The Innocent 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 Innocent
Series: ———-
Author: Harlan Coben
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 338
Words: 105K

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This wasn’t nearly as complicated as Gone for Good, and I’m very thankful for that. But at the same time, it is very obvious that Coben has a list of “include these plot points” and he just rolls a couple of dice to figure out which ones to put into the story. While not exactly recycled, there are just too many similar points for such a reader as myself. Not to brag (which usually means the person is about to brag), but I’ve read enough books, both good, bad, really good and really bad, to see this kind of thing coming from a mile away. And I wear glasses.
~buffs nails

At the same time, I’ve decided that I will start reading a series with a central main character instead of these standalone stories. They might work fine for those who read 5 books a year, but I’m sorry, I’m way out of those peoples’ league. And I need Coben to write at my level, not theirs.
~buffs nails again

Yep, letting my reading snob show here. I don’t care. I have standards. I really do my best to keep that snobbery from showing when it comes to other people, but when it is about the books “I” read on “my” blog, well, I get sick and tired of holding it in all the time. Darn this curse of good taste, it is a real burden on my shoulders.
~buffs both set of nails

Ok, I’m done now. The snobbery can go back in its box for another year or two. Maybe three if I can get on a good roll.

★★★☆☆

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From Wikipedia.org

Matt Hunter is a seemingly ordinary man in suburban New Jersey with a pregnant wife, Olivia. But Matt’s past is not so ordinary. In his late teens, Matt tried to break up a fight involving his friend, and wound up unintentionally killing the other fighter. While his friends spent time in college, Matt was behind bars serving time for negligent manslaughter. Now nine years after being released from prison, Matt is a paralegal in his brother’s law firm and his life is looking up. However, the past won’t seem to go away. As Matt and Olivia try to buy a house in his old neighborhood, neighbors and local authorities make it clear he is not welcome. After Matt receives disturbing photos from his wife’s phone, a man who is tailing Matt ends up dead. Matt soon learns that Olivia also has a past that she’d like to forget. Unable to trust anyone, Matt and Olivia are forced to work outside the law to save themselves and their future.

• All My “Harlan Coben” Reviews

Currently Reading Buddy Read: Farsight

Have started a buddy read with Dave and Markus. We’re reading Farsight by Phil Kelly, a novella about the Tau from the Warhammer 40K universe. We’re going to wrap things up by November 25th, so lots of time. If you have any interest in joining us, leave a comment and we’ll work out the details! Otherwise, shut up, sit back and be jealous of how awesome we are 😉

Foundation (Foundation #1) 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: Foundation
Series: Foundation #1
Authors: Isaac Asimov
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 234
Words: 70K

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Foundation is one of those books/series that I read in highschool, then again in Bibleschool and then yet again as an adult. When I read Foundation back in ‘08. I only gave it 3stars. Looking at my review, I don’t give any indication of why. I suspect I was expecting some sort of epiphany experience and when that didn’t happen, I blamed it on the book.

This time around I had more experience with a wider range of Asimov’s work. I’d seen him at the top of his form and I’d seen some of his better left forgotten stuff too. This was a collection of very dependent short stories and I loved every single second of it.

With just a few words Asimov sets the stage for 1000 years of future history. We meet Harri Seldon for all of 4, maybe 5 paragraphs and yet when his hologram appears again, he’s one of the most real characters in the stories. Trantor, the planet city, the Empire itself, are all sketched in with a very light touch and yet we are told enough that our imaginations can fill in all the gaps (well, if your imagination hasn’t atrophied in todays bookish culture).

Asimov’s strength has always been “The Idea” and he works that to the fullest here. I loved it.

★★★★★

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From Wikipedia

Called forth to stand trial on Trantor for allegations of treason (for foreshadowing the decline of the Galactic Empire), Seldon explains that his science of psychohistory foresees many alternatives, all of which result in the Galactic Empire eventually falling. If humanity follows its current path, the Empire will fall and 30,000 years of turmoil will overcome humanity before a second empire arises. However, an alternative path allows for the intervening years to be only 1,000 if Seldon is allowed to collect the most intelligent minds and create a compendium of all human knowledge, entitled the Encyclopedia Galactica. The board is still wary, but allows Seldon to assemble whomever he needs, provided he and the “Encyclopedists” be exiled to a remote planet, Terminus. Seldon agrees to these terms – and also secretly establishes a second foundation of which almost nothing is known, which he says is at the “opposite end” of the galaxy.

After 50 years on Terminus, and with Seldon now dead, the inhabitants find themselves in a crisis. With four powerful planets surrounding their own, the Encyclopedists have no defenses but their own intelligence. At the same time, a vault left by Seldon is due to automatically open. The vault reveals a pre-recorded hologram of Seldon, who informs the Encyclopedists that their entire reason for being on Terminus is a fraud, insofar as Seldon did not actually care whether or not an encyclopedia was created, only that the population was placed on Terminus and the events needed by his calculations were set in motion. In reality, the recording discloses, Terminus was set up to reduce the dark ages based on his calculations. It will develop by facing intermittent and extreme “crises” – known as “Seldon Crises” – which the laws governing psychohistory show will inevitably be overcome, simply because human nature will cause events to fall in particular ways which lead to the intended goal. The recording reveals that the present events are the first such crisis, reminds them that a second foundation was also formed at the “opposite end” of the galaxy, and then falls silent.

The Mayor of Terminus City, Salvor Hardin, proposes to play the planets against each other. His plan is a success; the Foundation remains untouched, and he becomes its effective ruler. Meanwhile, the minds of the Foundation continue to develop newer and greater technologies which are more compact and powerful than the Empire’s equivalents. Using its scientific advantages, Terminus develops trade routes with nearby planets, eventually taking them over when its technology becomes a much-needed commodity. The interplanetary traders effectively become diplomats to other planets. One such trader, Hober Mallow, becomes powerful enough to challenge and win the office of Mayor and, by cutting off supplies to a nearby region, also succeeds in adding more planets to the Foundation’s control.

• All of My Asimov Reviews

The Insulted and Humiliated (The Russians) 4.5Stars

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 Insulted and Humiliated
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translator: Garnett
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 534
Words: 145K

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This was probably the most Russian of the Russian novels I’ve read to date. A fiance dumps the guy for some rich prince, but not because he’s a prince but “because she loves him”. And the main character helps them both. He becomes the shoulder for the woman to cry on when things go hard, he listens to the princeling when he is at his stupidest (all the time), the princeling has zero will of his own and completely lives his life in the moment and by his emotions, the parents of the girl and princeling are suing each other and the main character finds and befriends a sick orphan girl, who dies in the end. The princeling marries someone else and the girl and the main character are left knowing too much has happened for them to ever return together.

Oh man, how can you NOT love something like that? It was distilled misery, like Grade AAA Maple Syrup, but Misery instead. It was glorious and I found myself, on several occasions, pumping my fist in the air and mentally exclaiming, YES, that’s a new low, how can you beat that? And Dostoyevsky must have heard me from the grave, because he kept one upping me.

The story itself is very slow and this was all about the characters interacting. If you want interesting characters, read this. Dostoyevsky knew people and what’s more, he knew how to translate that to the written word. This reminded me very much of a Dickens’ story and I daresay that Dostoyevsky is just as good as Dickens about creating characters and situations.

While I am not sure I would recommend this as an introduction to someone who wants to get into Classic Russian Literature, I would recommend it just to see if they can handle the misery. This book is like a stress test to see if someone can handle CRL in general and not necessarily a test to see if they like CLR. There’s a difference and you need to be able to differentiate between what you can handle and what you like.

★★★★✬

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From Wikipedia.org

Natasha leaves her parents’ home and runs away with Alyosha (Prince Alexey), the son of Prince Valkovsky. As a result of his pain, her father, Nikolai, curses her. The only friend that remains by Natasha’s side is Ivan – her childhood friend who is deeply in love with her, and whom Natasha has rejected despite their being engaged. Prince Valkovsky tries to destroy Alyosha’s plans to marry Natasha, and wants to make him marry the rich princess Katerina. Alyosha is a naïve but lovable young man who is easily manipulated by his father. Following his father’s plan, Alyosha falls in love with Katerina, but still loves Natasha. He is constantly torn between these two women, too indecisive and infatuated with both to make a decision. Eventually, Natasha sacrifices her own feelings and withdraws in order for Alyosha to choose Katerina. Meanwhile, Ivan rescues an orphan girl, Elena (known as Nellie), from the clutches of a procuress and learns that her mother ran away from her father’s (Jeremy Smith’s) home with her sweetheart, a man who abandoned her when Nellie’s mother gave birth. It is later revealed that Prince Valkovsky is Nellie’s father. Her parents were legally married, but Prince Valkovsky persuaded his young and innocent wife to rob her father, Jeremy. After moving to Petersburg, Nellie’s mother asks her father for forgiveness, but he rejects them. Before dying, Nellie’s mother makes Nellie promise to never go to her real father, whose name is on a document she leaves her daughter. In an attempt to make Nikolai (Natasha’s father) reconcile with Natasha, Ivan persuades Nikolai and his wife to adopt Nellie. By telling them her life story, Nellie makes Nikolai’s heart soften and he forgives Natasha and removes his curse, and they are reunited. Natasha’s family plans to move from Petersburg, but just before they leave Nellie dies from a chronic heart condition; the little girl makes it clear to Ivan she does not forgive her father for his cruel treatment of her mother. She also tells him he should marry Natasha. The story ends with Nikolai and Natasha considering what a waste everything has been to that point and how they can never be togetherl.

• The Russians
• Leo Tolstoy
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Ivan Turgenev
• Nikolai Gogol

Crimson Manticore - MTG 4E

The Wolverine Trilogy (Movie)

Instead of just watching X-Men: Origins: Wolverine (my goodness, what idiot thought that mashed potato filled title was a good idea?) like I intended, I ended up watching all three of the Wolverine movies. They are:

• Origins (2009)
• The Wolverine (2013)
• Logan (2017)

(all titles above link to the Wikipedia pages. I’m not going to waste time putting up synopses for these) I am glad to have gotten them all out of the way. After Logan, I was left gnashing my teeth, almost foaming at the mouth and fully decided to watch no more X-Men movies.

Origins, as the title declares, is the origin story of Wolverine. It’s not canon, it’s not even inline with the previous X-Men films, but I enjoyed this a lot. It was a comic book super hero movie and it leaned into that unabashedly. From stupid, face-palming one liners to scenarios so outrageous that your brain has to stop, this was fun from top to bottom.

The Wolverine was a bit darker, had Famke Jannsen as Jean Grey haunting Wolverine’s mind and ended up with a battle between Wolverine and a giant Mecha made out of adamantium. That Wolverine destroys with a heated adamantium super sword. Yakuza, kidnappings, corruption, like I said, darker. But at the same time, it felt like it was trying to be more serious than Origins but it was just as comic book’y. But it was trying to play it straight. It almost worked, but whereas I found myself just accepting stuff in Origins, for this movie I kept thinking “That’s stupid. That doesn’t make sense. How would that EVEN work?” Those are not questions I should be asking if I want to enjoy a movie.

Then we come to Logan. An old Wolverine is taking care of an insane and incontinent Professor X and there’s some new breed of Mutant X warriors, blah, blah, blah. This was rated R (where the previous two were pg-13) and boy did they run with that rating. Logan AND Professor X swear worse than sailors, the hopelessness of everything just oozes off the screen and in a move that I found rather despicable, Logan spends five minutes screaming at the little girl (X23?) about how comic books are lies and not real and should be ignored. That is when I decided to mentally check out. Comic books have never claimed to be real or “like the real world”. The whole flipping point is to give some kids an escape for a couple of minutes and to show them something good. There is a reason they used to be about Super HEROES, and not just about super powered individuals. Hope, comic books offered hope to kids in a form they could understand. And this movie took that hope, mind raped it, gouged its eyeballs out, cut its legs off and then sat back and smugly said “So, where is your hope now, puny human?” I was sickened, disgusted and totally put off by the message.

So I’m done with the X-Franchise. To be perfectly honest, Logan affected me enough that I’m considering not reviewing another movie until after new years.

[Rant] I Will Not Be One of the Masses

When it comes to books, I refuse to be one of the yapping drones parroting the same lines about the same books about the same authors that 1000 other bloggers are yapping about all at the same time. Yap, yap, yap…

Which is why I will read the books I do, in the very faint hope that just maybe ONE of those brainless drones will take a chance and try one of the books that nobody else reads any more and begin their own unique reading adventure through life.

STEP OUT OF LINE AND READ SOMETHING NONE OF YOUR PEERS ARE READING!!!

Of all the sorts of people in the world, I would have thought book readers would be the first to go their own way and do their own thing. Instead, all I see is a mass of faceless non-entities. Bowls of oatmeal, without even flavor to distinguish one from the next. Even their bowls are all exactly the same.

If I have to be a bowl of oatmeal, I will be a bowl of oatmeal like this:

Thankyou for listening. Just needed to get that out of my system. Crabby old hermit mode is powering down now. Normal functions will resume in 3….2….1….