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.
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 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.
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: 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. . . .
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: 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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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: Believe in Yourself Series: Demon Slayer #3 Author: Koyoharu Gotouge Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Manga Pages: 192 Words: 9K
With a title like that, you pretty much know where this story is going. Tanjiro fights a bigger baddie but believes in himself and overcomes all. Throw in a lot of faux-martial art terms for fighting forms and you have a formula. Thankfully, it works.
Since it is a fully known fact that demons are in fact just turned humans, Tanjiro continues to view the demons he fights as humans and not as “other”. A lot of this comes from his desire to heal his sister from her demon affliction and if he can help others, so be it. Once he defeats a demon, he tries to connect to the human side of them, and he succeeds in many cases. Usually, this can lead to the main character in a story becoming weak or all weepy and turning into a total wuss. It also leads them towards not fighting their hardest because they’re afraid of hurting something that used to be human. That isn’t the case so far in Demon Slayer. Tanjiro understands the need to put these creatures down, with extreme prejudice, but he never loses sight of what they were. He has mercy, where none is warranted and that touches my heart. He is walking the narrow path between justice and compassion and doing it well.
My only concern is the shonen style “scream your attack name while performing it” pattern that is pretty much fully developed here. I don’t find that cool any more. I find it annoying, especially since it is all fake. It would be like going grocery shopping and having your bagger scream out “Bagging Groceries: Frozen Food Form 9!” when he comes to the frozen items. And imagine him doing that for every item. Sigh. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, below is a picture from a famous anime, Dragonball, where the hero is using his special attack and yelling out its name.
I could have used a page from this manga, but Goku screaming out “Kamehameha!” while shooting out an energy beam really typifies the idea.
I was also concerned that Tanjiro’s sister Nezuko would become a non-character and just be an object used to gain reader sympathy. While she’s not exactly playing second fiddle to Tanjiro, she is being used as a secondary character. Speaking of secondary characters, this is where The Team seems to start to gather. Tanjiro meets two other Demon Slayers and both have characteristics that will play well in a group, which means there is going to BE a team and not just the standalone adventures of Tanjiro. I’m always more partial to standalone heroes than groups, but a well thought out group can provide a whole level of interaction that isn’t possible for a single hero. Of course, many times it is used lazily so the writer doesn’t have to try as hard. Since we just met the two other Demon Slayers, I don’t know how it will all shake out. Hopefully it won’t make the manga-ka go all lazy.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia
Table of Contents & Synopsis – click to open
“Arrow Demon”
“The Curse”
“Together Forever”
“Zenitsu Agatsuma”
“Tsuzumi Mansion”
“Rushing Boar”
“The Boar Bares Its Fangs, Zenitsu Sleeps”
“Former Member of the Twelve Kizuki”
“Believe in Yourself”
Tanjiro and the others proceed to battle Susumaru and Yahaba, who claim themselves to be members of Kibutsuji’s Twelve Kizuki. As Tanjiro manages to behead Yahaba and endure long enough for the demon to fully disintegrate, Tamayo uses her Demon Blood Art to trick Susumaru into uttering Kibutsuji’s name with his cells destroying her. Tamayo confirms from Susumaru’s remains that she was not a Kizuki, whose members have their number ranks engraved on their eyeballs. Tamayo prepares to leave Asakusa as the Kamado siblings set off southeast on their next mission, joined by the cowardly Zenitsu Agatsuma as they enter an abandoned mansion that a former Kizuki named Kyogai made his home while targeting humans with a rare blood type. They are joined by another Demon Slayer named Inosuke Hashibira, a fight-crazy maniac wearing a boar’s head who fights with chipped blades. Tanjiro manages to defeat Kyogai and acquire a blood sample for Tamayo, but gets into a confrontation with Inosuke when he injures Zenitsu as Zenitsu protects Nezuko.
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 Web of Spider Series: Spider #3 Author: William Gear Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 668 Words: 241K
This was twice as long as the first book and it was NOT twice as good.
This was very much a religious treatise as much as it was a science fiction “story”. There were pages of Gear using his characters to talk about neo-shamanism and how wonderful it is to serve a god who doesn’t know everything and who is both good and evil.
How anyone could find that desirable is well beyond me.
Gear also takes some heavy handed swipes at monotheistic religions, ie Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Unfortunately, Christianity is the one he focuses on and just ignores the other two.
I wanted to quit several times, but I was reading this concurrently with Neuromancer and that was so bad that I couldn’t tell if my desire to quit was because this book was really that unenjoyable or if Neuromancer was just sucking the reading joy from my life. Looking back now, its obvious to me this book WAS that bad and I should have dnf’d right near the start. One more mark against Neuromancer for destroying my senses in regarding other books.
★✬☆☆☆
From the publisher
Click to Open
THE FINAL CONFLICT!
The Sirian rebellion had proved the catalyst for the rise of two powerful new forces in the galaxy. Ngen Van Chow, leader of the failed rebellion, had fled to a distant world, establishing a base from which he would launch an interstellar holy war of destruction, a war fuelled by the discovery of a long-hidden technology which could transform ordinary men and women into fanatical soldiers of Deus.
While on the long-lost colony planet of World, the Romanans, known as the warriors of Spider, and their Patrol allies – formerly part of the military and police force which kept order among the worlds and stations controlled by the computer network of the Directorate – prepared for civilization’s final stand against this seemingly unstoppable conqueror.
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: It Was You Series: Demon Slayer #2 Author: Koyoharu Gotouge Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Manga Pages: 192 Words: 9K
The story actually moves forward, amazing! We find out all SORTS of interesting things. Like there is only 1 demon who can turn humans into demons (hence why the world isn’t over run by them), that this Demon King is actually living disguised as a human and has a human wife and child.
But let me back up.
We left Tanjiro fighting against a super fatso demon as part of his testing in the last book.
Ok class, one question pop quiz.
Raise your hand if you think the demon wins and eats Tanjiro?
Nobody?
Excellent, none of you are as stupid as you look then. Congrats!
Yeah, Tanjiro becomes a full fledged demon slayer, has an encounter with another newb and finds out that crows are the agents used to deliver where he’s supposed to go on missions. Brandon Lee would have been so proud.
Tanjiro demonstrates his strength on several occasions but also lets his heart show. I fully approve of that. But mainly I approve of the plot moving forward. Last time I said there were 30+ volumes. I was wrong. There are only 23. I approve of that too. In fact, I approve a lot of things about this manga. Which is why I’m going to keep on reading it.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia
Table of Contents & Synopsis
click to open
“Big Brother”
“Welcome Back”
“Kidnapper’s Bog”
“Suggestion”
“I Can’t Tell You”
“It Was You”
“Kibutsuji’s Wrath / The Smell of Enchanting Blood”
“The Doctor’s Opinion”
“Playing Temari”
Returning from Mt. Sagiri after passing the exam, Tanjiro learns his family’s murderer is a demon named Muzan Kibutsuji who knows how to restore Nezuko’s humanity. He departs with Nezuko after receiving his Nichirin Blade from the swordsmith Haganezuka to a town in the northwest where a demon with the ability to split into three bodies has been feeding on young girls. As Nezuko was hypnotized by Urokodaki to consider all humans her family, she helps Tanjiro kill two thirds of the demon with the remaining one forcing Tanjiro to kill him while interrogating him on Kibutsuji. Tanjiro then departs to Asakusa, Tokyo, where he has a short encounter with Kibutsuji while meeting Tamayo, a demon who escaped Kibutsuji’s control, and her assistant Yushiro. Tamayo takes Tanjiro to her tower abode and explains to him the nature Kibutsuji’s ability to place his cells in other people’s bodies to force their servitude with a “curse” added to any who utter his name. Tanjiro agrees to work with Tamayo to develop a cure for Nezuko, promising to let her study his sister’s blood and bring blood from powerful demons related closely to Muzan for her research. But they are soon attacked by assassins sent by Kibutsuji — Susamaru and Yahaba — who were ordered to kill Tanjiro (who was wearing hanafuda earrings).
