Lucia’s Progress (Mapp & Lucia #5) ★★★✬☆

 

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Title: Lucia’s Progress
Series: Mapp & Lucia #5
Authors: E.F. Benson
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Humorous Fiction
Pages: 289
Words: 84K

So Lucia takes center stage again. Mapp, having married the Colonel, is now trying to domesticate him AND still be the preeminent woman of the town. She fakes being pregnant, runs for Town Council (and loses right along with Lucia) and generally continues to make a nuisance of herself. Lucia meanwhile, works in the background and pretty much succeeds at everything she does. While she also loses the election for Town Council, she wheedles her way into it after the fact and by the end of the book is probably going to be the first female Mayor. She also marries Georgie, of all people. Talk about an Odd Couple.

I think I enjoyed this book a little bit more than some of the previous ones. Most of it was because the drama, while “big”, was handled in such a way that it was almost matter of fact and not raising my blood pressure.

I also had to practically chortle over Lucia and Georgie getting married. He’s as fuddy duddy and yet dandy’ish as you could ask for in a middle aged gentleman who still thinks that nobody knows he dyes his hair. He likes to knit and do water colors too. He just wants a comfortable life and for someone else to do all the driving. Lucia is more than glad to take charge and considering she and Georgie play the piano together and do almost everything together, them getting married was more of a convenience thing than a passionate midlife crisis thing. Like I said, it made me laugh and that was good.

While I did say I enjoyed this more than most of the previous books, there were still some things that bugged me so I couldn’t really give it 4stars. My main issue remains how backstabb’y, petty and plain vindictive both Mapp and Lucia are towards the other. That is not how people should be. Even if you were to feel like that towards someone, you fight against it and don’t give in to it. It is wrong and to see that wrong’ness marginalized is what bothers me.

There is only one more book in this series and after that I think I’m going to have to go search out some more stuff by Edward Benson. I have enjoyed these very much and so I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy some other stuff by him. Of course, that assumes he did actually write other stuff. I have zero knowledge about that and I guess I’ll be finding out in a couple of months.

★★★✬☆

• All My "Mapp & Lucia" Reviews

Judgment at Proteus (Quadrail #5) ★★★☆☆

 

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: Judgment at Proteus
Series: Quadrail #5
Authors: Timothy Zahn
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 415
Words: 163K

Let’s get the important issues out of the way first. For this re-read I have been complaining about the covers and how Frank Compton and Bayta look like some 2D design from a spastic 10 year old. So of course the final cover doesn’t have them and it bugs the ever living daylights out of me. I want consistency in my covers, even if the odds are against that. While I HATE the new covers for this series (they have all the artistic merit of a 2year old in the middle of a bout of diarrhea) they at least follow the same formula for every cover. I just can’t win.

And speaking of not winning, Zahn doesn’t really win here either. It is a satisfactory wrap up to the series but it’s so monotone. I feel like Frank Compton’s voice is coming from a drivethrough for a fastfood franchise and he’s a bored teenager who doesn’t want to be at work or helping you. The supposed acceptance of a relationship between Frank and Bayta had all the warmth and humanity of a cold, dead space slug. A GIANT cold, dead space slug in fact. It is the kind of relationship I would want to see between my grandparents (may they rest in peace).

This re-read has solidified in my mind that I am done with Zahn, old or new. I will probably re-read Cobra next year just to see if it holds up or fails like some of the Old Guard did for me in November (Galactic Odyssey, Sentenced to Prism) but other than that, it is time for me to accept that I need to move on.

Getting older sucks, you know that? All of these books and authors that were the foundations of my literary world are suddenly becoming completely irrelevant to me now. It is like if I was a Red Sox fan in 1920, when Babe Ruth moved to the Evil Empire, the Yankees. Babe Ruth who? Timothy Zahn who? Exactly. These changes are new enough to me that I’m not inured to them yet. That will happen, thank goodness, but until it does, it’s just low level misery. It’s like getting a flu shot and suffering for the weekend.

Overall, a decent story and a decent series. Just not for me any more.

★★★☆☆

• Night Train to Rigel (Book 1)

• The Third Lynx (Book 2)

• Odd Girl Out (Book 3)

• The Domino Pattern (Book 4)

• Judgment at Proteus (2012 Review)

Groo Meets the Thespians (Groo the Wanderer #12) ★★★✬☆

 

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: Groo Meets the Thespians
Series: Groo the Wanderer #12
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 23
Words: 2K

Groo ends up with a group of actors without realizing they are actors and saves the evil king in the play. This sends the audiences into stitches and Groo becomes famous. After many, many, many attempts, the actors finally get across to Groo that it is all fake and he’s just supposed to stand there as a guard and not do anything.

So what happens next?

They go to a kingdom ruled by an evil king, where two of the actors have been hired to kill the king. Groo thinks it is all acting and even when the evil king says he’ll give Groo one third of his kingdom, he just stands by. So the actors kill the king, the two noblemen who hired them then turn on the actors to cover up their part in the plan and Groo turns on everybody when he realizes it was real and he could have been rich, rich, rich. I had to laugh even while wondering how someone this dumb could survive on his own :-D

There was also an ad for some cartoons. Maaaaan, that brought back some memories.

While we didn’t watch tv on Saturday (that was part of how we kept the Sabbath) and our tv during the week was strictly limited, the times I’d go over to a friends house (usually my friend Jimmy) I’d binge. Or, binge as much a kid could who had too much energy and needed to get outside and moving :-D I do remember the Jetsons though. Poor George getting yelled at all the time by his boss and I can remember even having a crush on Judy, the teenage daughter. Ahhh, those were the days. The halcyon golden age of childrens television. Then Barney and the Teletubbies came along and ruined everything.

★★★✬☆

• All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

The Game (Victor the Assassin #3) ★★★☆☆

 

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Title: The Game
Series: Victor the Assassin #3
Authors: Tom Wood
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 405
Words: 115K

Victor, now working for the CIA, kills a fellow assassin, who had taken out an American. Can’t let that kind of behavior stand, so Victor does the deed. Only for the CIA to find out that this merc had been recruited to pull off a “big job” and without him, they have zero leads. So Victor has to pretend to be the merc and find out what’s going on and to stop it if necessary. We get a new CIA liaison for Victor and I must say, she was simply incompetent and improbable. Every time she meets up with Victor she’s all worried about him and bemoaning that she placed him in “such a dangerous situation”. I think the author was trying to show that she wasn’t a ruthless scumbag like Victor’s previous handler, but man, it came across the wrong way.

So Victor has to join a group of mercs but he doesn’t know what the job entails. It gets to the point where he’s about to walk out the door because of the lack of details and suddenly the criminal mastermind reveals that he has kidnapped a woman and child who he thinks are Victor’s (as he is pretending to be another man), so as to blackmail him. As soon as Victor didn’t kill everyone, I knew where this was going and once another mercenary was killed by the top mercenary, I knew where THAT was going. Everything turns into an electric boogaloo doublecross, only Victor goes all noble and saves the wife and kid. And the big bad plot? To kill a russian security officer. It was kind of disappointing that it wasn’t a nuke, or a plague or something!

So nothing bad here, just a mundane action/adventure story. I think that’s how the whole series is going to be and so I need to adjust my expectations accordingly.

★★★☆☆

• The Killer (Book 1)

• The Enemy (Book 2)

The Madness of Cthulhu Vol. 2 (Cthulhu Anthology #6) ★★★✬☆

 

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Title: The Madness of Cthulhu Vol. 2
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #6
Editor: S.T. Joshi
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 194
Words: 74K

TOC

20,000 Years Under the Sea by Kevin J. Anderson

Tsathoggua’s Breath by Brian Stableford

The Door Beneath by Alan Dean Foster

Dead Man Walking by William F. Nolan

A Crazy Mistake by Nancy Kilpatrick

The Anatomy Lesson by Cody Goodfellow

The Hollow Sky by Jason C. Eckhardt

The Last Ones by Mark Howard Jones

A Footnote in the Black Budget by Jonathan Maberry

Deep Fracture by Steve Rasnic Tem

The Dream Stones by Donald Tyson

The Blood in My Mouth by Laird Barron

On the Shores of Destruction by Karen Haber

Object 00922UU by Erik Bear and Greg Bear

With this collection, Joshi steers the boat back into the Cosmic Horror side of Cthulhu instead of the Weird Fiction stream he entered with Madness Vol 1. I much prefer Cosmic Horror (as I’ve said before and I’m sure I’ll say again).

I’m realizing, as I read more of these anthologies, that a good grounding in both classic literature AND the original Cthulhu Mythos by Lovecraft make for a much richer, fuller read. The first story, 20,000 Years Under the Sea is about Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, from Jules Verne’s story 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. While Anderson does a good job (I’m surprised I’m saying that about him, as I usually think he does slip shod and crappy work) of giving us all the details we need to know for this particular story, if you know the original story it adds some depth to the characters, etc. In the same way, A Footnote in the Black Budget deals with the shoggoth and the fallout from Lovecraft’s story The Mountains of Madness. Again, you are given everything you need for this particular story, but knowing the history just adds more to your enjoyment.

I also find that the horrible works better than the strictly weird. The Dream Stones is a perfect example. That is an interview at a police station with a person who appears to have gone insane after murdering 6 couples. But if you believe in the mythos, you see that they have been driven insane by something so vast that it simply broke their mind. Why does that appeal to me? I have no idea.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with this collection. There was no snobbery or pretentiousness to ruin the stories and we went from the time of the Vikings to the Far Future, so it wasn’t all the same setting. At the same time, I gave this the same rating as Vol 1 because none of these stories quite rose to the occasion. So while I enjoyed the Cosmic Horror, it wasn’t as good as I was hoping for.

★★★✬☆

• Cthulhu Lives! (Book 1)

• Cthulhu Lies Dreaming (Book 2)

• The Madness of Cthulhu Vol 1 (Book 3)

• Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 1 (Book 4)

• Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 2 (Book 5)

In the Best Families (Nero Wolfe #17) ★★★★✬

 

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: In the Best Families
Series: Nero Wolfe #17
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 194
Words: 73.5K

In an earlier Nero Wolfe book I had wondered what a story only about Archie or only about Wolfe would be like. Well, I get a boatload of Archie Goodwin here. This is the third and final book dealing with the criminal mastermind Arnold Zeck. Once again Wolfe takes on a case that interferes with something Zeck is doing and Zeck gives Wolfe a final warning to stay out of his way. Wolfe disappears and Archie goes into business for himself. In the end, Wolfe had lost about 200lbs, gone undercover and infiltrated Zeck’s organization and eventually kills Zeck and destroys his organization.

I have to admit, when Archie was on his own, he was a boring bore. He wasn’t entertaining, he didn’t come across as tough but more as a bully. But that is exactly what I wanted to see. He and Wolfe need each other as literary characters and it was nice to have it confirmed that a story needed both of them for them to be at their best.

I am also very glad that Zeck is dealt with, and in such a manner that is 100% Bookstodge Approved. There is no rehabilitation for someone like him, so death is the only sentence that is justified. And there was no hesitation about carrying out the sentence either. Both Wolfe and Archie knew it and they didn’t wring their hands and cry and weep like women.

Somehow I messed up the series numbering on my kindle and so I skipped #16. I don’t think it will make much of a difference, storywise, as these are standalone stories, but it offends my personal sense of order. I just wanted to note this egregious lapse so that my future self wouldn’t be confused about why I made such a blunder in reading these out of order. If this lapse has confused you or thrown you into a maelstrom of chaos, allow this lowly one to apologize to you as well. I have brought dishonor upon myself. I have brought dishonor upon my family. I have brought dishonor upon my cow. Please allow me the honor of expiating such dishonor in the only honorable way.

★★★★✬

• All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Double or Nothing (Bone #15) ★★★☆☆

 

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Title: Double or Nothing
Series: Bone #15
Author: Jeff Smith
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 26
Words: 1K

Gran’ma Ben overhears Thorn and Fone talking about their dreams and after scaring the crap out of them, runs off into the woods without explaining anything. They track her down and just as Fone is about to get something from Gran’ma, they realize they’re surrounded by rat creatures. And instead of following through, we immediately switch over to Group Two, which consists of Phoney, Smiley and Lucius the bar owner.

Phoney and Lucius make another bet about how to run the tavern and Lucius gives Phoney a month to prove his claims. I have to admit, it made zero sense to me. Lucius OWNS Phoney and Smiley for several months already due to the cow race fiasco, so what does he gain by gambling again? I suspect Lucius is a prime candidate for Gamblers Anonymous and is the exact kind of person Phoney preys upon with his totally messed up plans.

Reading this story one issue at a time instead of all at once via the One Volume Bone edition is a completely different experience. I know I keep saying this, but forcing myself to just read one issue a month, like how it was released (in some cases, the issues were delayed, so it was even longer between releases) makes me wonder how this survived long enough to get the story told. I am champing at the bit to read more and I can see myself losing interest if Smith just keeps dolling out the info in such small amounts. It is rather frustrating, even knowing the story is already complete and I don’t have to worry about him just stopping the story.

★★★☆☆

• All My "Bone" Reviews

Shogun (The Asian Saga #1) Unrated DNF@68%

 

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Title: Shogun
Series: The Asian Saga #1
Author: James Clavell
Rating: Unrated / DNF@68%
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 1113 / 757
Words: 438K / 298K

When I read this in 2010, I loved it. It wasn’t perfect but the utter foreignness of the setting (1600’s I think, in Japan) made for an enthralling read.

This time, all I could read were the sailors swearing like sailors. The biggest part was that they would claim to be Christians and then take Jesus’s name in vain as part of their daily routine. I’m not blaming Clavell for including it, which is why I’m leaving this unrated, but it is not something I want to get comfortable with. It was starting to bug me and then it happened with several of the characters multiple times in just a few pages, so I decided I had had enough and dnf’d the book.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much this time and not so much back in ‘10. While I am older, I don’t feel like I can say I am more mature as a Christian, if anything I realize just how much in the shallow end of the pool I really am. My own temptation to swear at work is waaaaaay greater and thus harder to fight against. I’m less involved at church. I didn’t think much about it when I just dnf’d it, but now that I am writing, it is a puzzling aspect to me. I haven’t come to any conclusion but now I am curious. Something changed in me and I don’t know what it is. I’ll have to keep on cogitating on it.

I definitely won’t be re-reading the rest of the Asian Saga, as I remember not enjoying them nearly as much as I did Shogun back then. So another re-read that didn’t quite work out. I seem to have gone through a list of books like that in the last month or two. Good thing my tbr is close to 300!

Unrated DNF@68%

• Shogun (2010 Review)

Duty Calls (WH40K: Ciaphas Cain #5) ★★★✬☆

 

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: Duty Calls
Series: WH40K: Ciaphas Cain #5
Authors: Sandy Mitchell
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 317
Words: 101K

Cain gets in another scrap on some world and finds a weapon that is capable of turning regular humans into psykers. A rogue priest (? I simply can’t keep straight what various non-soldiers in the Imperium are called. There are so many!) wants to use it to turn humanity into a massive psyker fist and punch out the lights of Chaos. Of course, he’s tainted by Chaos and ignores that psyker abilities are an aspect of Chaos. Thankfully, the woman who Cain hangs out with (not a clue what her name is at the moment) is involved and she’s got some power armor. Plus a genestealer fleet is invading and the world is full of chaos cultists as well.

Cain stumbles from one hairy situation to another, always succeeding, always coming out looking good and always knowing he’s a Hero of the Imperium. It just makes me grin :-) Plus, the action, while not non-stop, is pretty intense. That always helps keep my interest in a franchise fiction story.

Mitchell (the author) continues to impress me with the workman like writing. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, but for franchise fiction, it is pretty much what I want. Get the grammar right, get the syntax correct and don’t have Cain being in two places at once in the story and I’m satisfied. I know I judge other books harder and hold them to a higher standard, but that simply isn’t done for this kind of book or series.

When I want to judge an energy drink, I compare it to a Reign White Gummy Bear and its 300mg of caffeine. When I drink an 8oz Red Bull, I know I’m only getting 80mg of caffeine and something that I imagine tastes like horse piss. I don’t blame the Red Bull for being weak horse piss. It is what it is. Hahahahahaa. So franchise fiction has its limitations and I judge accordingly.

★★★✬☆

• For The Emperor (Book 1)

• Fight or Flight (0.5 Short Story)

• Caves of Ice (Book 2)

• Sector Thirteen (0.6 Short Story)

• Echoes of the Tomb (1.5 Short Story)

• The Beguiling (1.7 Short Story)

• The Traitor's Hand (Book 3)

• Death or Glory (Book 4)

A Christmas Carol read by Patrick Stewart ★★★★★

 

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: A Christmas Carol read by Patrick Stewart
Author: Charles Dickens
Narrator: Patrick Stewart
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Length: 1hr and 46min
(Pages: 98)
(Words: 28K)

Last year when I listened to this story narrated by Tim Curry, many of my faithful followers recommended the audio version read by Patrick Stewart. I immediately put it onto my google calendar to help remind myself for this year.

And boy howdy, am I glad I did! I will never listen to another version again and I’ll be hard pressed to even justifying reading it. Stewart does an absolutely PERFECT job here and I was completely impressed.

He also reads at a faster pace than Curry did and takes about half the time, so it’s not a big time commitment. It never felt rushed though and his stage training meant his diction and enunciation were a joy to listen to.

In short, and to end, this is now my definitive and preferred edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Good stuff!

★★★★★

• A Christmas Carol (2013 Novel Review)

• A Christmas Carol Read by Tim Curry (2021 Audio Review)