The BFG ★★★✬☆

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 BFG
Authors: Roald Dahl
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Childrens Fiction
Pages: 138
Words: 38K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

Sophie, an eight-year-old girl in an orphanage, cannot sleep. Looking out of her window, she sees a mysterious giant in the street, carrying a suitcase and a trumpet. The giant sees Sophie, who tries to hide in bed, but the giant picks her up through the window. Sophie is carried to a large cave in the middle of a desolate land, where the giant sets her down. Believing that he intends to eat her, Sophie pleads for her life, but the giant laughs and dismisses the idea. He explains that although most giants do eat humans, he does not, because he is the Big Friendly Giant, or BFG.

The BFG explains, in a unique and muddled speech, that his nine neighbours are much bigger and stronger giants, who all happily eat humans every night. They vary their choice of destination both to avoid detection and because the people’s origins affect their taste. For example, people from Greece taste greasy, and so no giant goes there, while people from Panama taste of hats. As he will never allow Sophie to leave in case she tells anyone of his existence, the BFG reveals the purpose of his suitcase and trumpet: he catches dreams in Dream Country, collects them in jars, and gives the good ones to children all around the world, but destroys the bad ones. Since he does not eat people, he must eat the only crop which grows in his land—the repulsive snozzcumber, which looks like a cucumber.

When the Bloodbottler, one of the other giants, enters the cave, Sophie hides in the snozzcumber; not knowing this, the BFG tricks the Bloodbottler into eating the vegetable. Luckily, the larger giant spits her out and leaves in disgust. They then drink frobscottle, a delicious fizzy drink where the bubbles sink downwards rather than upwards, causing noisy flatulence, which the BFG calls “whizzpopping”. The BFG takes Sophie to Dream Country, but is bullied along the way by his neighbours, led by Fleshlumpeater, the largest and strongest. Sophie watches the BFG catch two dreams—while one would be a good dream, the other is a nightmare. The BFG uses it on Fleshlumpeater, who has a dream about a giant-killer named Jack and accidentally starts a brawl with his companions.

Sophie persuades the BFG to approach the Queen of England for help with the other giants. She navigates the giant to Buckingham Palace, where he places her in the Queen’s bedroom. He then gives the Queen a nightmare which closely parallels real events; because the BFG placing Sophie in her bedroom was part of the dream, the Queen believes her and speaks with the giant over breakfast. Fully convinced, she authorises a task force to travel to the giants’ homeland and secure them as they sleep. The BFG guides a fleet of helicopters to the sleeping giants. Eight are successfully shackled, but Fleshlumpeater awakes; Sophie and the BFG trick him into being tied up. Having collected the BFG’s dream collection, the helicopters carry the giants back to England, where they are imprisoned in a massive pit.

Every country that the giants had visited in the past send thanks and gifts the BFG and Sophie, for whom residences are built in Windsor Great Park. Tourists come in huge numbers to watch the giants in the pit, who are now fed only on snozzcumbers; they receive an unexpected snack when three drunks manage to climb the fence and fall in. The BFG receives the official title of Royal Dream-Blower, and continues bestowing dreams upon children; he also learns to speak and write more intelligibly, writing a book identified as the novel itself, under another’s name.

My Thoughts:

I have not re-read this book since the 90’s (I have no record of it since I started keeping track in April of 2000) and yet, I remembered it all. How does Dahl do that?!?

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• All My “Roald Dahl” Reviews

Ashnod's Battle Gear - MTG 4th Edition

9/11 - An Unbearable Weight of Remembrance

Another year, another day, another time to remember what happened. Last year I mentioned how hard it was getting to remember this. Not in terms of forgetting, but in terms of remembering in the face of a whole generation who it means literally nothing to.

I can remember growing up and wondering why Pearl Harbor Day was on the calendar. Sure, I knew that PHD had happened and it was a bad time but that was way back in my grandfather’s day. I was watching anime from japan and I had a sony dvd player for goodness sake. I could say “ohayo” with the best of them (that’s “good morning”). I couldn’t understand why People were still trying to remember something from so long ago.

Now I understand. And it is a weight upon my shoulders. Every year it gets heavier and becomes harder to even think about it, much less publicly remember it. And I will cry each year in private and wonder if I’m the only one left who is remembering and then the next day I will be fine and know that others were grieving as well. I am not alone in my pain and tears. So each year I post about it and then wonder if I’m being a middle aged fool. Until the next year rolls around and I repeat it all over again. I will drag these chains another year so that the kids don’t have to. They will get their own chains soon enough, no need to burden them with this. This is MY pain to deal with.

I will remember 9/11.

American Assassin (Mitch Rapp #11) ★★★★☆

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: American Assassin
Series: Mitch Rapp #11
Author: Vince Flynn
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 381
Words: 125K

Synopsis:

From the Publishers

Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorist’s worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world…and then tragedy struck.

Two decades of cutthroat, partisan politics has left the CIA and the country in an increasingly vulnerable position. Cold War veteran and CIA Operations Director Thomas Stansfield knows he must prepare his people for the next war. The rise of Islamic terrorism is coming, and it needs to be met abroad before it reaches America’s shores. Stansfield directs his protÉgÉe, Irene Kennedy, and his old Cold War colleague, Stan Hurley, to form a new group of clandestine operatives who will work outside the normal chain of command-men who do not exist.

What type of man is willing to kill for his country without putting on a uniform? Kennedy finds him in the wake of the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack. Two-hundred and seventy souls perished that cold December night, and thousands of family and friends were left searching for comfort. Mitch Rapp was one of them, but he was not interested in comfort. He wanted retribution.

Six months of intense training has prepared him to bring the war to the enemy’s doorstep, and he does so with brutal efficiency. Rapp starts in Istanbul, where he assassinates the Turkish arms dealer who sold the explosives used in the Pan Am attack. Rapp then moves onto Hamburg with his team and across Europe, leaving a trail of bodies. All roads lead to Beirut, though, and what Rapp doesn’t know is that the enemy is aware of his existence and has prepared a trap. The hunter is about to become the hunted, and Rapp will need every ounce of skill and cunning if he is to survive the war-ravaged city and its various terrorist factions.

My Thoughts:

You know, I think this was one of the best Mitch Rapp novels so far. His college sweetheart is already dead, his future wife hasn’t entered the picture yet and we get to see the forging of an unparalleled weapon.

THIS is what I wanted from the get-go. A man unfettered by human connection, touched by tragedy but with an uncorrupted moral compass. A weapon with a conscience, as it were. If Mitch has to have a companion, he needs someone compatible. He’s a Desert Eagle 357 Magnum. His dead wife was a glass of whiskey. Those 2 things aren’t inherently compatible. What Mitch’s gun needs is either a matching gun or a security case where it can rest until needed. I don’t think that’s going to happen though.

Being a prequel, we know that Mitch isn’t going to fail and as such some of the tension is gone but the action keeps up the tempo and this is a thrill a minute. I also wondered if it would be a good thing to start the series here, but I am in the camp of reading a series in which the author wrote it and despite how good I think this book is, nothing about it changed my thoughts on the reading order.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

• All My “Mitch Rapp” Reviews

And Be A Villain (Nero Wolfe #13) ★★★✬☆

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: And Be A Villain
Series: Nero Wolfe #13
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 207
Words: 65K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia

Cyril Orchard, the publisher of the weekly horse racing sheet Track Almanac, is poisoned with cyanide during a live soft drink commercial on a popular radio talk show. A media sensation, the case attracts the attention of Nero Wolfe, who is facing a crippling income tax bill, and Archie Goodwin is dispatched to convince the producers and sponsors to hire Wolfe to investigate the crime. The police have identified several suspects, including the show’s host Madeline Fraser; her business manager, friend and former sister-in-law Deborah Koppel; her on-air side-kick Bill Meadows; Tully Strong and Nathan Straub, representatives of the show’s sponsors; script-writer Elinor Vance; Nancylee Shepherd, the head of Fraser’s fan-club; and F.O. Savarese, an assistant professor of mathematics and the show’s other guest.

Although his initial investigations seem unpromising, Wolfe eventually learns that a separate bottle of the beverage being advertised was provided for Fraser, identified with tape around the neck. When pressed, the producers admit that Fraser is unable to drink the beverage she was advertising because it gives her indigestion, and instead drinks iced coffee from the bottle instead. As the marked bottle was the one containing the poison, this suggests that Fraser was the intended victim instead of Orchard.

Wolfe passes this information on to Inspector Cramer, seeing this as an opportunity to claim his fee without further work. When the press — prompted by Archie — criticises him for his lack of effort, however, he is stung into further action but, to Archie’s surprise, begins investigating a different murder. Beula Poole, the publisher of an independent political and economics journal, has been shot dead in her offices days before. Although there is no apparent connection between the crimes, Wolfe is skeptical that two independent publishers would be murdered within weeks of each other without any link. His investigations reveal that the magazines were in fact the front for a sophisticated blackmail operation which targeted its victims using the threat of slander to compel them to purchase subscriptions for a year. This, in turn, brings Wolfe into contact with Arnold Zeck, the shadowy and powerful criminal mastermind behind the operation, who warns Wolfe not to interfere in his affairs.

After the blackmail story is published Walter Anderson, the president of the soft drink company, tries to end Wolfe’s investigations by paying him off and announcing that his company is withdrawing sponsorship from Fraser’s show. With no further leads, Wolfe sends Archie to Fraser and her entourage with a fake letter implicating Elinor Vance in order to try and shake a response out of the suspects. During the meeting, Deborah Koppel dies after eating a piece of candy laced with cyanide. Discovering the letter on Archie, the police threaten to charge him with obstructing justice, but they are interrupted by a phone call from a rival radio station. Wolfe has announced that he knows the identity of the murderer and threatens to reveal it on-air that night.

To avoid humiliation, the charges against Archie are dismissed and Wolfe is permitted to reveal the identity of the murderer in his office. Once the suspects have arrived, Wolfe presses Anderson to reveal the reason he tried to terminate his contract with Wolfe and Fraser’s show. Anderson had discovered that Madeline Fraser had received blackmail letters, and it is revealed that Fraser was being accused of murdering her husband years before. However, while the blackmail syndicate had previously created false claims about their victims to slander them, in this case they had unwittingly stumbled upon the truth – Fraser had in fact murdered her husband. Fraser murdered Orchard and Poole to conceal her secret, and Koppel when she began to suspect the truth. Fraser is arrested and charged with murder. The novel ends with Wolfe receiving a phone call from Zeck, congratulating him on solving the case — and warning him not to interfere in the crime lord’s affairs.

My Thoughts:

The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight,
but the wicked falls by his own wickedness.
~Proverbs 11:5 (English Standard Version)

This Bible verse is the first thing that sprang to my mind when thinking about reviewing this book. The second part of the verse anyway. Fake blackmailers stumble upon a real crime and pay the consequences and the criminal gets hers as well. Evil devouring itself.

This was a book of several crimes that appeared unconnected but ended up all being part of one big crime. It reminded me very much of Dan Willis and his urban fantasy series The Arcane Casebook featuring Alex Lockerby. In fact, thinking about it, I suspect that Willis has read enough of Rex Stout to be influenced in his own writing. That’s really neither here nor there, but it was something else that popped into my brain while reading this story.

There was also a LOT of negative interaction between Archie and Wolfe this time around. Mainly because Archie deals with the bills and Wolfe is just lazy. I am now curious what a book about each of them on their own would be like. I am being careful about that wish though, because that very interaction, whether positive or negative, is what drives my interest a lot of the time.

Overall, another good entry in the Nero Wolfe series and I’m happy with what I read.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Moby Bone (Bone #13) ★★★✬☆

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: Moby Bone
Series: Bone #13
Author: Jeff Smith
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 22
Words: 1K

Synopsis:

From Boneville.fandom.com

Fone Bone is dreaming that he is in the position of Ishmael in Moby Dick. Phoney is turned into Captain Ahab, and a confused Fone Bone soon finds out that only he knows his identity in this dream. Ahab-Phoney soon spots Moby Dick (Smiley). In the chase to catch him, Fone Bone is thrown overboard and into the sea. Managing to grab onto a coffin, he calls for Phoney, a call that is not answered. Suddedly, a tidal wave appears, and Fone Bone sees the Great Red Dragon’s head in the wave.

Fone Bone wakes up and finds himself in an empty house. When he goes outside, he realizes that he overslept. Walking around, he meets up with Ted. Ted tells him it’s already the afternoon and asks him how his love poetry is doing. After panning his choice on a previous poem, Ted jumps off, and an irritated Fone Bone walks off to work on another. THIS poem almost gets spotted by Thorn as Fone Bone is writing (he quickly hides it before she can really see what it is) She asks him if he remembered his dream (the one that she saw him in while she was on watch duty). He recollected the dream in short fashion, then asked her if she had any dreams. She retold him her dream, also meantioned that him, or at least his face, was in the dream as well, and then left to continue with her work. Bashful Bone, however, didn’t notice this, and pulled out some flowers for her…only to find out that the DRAGON had taken her place. When asked about the dream Fone Bone had (that included his head), the Dragon merely meantioned that both Bone and Thorn’s dreams were intruded (the Dragon reveals that he purposely invaded Fone Bone’s dream by saying “Welcome aboard, Ishmael.”). At that, the Dragon walks off, leaving Bone to angrily stammer and finally tell/yell at the Dragon to stay out of his dreams, all the while wondering how the Dragon knew.

Two distractions aside, he continues on his poems…only to be spotted writing them by Smiley and Phoney, who, almost imediately, takes the poems and starts reading them. Phoney, at this time, thinks that Fone Bone is starting to look like “a drooling idiot” to Thorn…until Fone Bone reveals he hasn’t shown them to her. Then Phoney claims that Fone Bone is getting a little too obedient to them; Fone Bone says that Gran’ma Ben has been giving them a home and food; the LEAST they could do would be to help out with the chores. Phoney points out that Fone Bone hasn’t seen Smiley and Phoney drop what they’re doing everytime Thorn and Gran’ma Ben snap their fingers…right when a bell rings-the dinner bell, as Smiley and Phoney deem it as-and the two cousins run toward the noise, with Fone Bone trailing behind.

However, they found Gran’ma waitng behind the house for them; they weren’t going to be eating dinner yet, because the Bones were going to be making it. She sends Smiley with a pot to get some hot water and brings Fone Bone and Phoney to the chickens, where their job is to kill four chickens and dip them in the water that Smiley would bring back. At the mere mention of how they were going to kill them, they fainted, leaving Gran’ma to kill them herself, which she does, muttering to her self angrily, “City boys!”

My Thoughts:

This was actually a little scary as you realize that even dreams are now going to be a battleground.

The last page just made me laugh. Phoney and Fone are supposed to kill 4 chickens for dinner and Gran’ma Ben tells them they can wring their necks before cutting their heads off if they don’t want the chickens running around afterwards. So they faint. Gran’ma Ben’s reaction is literally picture perfect. I can imagine myself having this reaction too in the right circumstances.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lshoha3qqzbh1i7/bone13.jpg

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

• All My “Bone” Reviews

The Shadow Laughs (The Shadow #3) ★★★☆☆

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: The Shadow Laughs
Series: The Shadow #3
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 156
Words: 47K

Synopsis:

A duel with Evil

When an innocent man is murdered under strange circumstances and a crack police detective is lured to his death, The Shadow sees the signs of a vicious plot. He uncovers a ruthless gang of counterfeiters, led by the most powerful and diabolical man in New York’s underworld.

Harry Vincent is sent in to investigate, the Shadow gets shot and eventually Eeeeeeevil is brought to justice.

My Thoughts:

Yeah, I liked this. I liked the brevity of the story. But it didn’t feel short. It felt just right. Thrills and chills and action and guns, bad bad guys, doofus good guy minions and a brilliant leader. It’s kind of a mix and match hodgepodge of elements that will work together no matter what order you put them in.

These are reminding me of Louis L’amour and his westerns (these obviously came first but I didn’t read them first). And if you look at the numbers, you can see that this write by numbers approach can work and work well. Lamour was writing his stories up until he died and Grant churned out over 300 stories about the Shadow. It’s pulp and it’s good.

It’s not going to work for everyone but if you’ve felt the need of a good old fashioned action story without a moral message telling you what you should be thinking/doing, then at least give the Shadow stories a try. If you don’t like the first couple, then it’ll be a safe bet the Shadow isn’t for you and you’ll know it. But you won’t know unless you try.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

• The Living Shadow (Book 1)
• The Eyes of the Shadow (Book 2)