right?

The biggest thing I took away from this book is that God gives us the grace we need, WHEN we need it. Welch is constantly referring back to the Israelites in the wilderness when they wandered for 40 years between leaving Egypt in the Exodus to when they entered the Promised Land, Canaan. The main thing he bangs on is the manna that God provided, each day. They couldn’t gather it and save it (God told them not to and some of them tried anyway. It went moldy and wormy overnight) but had to trust that God would provide more manna tomorrow. His point is that we worry about tomorrow when our needs are being taken care of today and that we need to trust that God will take care of us tomorrow too. He spends a whole chapter on differentiating what we think our needs are versus what God says our needs are. That is a good thing to remember.

His advice to most anxious Christians comes down to reading your Bible daily, praying daily and truly learning to seek and trust God. He goes into more detail that I’m sure would help anxious people, but that is the big picture take away. I’m glad I read this, but I’m not sure I’d read anything else by Welch unless it was an issue that I was directly dealing with. But if I was, I’d unhesitatingly read one of his other books.

★★★✬☆