The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare ★★☆☆☆

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, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
Author: G.K. Chesterton
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Christian Allegory
Pages: 215
Words: 58K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia

In Victorian-era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti-anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him at a party and they debate the meaning of poetry. Gregory argues that revolt is the basis of poetry. Syme demurs, insisting the essence of poetry is not revolution but law. He antagonises Gregory by asserting that the most poetical of human creations is the timetable for the London Underground. He suggests Gregory isn’t really serious about anarchism, which so irritates Gregory that he takes Syme to an underground anarchist meeting place, under oath not to disclose its existence to anyone, revealing his public endorsement of anarchy is a ruse to make him seem harmless, when in fact he is an influential member of the local chapter of the European anarchist council.

The central council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a cover; the position of Thursday is about to be elected by Gregory’s local chapter. Gregory expects to win the election but just before, Syme reveals to Gregory after an oath of secrecy that he is a secret policeman. In order to make Syme think that the anarchists are harmless after all, Gregory speaks very unconvincingly to the local chapter, so that they feel that he is not zealous enough for the job. Syme makes a rousing anarchist speech in which he denounces everything that Gregory has said and wins the vote. He is sent immediately as the chapter’s delegate to the central council.

In his efforts to thwart the council, Syme eventually discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was employed just as mysteriously and assigned to defeat the Council. They soon find out they were fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of their president, Sunday. In a surreal conclusion, Sunday is unmasked as only seeming to be an anarchist; in fact, he is a proponent of state power like the detectives. Sunday is unable to give an answer to the question of why he caused so much trouble and pain for the detectives. Gregory, the only real anarchist, seems to challenge the false council. His accusation is that they, as rulers, have never suffered like Gregory and their other subjects and so their power is illegitimate. Syme refutes the accusation immediately, because of the terrors inflicted by Sunday on the rest of the council.

The dream ends when Sunday is asked if he has ever suffered. His last words, “can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?”, is the question Jesus asks St. James and St. John in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, vs 38–39, a rhetorical question intended to demonstrate that the disciples are wrong to covet his glory because they are unable to bear the suffering for the sins of the world for which he is destined.

My Thoughts:

Man, how I have changed in 20 years. Much like my review of The Napolean of Notting Hill, I found that this time around I did not enjoy this book by Chesterton nearly so much as I did in my early 20’s. Part of that is that I’ve been exposed to a much wider school of Christian Apologetics and Thought but another part is that I am now comfortable with myself in what I like or do not like.

And the fact of the matter is that I do not like Chesterton’s style. It doesn’t mean it is good or bad but that I simply do not like it. I suspect I would not have liked him as a man either though and thus the good/bad debate has to be thrown out. Plus, I don’t like poetry and Chesterton starts the book off with a poem.

I have now read enough to figure that Chesterton is most likely not for me. I’m going to try one more book by him just to be sure but am not holding out any hope that he’ll suddenly change and become an appealing author to me.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

• The Man Who Was Thursday (2001 Review)

George's Marvelous Medicine ★★★✬☆

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: George’s Marvelous Medicine
Series: ———-
Authors: Roald Dahl
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Childrens Fiction
Pages: 63
Words: 12.5K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

While eight-year-old George Kranky’s parents are out grocery shopping, his elderly maternal grandmother bosses him around and bullies him. She intimidates George by saying that she likes to eat insects and he wonders briefly if she’s a witch. To punish her for her regular abuse, George decides to make a magic medicine to replace her old one. He collects a variety of ingredients from around the family farm including deodorant and shampoo from the bathroom, floor polish from the laundry room, horseradish sauce and gin from the kitchen, animal medicines, engine oil and anti-freeze from the garage, and brown paint to mimic the colour of the original medicine.

After cooking the ingredients in the kitchen, George gives it as medicine to his grandmother, who grows as tall as the house, bursting through the roof. When his grandmother doesn’t believe it was George who made her grow so tall, he proves it by feeding the medicine to one of his father’s chickens, which grows ten times its original size. As they return home, George’s parents can’t believe their eyes when they see the fattest chicken ever and the grandmother. George’s father grows very excited at the thought of rearing giant animals. He has George feed the medicine to the rest of the farm’s animals, causing them to become giants as well. However, his grandmother begins complaining about being ignored and stuck in the roof, so Mr. Kranky hires a crane to remove her from the house. Her extreme height has her sleeping in the barn for the next few nights.

The following morning, Mr. Kranky is still excited about George’s medicine and announces that he and George shall make gallons of it to sell to farmers around the world, which would make his family rich. George attempts to recreate it but is unable to remember all the ingredients. The second version makes a chicken’s legs grow extremely long, and the third elongates a chicken’s neck to bizarre proportions. The fourth has the opposite effect of the first and makes animals shrink. George’s grandmother, now even more angry she’s sleeping in the barn, storms over and starts complaining loudly that she’s once again sick of being ignored. She sees the cup of medicine in George’s hand and erroneously mistakes it for tea. Much to his and Mrs. Kranky’s horror, and Mr. Kranky’s delight, she drinks the entire cup and shrinks so much that she vanishes completely. At first, Mrs. Kranky is shocked, confused and distraught about the sudden, and very strange disappearance of her mother, but soon accepts that she was becoming a nuisance anyway. In the last page, George is left to think about the implications of his actions, feeling as though they had granted him access to the edge of a magic world.

My Thoughts:

I am coming to the conclusion that this will probably be my final read of Dahl’s body of work for my own enjoyment. Not that I am disliking them but I do want “more” and these don’t offer that any more. I feel that in my multiple reads I have plumbed the depths of these stories and I would rather explore a new author or series than to re-tread material this familiar to me.

That is in no way a denigration of Dahl’s skill as a writer or a story teller, but I’ve realized that I’ve done a bit of growing up in the last 15 years and I cannot go back. Reading these books have been an attempt to see if I could actually go back, but as we all know, time only flows in one direction.

I have to admit, I am surprised this was published as is. George puts in a LOT of nasty stuff into his medicine and even I know that some of them would kill you outright. If I read this to a kid, I’d be keeping an eye on them for the next week or two to make sure they didn’t try to experiment on themselves or others 😀

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• All My “Roald Dahl” Reviews

Feast and Famine ★★✬☆☆

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: Feast and Famine
Series: ———-
Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 157
Words: 60.5K

Synopsis:

From the Inside Cover and TOC

In Feast and Famine Adrian Tchaikovsky delivers an ambitious and varied collections of stories. Ranging from the deep space hard SF of the title story (originally in Solaris Rising 2) to the high fantasy of “The Sun in the Morning” (a Shadows of the Apt tale originally featured in Deathray magazine), from the Peter S Beagle influenced “The Roar of the Crowd” to the supernatural Holmes-esque intrigue of “The Dissipation Club” the author delivers a dazzling array of quality short stories that traverse genre. Ten stories in all, five of which appear here for the very first time.

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Feast & Famine

3. The Artificial Man

4. The Roar of the Crowd

5. Good Taste

6. The Dissipation Club

7. Rapture

8. Care

9. 2144 and All That

10. The God Shark

11. The Sun of the Morning

12. About the Author

My Thoughts:

That’s right, there’s a reason I’ve been avoiding Tchaikovsky for the last year or two. While he can tell some good stories, he also really digs the knife into Christianity. Not organized religion, or Buddhism, or Islam, or any other religion, just Christianity. I “think” I could handle it if he were an equal opportunity mocker, but he’s not. He really lets fly with the story “Rapture” and I realized that while the other stories might be interesting that my time with him is done for good now.

If I need any more fixes of Tchaikovsky, I’ll just go and re-read the Shadows of the Apt decology.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

• All of My “Adrian Tchaikovsky” Reviews

Conan the Bold (Conan the Barbarian) ★★★✬☆

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 Bold
Series: Conan the Barbarian
Authors: John Maddox Roberts
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 175
Words: 80K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org & Me

A young Conan’s prospects for a domestic existence are destroyed, along with his intended fiancé, by the renegade Taharka of Keshan. To achieve vengeance, the Cimmerian joins forces with a one-eyed warrior woman, Mad Kalya, also wronged by Taharka’s outlaws. The couple pursue their enemies across several nations, from Croton’s fighting pits to the Ophirian plains, overtaking them in time and again only to see Taharka slip through their fingers. The chase ultimately culminates in a battle to the death.

Kalya dies in Conan’s arms but Taharka gets his just desserts. Conan decides to keep exploring the other lands and to find out what other adventures await him.

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed this story quite a bit. This was an origin story for Conan and shows how he came to be exploring lands other than Cimmeria. I suspect if I read enough Conan stories though that I’ll find multiple “origin” stories. So I’m not holding this as canon or anything.

There is some cosmic horror involved, as both Conan and Taharka are accosted by priests of elder gods and told they both have “great destinies”. Taharka allows this to go to his head and acts accordingly while Conan simply scoffs and tells the priests no one, or no thing, will ever control his actions. Of course, Taharka dies and Conan doesn’t. So much for those elder gods prescience, right? Hahahahahaa.

In terms of action, this is all over the place geographically and it keeps things fresh. We get to see a glimpse of Conan as a river pirate, hinting at his future as a real pirate later on. That is one story I’ve never read about Conan, his time as a pirate. It’s always just referred to. I hope JMR writes at least one story about that.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• The “Essential Conan” Trilogy
• All of My “John Maddox Roberts’ Conan” Reviews

August '22 Roundup & Rambling

Raw Data:

Novels – 15 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.33 ↑

Pages – 4125 ↓

Words – 1162K ↓

The Bad:

One Piece #28 – The only under 3star rating this whole month!

The Good:

A Season in Carcosa – 4.5stars of Almost Perfect cosmic horror

Movie:

The 2015 tv revival of The Muppets made them rude and crude instead of laughable and lovable.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Animate Wall MTG
• Binstagramm
• The 80’s Movie Book Tag
• WordPress Woes
• Ankh of Mishra MTG
• Apprentice Wizard MTG
• Currently Reading
• Armageddon MTG
• Armageddon Clock MTG

Personal:

Batched the first week of the month as Mrs B was still out in California visiting family. Got sick in the middle of the month for a couple of days and then worked and read, worked and read. I just felt super busy the whole month even when things were going fine.

Had a baptism at church, which was really nice, went to a company lunch one friday (which was great because we still got paid but didn’t have to work those 3hrs), visited the SDA church one Saturday and tried to get a game of boardgame Doom going with my brother.

WordPress “updated” in the background at some point this month and they broke the ability to copy/paste multiple items into the Title bar of a post. Since I c/p the title, series and rating, I had to figure out an alternate way. I emailed WP and they confirmed it was the update doing the breaking and they also confirmed it wouldn’t be fixed at least until the next update. So I had to start using blogger as my primary blog and then WP as the backup. Blogging is just becoming a hassle and WordPress seems fixed on their course of driving away the casual blogger. I am really stressed about it. It is cumulative stress too, so it doesn’t go away. The block editor, which I am used to, still makes me angry to use, WP’s various shenanigans with their plans and addons and crap and now something “basic” isn’t working. It feels like I am dragging a ball and chain behind me every time I go to blog and I am starting to really, really, really hate it.

My Librarything usage has also been dropping and since the few people I interacted with on a social level had dwindled as well, I began cutting back at LT soon after the month began. Starting this week I’ve cut the cord completely. One less place I have to copy/paste and keep track of information. I feel like I’m re-trenching on multiple fronts. That’s not good, because you only retrench when you’re in a war, and usually only when you are losing that war. Reviewing has become a war that I’m losing. While I know my moods affect how I feel about blogging, the fact that I am feeling this way at all about it is a big fat warning sign to me. I’ll be giving it all some serious consideration over the coming months.

Plans for Next Month:

September is going to be a very full blogging month. So much so that I’ll be double posting on Mondays. One will be the typical Magic the Gathering post and the next one will be a book review, hopefully at noon. Might be some timing issues due to WP being idiotic but it will at least go up on my site at noon.

I’ve got to write about September 11 and do the next Muppets thing and everything else will be book reviews, book reviews, book reviews. I have GOT to get caught up, so September gets to be the month I pack them all in. I know book review posts aren’t as fun to read, but my backlog has almost doubled between the reading time I had while in California and the sick time I had this month. So prepare yourselves to be socked between the eyes. If I feel the need to write some other non-book review stuff, well, then that’ll be another double posting day as well.

Wyper the Berserker (One Piece #28) ★★☆☆☆

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: Wyper the Berserker
Series: One Piece #28
Arc: Skypiea #5
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 185
Words: 8K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_One_Piece_chapters_(187_388)

“Wyper the Berserker”

“Dial Battle”

“The Many Souths”

“Pirate Zoro vs. Warrior Braham”

“Pirate Luffy vs. Berserker Wyper”

“Warrior Genbo vs. Heavenly Warriors Commander Yama”

“Pirate Chopper vs. Vassal Gedatsu”

“Pirate Nami and the Weird Knight vs. Heavenly Warriors Subcommanders Hotori and Kotori”

“Warrior Kamakiri vs. Kami Eneru”

With the war’s start, Eneru decides to make a bet: of the eighty-one combatants currently on Skypiea (the Straw Hats, the Shandians, and his own forces), only five will remain in three hours’ time. The Shandians engage Eneru’s forces, the remaining priests fight the Shandians, and the Straw Hats fight whoever is left. After two hours, the number of active combatants dwindles to twenty-five. Luffy mistakes a giant snake’s mouth for a cave.

My Thoughts:

This is just about 180 pages of people fighting each other while screaming how impossible everything the other person is doing. Over and Over and Over again. I am at the point in my life where displays like this don’t do a thing for me. And splitting everyone up so I get to see 3-5 different fights REALLY doesn’t do it for me.

This was the last volume I read back when I was reading One Piece as it was released in english. I can totally understand why I stopped here. Big, flashy and confusing fights simply do not hold my attention. Not anymore. It’s not like I’m going to stop this time but I must admit, Oda-sensei better get off his keister and start telling a story again.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

• All My “One Piece” Reviews

Armageddon Clock - MTG 4th Edition