Then It Fell Apart (Non-Fiction) 2Stars

 

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: Then It Fell Apart
Series: Non-Fiction
Author: Moby
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 382
Words: 119K
Publish: 2019

Wikipedia has this little bit to say about this book:

“The memoir predominantly deals with Moby's life from 1999 to 2009 with some flashbacks to his early childhood. In particular, the memoir deals with his surprise at the accidental success of Play, his descent into alcohol addiction, and his decision in 2007 to finally go to rehab in order to stay sober.”

I read Moby’s first memoir, Porcelain, back in 2017. I enjoyed it and so when I was looking for non-fiction books to fill up my non-fiction category, I found out Moby had written a second memoir.

This book alternates chapters from 1999 to 2008 and then from 1968 to the 80’s.

Moby claims to remember stuff from 3 years old and on. Some of it pretty terrible in fact. I can’t say he’s lying, but most kids do not remember things from that age, not even the really bad stuff. The one thing that bears him out though is his later behavior, which has all the classic signs of an abuse victim. Then again, all one has to do is take a Psych 101 class to learn what those behaviors are. The 1999 and on parts were about his meteoric rise to fame and then his gradual descent. It was the typical shallow rockstar story of drugs, alcohol and sex. The book ends with him going to an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting and realizing that he did need help.

My problem is that not once is there any sense of shame or regret. He goes through people (not just girlfriends) like they are disposable. It was exactly the same as how he wrote about people in Porcelain. A name, a situation, then we never hear about them again. We don’t hear how or why he stopped hanging out with them, beyond the occasional “and I was a dick to them” general blabbings. It was trademark narcissism. I was hoping since he’d gotten clean around 2008 that he’d grown up between then and writing this book. Sadly, it seems he hadn’t.

He didn’t handle fame very well and his drinking, drug use and promiscuity were simply accelerated by it. This was a journal of self-destruction. I also had my doubts about the accuracy of things portrayed. Memory is a porous thing (hence my weekly journaling) and details are easy to misremember OR to be remembered in a light that makes us feel better about ourselves.

Overall, this felt like I had been dragged through a sewer and had many, many instances of second hand shame, as there wasn’t any on Moby’s part.

I had a large collection of Moby’s work on hand while reading this and would have it playing in the background. I listened to his earlier works, which I didn’t care for, then his three big album hits (Play, 18 and Hotel, with Play and 18 including the B-sides songs) which I did enjoy quite a bit and then his later stuff which I once again did not enjoy. It felt like he was a musician doing “musician’y” things for his own enjoyment or other musicians rather than for the masses like me. I can understand why those three albums made waves and I can understand why his other stuff didn’t.

If Moby ever writes a third memoir about getting cleaned up and his life after fame, I’ll be tempted to read it. But I don’t know if I would or not. I can’t take another book of non-repentance.

★★☆☆☆

Immolation - MTG 4E

 

The flames dance, a hungry orange tongue,
Lapping at skin, a story unsung.
Each nerve alive, a vibrant, searing cry,
As flesh surrenders, reaching for the sky. 

No scream escapes, only a silent plea,
For release from this fiery decree.
The body writhes, a fragile, burning shell,
Consuming all, a dark and smoky spell. 

Yet in this blaze, a truth begins to bloom,
A cleansing fire, dispelling inner gloom.
The old self fades, a wisp upon the breeze,
While new beginnings stir among the trees.

The heat subsides, the embers start to gleam,
A promise whispered, a resurrected dream.
From ashes rising, a phoenix takes its flight,
Transformed by fire, bathed in golden light

~ Ember and Ash, a poem by James Zoller

Reading Rotation 9/25

 

Several years ago, I wrote up a Post where I listed all of the Various Authors or Series I had on my kindle that I was reading through. Given that I wanted to do less book review posts this month, that meant I had to write other stuff. Lists are easy in that regards ;-) So without further ado, here is the list of authors and/or series, annotated, that I currently have on my ereader.

Austen.
This is pretty self-explanatory I think. I am currently working my way through all her Juvenilia.

Black Widowers / Mythago Wood
I am rotating between reading 3 of the Black Widower books by Asimov with 3-4 of the Mythago Wood books by Robert Holdstock.

Coleridge
This is a trilogy by Laird Barron about a former mob enforcer named Isaiah Coleridge. Crime fiction is what I think the genre falls into.

Conan
Once again, pretty self-explanatory.

Cook / Herron
I am rotating between Herron's Slough House series and Glen Cook's Black Company. 3 of one, then 3 of the other.

Discword / Bond
3-4 Discworld books by Pratchett and then 3 James bond books by Flemming.

Dracula / Lord of the Isles
3 of the Dracula Files books by Fred Saberhagen and then 3 of the Lord of the Isles by David Drake

Empire Rising / Vorkosigan Saga
Once again, 3 of the Empire Rising books by David Holmes and then 3 of the Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold

Hamilton
This is a split between two "Complete Collections" of Edmond Hamilton and the Complete Dumarest series by Edwin Tubb. I linked them together because of the similarity of their first names. It doesn't take much to get me to "organize" things after all :-D

Hitchcock
Those lovely "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" crime fiction stories. I have 5 or 6 of these currently on my Era (my ereader) and 18 or 19 still in my calibre library. I won't be reading them all in a row. I'll read 5 or 6 then replace them with some other trilogy or some such to give me a break and then return to this after Trilogy X is finished. I do my best to keep things fresh.

MHI
The Monster Hunter International books by Larry Correia. Once I'm finished what is currently out, I plan on re-reading Correia's Grimnoir trilogy and I'll just place it in this category so I don't have to rename things ;-)

Misc
This is for all my standalone books that either don't belong to a series OR I just want to read the first book of a series and pretend it is not part of a series. I'll list these, just because.

• Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
• Joy Makers by James Gunn (not that stinking movie guy)
• Way-farer by Dennis Schmidt
• The Resolve of Immortal Flesh by Rich Colburn
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Drumindor by Michael Sullivan

Nonfiction
This is the year I am seriously trying to read more non-fiction. Having an actual "category" for it helps tremendously.

Osten Ard
These are the fantasy books by Tad Williams consisting of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy and then the sequel series Last King of Osten Ard. MST is a favorite from my young adult days, so I hope the Last King works well for my older self.

Pollifax / Alphabet
Switching every couple of books between the Mrs Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman and the Alphabet crime mystery books by Sue Grafton featuring the character Kinsey Milhone. Completely different female characters. One I love and so far, one I hate. I'll let you guess which is which.

Ravens Shadow
The Ravens Shadow trilogy by Anthony Ryan. I enjoyed the first book when I read it years ago but lost track of them as they came out. I'm hoping I still enjoy them.

Rohmer
Much like the "Hamilton" category, this consists of two "complete collections" of Sax Rohmer (I am most interested in his Fu-Manchu books) and William Hodgson (who wrote the extremely weird House on the Borderland with that horrible yet mesmerizing pigman cover). This is my way of reading more older works, but at a slower rate than the newer stuff. More of a slow drip than me chowing them down like a pepperoni pizza.

The Russians
Cycling through the complete works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev. I'm in no hurry, so going through the collections is once again like a drip feed.

Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
Larry Correia's foray into the book writing world of epic fantasy. He's a good enough author that I don't mind reading 2 different series by him, this and the Monster Hunter International.

The Shadow
I have 10 or 11 Shadow omnibuses and each of them contains 5 or 6 The Shadow stories. Every time I finish one omnibus, I decide then if I want to replace it with the next omnibus or with a completely different series to give myself a break. Just like with the Hitchcock category, keeping things fresh is Important.

Warhammer 40K
This is a real hodge-podge of whatever WH40K books I feel like reading. Most of WH40K is about the damnable Astartes/Space Marines and I HATE those guys, so I am forced to pick up other books. The problem is that the publisher, Black Library, doesn't make their back catalog easy to figure out what faction is being written about, so I have a very hit and miss approach to the books I add to this. If it wasn't for both Dawie and Mark, I would have given up on this "series" long ago. But they have given me enough help that I have close to another year's worth of books to go. I can deal with that.

Wolfe
The Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. Only 13 or 14 more to go and then it will be time to start the most excellent re-read journey of all 47 books :-D It just doesn't get much better than that!

YA
This is the category I use for all of the non-adult books. From middle grade to highschool to college age, I just chuck them all in here to keep from becoming totally disconnected from those kids who won't get off of my lawn. Right now, I am re-reading the original Earthsea trilogy by Ursula LeGuin. Good stuff!

If you read all of that, color me impressed. My reading rotation is complex, complicated and suited to no one else but myself. However, it works like you wouldn't believe. I haven't had a reading slump since 2015 or so, not even when life was almost unbearably stressful. I read each category one after the other, so I never have a "choice" about what to read next. I've made that "choice" already by including the books in the category. My choices are long range, not book by book, and it has worked for me. I have tried to recommend it to other people but I no longer do that for a variety of reasons. I am satisfied enough that it works for me.

What a great way to start the week, eh?

My Week XXIX

 

This post is going to start two weeks ago, because I said so. Last week I returned to work after two months of being out due to an optic nerve palsy. I had scheduled my routine eye injection for Friday, so I only had to work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Let me tell you, I was so out of shape that by the time Friday morning rolled around, I was HAPPY to get the eye injection and not have to walk another day. My legs and feet hurt so bad that I had to take a tylenol when I got up Friday morning.

The following Monday was Labor Day, a federal holiday, so lots of people got it off. Of course, Mrs B works retail so she didn't. So I was home alone for the day. You know what I did? I watched Cheers for 7hrs straight. Cheers is a sitcom from the 80's and 90's. By the time Mrs B got home I felt like a zombie and realized it was a complete waste of a day. I was worn out still from work (3-4 days ago!) that I didn't care. I just enjoyed sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing. Ahhhhh.

Then Tuesday happened, da da dum! I was assigned to a job that I could do by myself with the gps equipment about an hour away. The vehicle I was to use had a slow leak in one of the tires but as long as we pumped it up each morning, it was good to go. Well, 10m minutes from the job site, the patch on the hole gives up the ghost and the tire goes flat in 60 seconds. That van is so noisy that I didn't hear anything, but the steering immediately went supah wonkey and I pulled over. Sure enough, that tire was dead and I could feel the air coming out of the hole. Took me an hour to change that tire. It was big enough that I couldn't lift the spare back on, but thankfully a local cop stopped by and gave me a hand. I was sweating like a pig and upset as all get out (they KNEW the tire had a slow leak but didn't want to get it properly fixed) but at least I was only 10minutes from the site and could get going and grump to myself in the woods in peace. I even told the cop that the day just HAD to get better.

So Naive...

Ohhhhhh. I get to the site (which I remind you is an hour from the office) only to realize I've forgotten a vital piece of equipment that I need to do the job. I call the office and they send someone with it to meet me half way at a local town office. I'm waiting and waiting and finally text the guy, asking where he is. He tells me he is there and wondering where I am. He starts describing what he is seeing and I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. There are two towns that both start with Green but have different endings. He had gone to the wrong town. I let the office manager know and that point he said to just come back, as it was a complete waste of time. So I get a second job, just 20minutes from the office.

And somebody had been messing with the equipment and changed some settings, so it wasn't working right. But I didn't know WHAT settings had changed. I played around with what I knew, but by 3pm I was so angry and frustrated and my feet hurt (I had walked about a mile at this point looking for control points) that I just called it a day. Once back at the office the new guy (who is a licensed surveyor from Texas of all places) showed me what he had changed and what I needed to do to get it back to working order. I didn't even punch him for messing around with equipment that he doesn't know how WE use. I came home, ate dinner and was in bed by 8pm. I was ready to quit my job or do murder or both.

AND THAT WAS TUESDAY.

Wednesday was just another day of getting back in the saddle. I was again by myself, but doing a job that is ok for a two man crew and physically challenging alone. I did it but I wasn't very happy and once again, I just hurt. A body really gets soft in two months and I am finding out just how soft.

Yeah, that soft

Thursday I went back to the job I was supposed to do on Tuesday. No flat tires, no forgetting equipment, nothing. Everything went well. Except. There was a company outing at 1pm at a local beer garden (I don't know what they call them overseas), basically a place for the people of the company to socialize and drink a couple of adult beverages. Paid from 1pm to 4pm. I was told however that the job I was doing needed to be done by tomorrow and to "budget your time accordingly". Which meant that I needed to stay out today to make sure I got enough done to finish up tomorrow. Which meant I got back at 3pm and missed the entire thing. So while my coworkers were getting paid to swill beer and sit on their *&^% asses (like the office people don't sit on them enough!) I was out working in the woods. And the kicker is I'm not sure I'm going to finish the job up tomorrow anyway. I have to talk to the project manager tomorrow about some stuff.

And that brings us to Friday, ie, today. Except I'm pre-writing all this Thursday evening, so it's "tomorrow" for the me of Right Now. I don't know if I'll be home by 5pm or not and if I'm not, I wanted a record of how this week went down before I forget. And because Monday was a holiday, we don't get paid overtime because we didn't "work" on Monday. So any extra hours I put in are just at the regular rate. Not a very happy feeling. If I'm home before this goes live, I'll update it accordingly. I know you're breathless with anticipation.

Oh hurray, halloo! I was out by 3pm and I finished up the job with no problems. My legs and feet didn't hurt either, so I'm definitely getting back into battle shape. To celebrate such a great thing, I ordered an extra large pizza for the weekend. Half for me, half for Mrs B. So now, no matter how Saturday goes, I'll be ok. I feel like I actually thrived today instead of just surviving. Oh, that is a great feeling.

Saturday is going to be a long day too. I have a Men's Meeting with the guys from the Sunday church at 8am. Immediately after that, Mrs B and I go to the SDA church for service. It is the first Sabbath of the month, which means the Pastor is the one preaching and he almost always preaches until 1pm. After that is potluck, so an hour minimum, if not more. I don't expect to be home before 3 or 4pm. I'm exhausted just thinking about it :-D One good thing is that I don't have a post going live on Saturday, so I don't have to deal with the blog that day.

I can tell I haven't done one of these My Week posts in a long time because the words just came pouring out. Hopefully if I can do one or two of these a month that will help with the deluge of words coming your way. So blessed Sabbath to you and yours.

Monster Hunter Guardian (MHI #8) 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: Monster Hunter Guardian
Series: MHI #8
Author: Larry Correia & Sarah Hoyt
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 313
Words: 119K
Publish: 2019

I re-read this and THEN read my review from 2020 (link at the end of the post).

The only thing I would really change this time around is that I didn’t notice the “emotional” side of things like I did then. No idea why, but I never even noticed it and hadn’t remembered that aspect at all until I re-read my old review.

A marathon of a story about a mother saving her kidnapped son first from a demon who wants to auction him off to other demons and then second, from her own mother who is a superpowerful vampire. The action is almost non-stop and I loved it.

When I read this in 2020 I gave serious though to searching out Sarah Hoyt’s other works and seeing how her stuff compared to this collaboration. Unfortunately, most of her stuff seemed to be ongoing, abandoned or, according to reviews, “have that romance vibe”. Yeah, no thanks to all three of those. So I never investigated any more of her works and I’m still ok with that decision five years later.

★★★★☆

From MHI.Fandom.com & Bookstooge

While Owen and the other Monster Hunters are off in Russia fighting the big baddies, Julie (Own’s wife and former Shackleford) is in charge of running the skeleton crew of MHI. She’s also taking care of her dying grandfather and her newborn son.

She has a recruitment possibility but it goes sideways and turns out to be just a lure so a malevolent being can kill her grandfather and kidnap her son. Brother Death then contacts Julie and says he’ll trade her son for a powerful artifact he knows Julie is guarding, even though she told MHI it was destroyed. She reluctantly agrees but creates a backup plan to recover the item and her son if Brother Death double crosses her. He does. Julie ends up in Germany alone and with almost no weapons. She tracks down the group of cultists who took possession of the artifact only to find out that the kidnapping of her son and artifact were unrelated. In the process of recovering the artifact, Julie breaks about a bajillion german laws and the german version of MCB makes MCB look like a kind and benevolent grandfather.

Julie goes on the run. With the help of Management (the last dragon in existence), she finds a man who is a European Monster Advocate. She needs his help to track down a monster known for kidnapping children, who will hopefully then lead her to Brother Death. Turns out the Monster Advocate was killed years ago and his body taken over by the child killer monster. Julie kills it and lets Management into its computer system. This gets her an invite to an auction that Mr Death is holding, with her son being the main item on the agenda.

Julie heads out with a lawyer from Management. At the auction she becomes aware that her mother is there and wants Julie’s son to raise as her own (Julie’s mom is a nutjob of a super vampire). The auction goes bad and Julie shoots her way out. She rescues her son only to see him taken from her by her mother. With the lawyer’s help she escapes Brother Death.

Julie tracks her mom down and calls all the dregs of MHI to assault the mansion, along with the local branch of government monster hunters. They succeed against all odds and Julie has her son back. She also finds out that MHI is back from the Island.

With help from Owen and some of the other MHI Crew Julie finds out Brother Death’s real name and uses that to kill him. During all of this her Guardian marks have grown and she finds out that as the marks grow, her humanity will shrink until she ceases to be human. At which point she will become a monster herself.

• Monster Hunter Guardian (2020 Review)

• All of My “MHI” Reviews

Currently Reading: The Younger Sister

 

"Now you see," burst out Elizabeth afresh, "you see, Emma, what Jane thinks of Tom Musgrove—you must change your mind."

"No, indeed; her liking him can make no difference to me," replied Emma, quietly.

"Oh, Emma! I did not think you so conceited, to think of your setting up your opinion against Jane's, a married woman, and so much older and more experienced; I could not have expected it."

"I do not set up my opinion against her, I only differ in taste,"

`Chapter 5

 

It's not just the current generation that has that "Agree with Me on Everything or You are My Enemy" mentality. It's endemic to human nature.

This is a full length novel written by Catherine Hubback, Jane Austen's niece. It is based on the five chapters of The Watsons that Austen wrote and never completed. I am enjoying it immensely so far.

Bleeding Hearts 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: Bleeding Hearts
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 171
Words: 67K
Publish: 1974

Man, engaging stories here.

We start off with a story, The Plays the Thing, about a thespian who finally has his big chance on Broadway to play Hamlet. But he’s gone off the deep end and kills his leading lady and uses her skull in the scene where Hamlet is talking about “Alas, poor Yorick!”. He left her body in a traveling trunk. What a nutjob eh?

The next story that stood out to me was The Sensitive Juror. By the end it strained credulity, as the entire story was based on the murderer being able to psychically manipulate a woman on each jury to be sympathetic to him. Even without that little reveal at the at, it was obvious where this story was going, as the current narrator (the sensitive juror) relates the murder trial, which we then re-tread by following her down the almost exact same path. It was just creepy.

Then we had another Fat Jow story, Fat Jow and Chance. This wasn’t so much a mystery as just a community coming together to right a wrong that the Law didn’t recognize as a wrong. It decided me on looking into the Fat Jow stories as an entity unto themselves. Which figures, because it turns out that they were only written for the Alfred Hitchcock collections and I couldn’t even find out any info on the author Robert Alan Blair. Makes me wonder if he was a “house author” and some poor schlub just wrote several Fat Jow stories to pad things out. Oh well.

I like when a story totally subverts your expectations, like how M. Night Shyamalan would put twists into his movies. Well, that happens with Motive: Another Woman in a big way. The story starts out describing a marriage that almost fell apart due to the husband’s philandering. He and his wife work things out and he gets back on the straight and narrow, for 5 years. Then he starts going out to the movies every Sunday evening and his wife doesn’t go with him because the crowded theatre gave her headaches. One day she overhears her husband talking about seeing a young Mrs Bennet the other night. The woman realizes her husband has gone back to his philandering ways, so she plans out a home invasion cover story where she “accidentally” kills her husband thinking he is a burglar. Only for the story to end with her seeing the title of the latest movie at the theatre “The Young Mrs Bennett”. And it just ends. We’re left to imagine what the woman is thinking and feeling, realizing her husband was still staying faithful to her and that she had just murdered him.

I think this is going to be my new “format” for these Hitchcock collections. Just talk about 3-4 stories and let that be the review. Unless I am feeling funny and write a post to amuse myself with my trademark wit and wonder ;-)

★★★✬☆

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock

THE PLAY’S THE THING by Robert Bloch

THE EXECUTIONER by H. A. DeRosso

MAN ON A LEASH by Jack Ritchie

THE DEEP SIX (Novelette) by Richard Hardwick

HIDDEN TIGER by Michael Brett

THE SENSITIVE JUROR by Richard Deming

FAT JOW AND CHANCE by Robert Alan Blair

SLAY THE WICKED (Novelette) by Frank Sisk

INTO THE MORGUE by Hal Ellson

I’LL BE LOVING YOU by Fletcher Flora

MOTIVE: ANOTHER WOMAN by Donald Honig

THE BROTHERHOOD by Theodore Mathieson

THE FINAL REEL by John Lutz

CHIMPS AIN’T CHAMPS by Talmage Powell

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews