Mrs Pollifax on the China Station (Mrs Pollifax #6) 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: Mrs Pollifax on the China Station
Series: Mrs Pollifax #6
Author: Dorothy Gilman
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 174
Words: 62K
Publish: 1983

Absolutely delightful! I have been alternating Mrs Pollifax with the Alphabet Mystery series and I must say, it is a true delight to return to the adventures of Emily Pollifax.

She is calm, poised and while not always “in control”, she never allows the circumstances around her to impede what she must do. In this book near the end, she has to face down an armed Russian sleeper agent and ends up karate chopping him to death. Scenes like that are why this isn’t “cozy”. She’s also old enough not to fall to pieces after such an act. She’s in no way stupid and I for one appreciate that Gilman actually writes her character to be intelligent.

Another successful foray into the underbelly world of the CIA. Mrs Pollifax hasn’t failed me yet and I doubt she’d fail you either.

★★★★✬

From Wikipedia.org

Mrs. Pollifax is thrilled when Mr. Carstairs, her boss at the CIA, gives her an assignment in China to help rescue a prisoner from a labor camp. As luck would have it, she has recently completed a course in Chinese history, so she is primed and ready to go. She joins a tour group and is told that one of the other group members is actually a CIA agent who will become her partner later on. She tries unsuccessfully to detect her future partner and is very surprised when the agent's identity is revealed. As the action speeds up she finds the labor camp, rides a runaway horse, and encounters some rough stuff from a Russian spy.

• All of my “Mrs Pollifax” Reviews

Healing Salve - MTG 4E

 

It's amazing to me how just having armless hands and that funky red background gives this whole picture a djinni, arabian nights vibe. 

Calendars & Scheduling the Bookstooge Way

 

I have talked about scheduling before, and mention it randomly in posts and comments. I touched upon it in my Blogshido series of posts and randomly sneak attack you by suggesting maybe you should try scheduling. Many people are intimidated by Schedule-Fu, while others just don't want anything to do with it. If you don't have any interest, this post is not for you. This is a post to help Masters of this discipline increase their mastery and to help those who have not started yet down the path but who are wondering about it. But I would like to say that ANYONE can master Schedule-Fu and make it their own.

The single most important tool that a master of Schedule-Fu has available to him or her is a calendar. I use three calendars myself, because of the amount of things I keep track of and it would be wicked messy to put it all one one calendar. I use the calendar above to keep track of real life things, like doctors appointments, car things, social engagements, etc. It's on the wall next to our door, so I see it every morning and evening as I come and go. As long as I write stuff down (and so does Mrs B), we never forget things happening in real life. That's important, because you know, Real Life.

The next calendar I use is the Protonmail calendar. I use this calendar as a widget on my phone. The reason I've put it on my phone is so that when I go to look at it, I don't get distracted from my purpose and end up not reading my Bible. This is a chart for what I'm to read each day. I used to use little paper charts, but the print was so small on them (because they were trying to fit a whole years worth of stuff on one 8.5x11) that I had to abandon them. This has one purpose alone and it's not cluttered up. Now, it was a lot of work setting it up, as I had to enter each day individually and click the "repeat annually" for every day. But once it was done, it was set for the years to come.

Finally, and the most used and most relevant for blogging. is my google calendar. This is where I plan out everything blog related. The blue posts are the ones I've written and scheduled. The red ones are unwritten ones but are there to show me when I want a post. As you can see, when I took the screen capture, I hadn't yet written this post. By the time this goes live, most of June should be a sea of blue. The nice thing about using red and blue is that I can rearrange the red posts however I want should something come up. It gives me the comfort of still using the schedule but also the freedom to rearrange things should that one iota of "artistic" me strike :-D

I realize scheduling like this just isn't for everyone. It can bring more stress to others and become a weight that drags them down. But if you want to become a disciple of Scheduling, these tools, or ones like them, can help you tremendously. I know of people who keep a planner journal and use that.

There you go. Now you too can become a Scheduling Guru! 

[Journal] Pear Garden

 

This is the blurb about this journal from Paperblanks:
"During the Tang Dynasty (618–907), the Emperor Taizong founded an opera school called Liyuan (Pear Garden). Chinese opera reached its pinnacle under the Qing court (1644–1911), giving birth to what is known as Peking Opera. Reproduced here is a piece of beautifully embroidered opera skirt from that era."

When I was deciding which 8 Journals to buy last year, by the end I wanted something that looked completely different from all my others. This Pear Garden option worked a treat. You can't see it in the pictures, but it has a little bit of sparkle to it. I'm gonna sparkle like a bloody Twilight Vampire!

Hope you have a great weekend and feel free to tell me how you feel about the journal, Twilight, vampires or just life in general. "I'm Listening"

Bone Swans 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: Bone Swans
Series: -----
Author: Claire Cooney
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 236
Words: 95K
Publish: 2015

Last year Bookforager reviewed this collection. In her review, she sounded exactly how I felt when I would read a Patricia McKillip book. As McKillip is now dead and will not be writing any more stories, I was hoping that maybe this Cooney girl could pick up the slack. Saying I had high hopes was putting it mildly.

Things got off to a rocky start. There was an introduction by Gene Wolfe, as he knew Cooney. I despise Wolfe’s writings, so when he praises someone, that’s a big old warning sign to me. I knew that biased me so I went into the actual stories determined not to let Wolfe ruin this for me. No fear on that account, Cooney did that all by herself with no help from anyone.

I have described McKillip’s writing as fire and silk, rounded stones in a small brook creating that soothing babbling sound. Her writing was poetry in lyrical form. Cooney had that same poetical format and even I could appreciate it. However, Cooney was rotting granite (if you have ever come into contact with rotting rock, you know how vile it is) in the midst of a swamp of effluent. Every story set my teeth on edge. My back was completely riled. I hated this collection. I’m not going to go into specifics in this review because I don’t want to give any more of my time to even thinking about Cooney. I know nothing about her beyond the introduction by Wolfe and I want to keep it that way.

If you are curious about the book’s contents, read Bookforager’s review. She did an admirable job and I have no hesitation about recommending her review.

★★☆☆☆

From the Publisher & ToC

A swan princess hunted for her bones, a broken musician and his silver pipe, and a rat named Maurice bring justice to a town under fell enchantment. A gang of courageous kids confronts both a plague-destroyed world and an afterlife infested with clowns but robbed of laughter. In an island city, the murder of a child unites two lovers, but vengeance will part them. Only human sacrifice will save a city trapped in ice and darkness. Gold spun out of straw has a price, but not the one you expect.

Introducing C. S. E. Cooney

Life on the Sun

The Bone Swans of Amandale

Martyr’s Gem

How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain with the Crooked One

The Big Bah-Ha

Currently Reading: Batman/Shadow: The Murder Geniuses

 

I am a fan of The Shadow. Lashaan is a huge fan of Batman. He read this way back in '19 and it caught my eye then. It has just taken a little bit of time for me to get around to it, hahahahaa. I do like that cover and you know what? The Shadow's schnozz isn't huge, amazing!

I just wanted to showcase the cover because while I like it a lot, there is no way it'll ever make the Cover Love category.

Cheers!

Monster Hunter Siege (MHI #6) 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 Siege
Series: MHI #6
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 348
Words: 137K
Publish: 2017

A couple of books ago (Alpha) we were introduced to a character named Jason Lococo. He was a big ol’ brute who had a heart of gold and helped the boss of Monster Hunter International stop a werewolf invasion from taking over the United States. He got sucked into the Nightmare Dimension in Legion and was making the main character, Own Pitt, feel really guilty. So Owen sets off to rescue him and some other survivors. It snowballs into a massive multi-Hunter Company taskforce and they basically attack a Russian island with US military level power. Then Owen has to go through the gate to the Nightmare Dimension and save everyone. He has to fight off a High Hunt and he does so with Lococo’s help. He rescues the other guys and Lococo disappears. Only in the end to find out that Lococo was just a meat suit for a super demon named Asag who wants to destroy our world and that Asag needed a meat suit to get back to our dimension. Just like the Smoke Monster in LOST.

So this whole book was a longcon game by Asag, who was manipulating Owen the entire time. How cool is that?

All the fighting monsters was cool too. But I liked getting to the end and realizing that Owen, the Chosen One, was fooled like everyone else. I love this series but I don’t love Owen. Almost everybody else I enjoy reading about. But Owen, while I don’t hate him, I don’t actively enjoy him as a character at all. It’s too bad, since he IS the main character, hahahahaa.

Reading this MHI series months apart (as opposed to the years between initial releases) makes the overall big picture storyline much clearer. I can put pieces together now that I didn’t even realize were pieces back on my first read. I like that, a lot. It’s fun, it’s engaging and it is good writing. Also makes me realize that I could never BE a series writer. Not that I want to be an author mind you (I’d rather poke your eyes out than become an author), but knowing I don’t have that skillset is reassuring. No accidentally becoming an author for me! (crisis averted)

★★★★☆

From MHI.Fandom.com & Bookstooge

GO BIG OR GO HOME

When Monster Hunter International's top hunter, Owen Zastava Pitt, was given a tip about some hunters who had gone missing in action, he didn’t realize their rescue mission would snowball into the single biggest operation in MHI's history. Their men are being held prisoner in a horrific nightmare dimension, and the only way to reach them is through the radioactive ruins of a monster-infested war zone.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it's also the home base of the powerful creature behind the devastating attacks on the Last Dragon and Copper Lake. It turns out ancient gods of chaos really hate trespassers. But this god picked a fight with the wrong crew, and now MHI wants payback. Calling on their allies, a massive expedition is formed, and with the odds stacked against them, a legion of hunters goes to war.

It's D-Day at the City of Monsters.

Pitt rescues the survivors and even makes it back himself, against all odds. But just like in LOST, Asag needed a dead meat suit to escape the Nightmare Dimension and now he’s in our world, free to cause chaos and destruction to his heart’s content.

• Monster Hunter Siege (2017 Review)

• All of My “MHI” Reviews