December ’18 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

12 Books

3338 Pages

3.67 Average Rating (talk about ending the year on a high note. I’m pretty happy!)

 

The Bad:

Of Mice and Men – 1 Star (ugh, what a waste of talent)

 

The Good:

To Kill a Mockingbird – 5 Stars (it should REMAIN required reading in schools)

Hogfather – 5 Stars (Pratchett was bitter but he still wrote really funny books)

Seal of the the Worm – 4.5 Stars  (what a great ending to a great series)

 

Manga:

Shaman King is really revving up and I’m excited about continuing to read this series each month. This month I read all 3 volumes in one day and wrote the reviews between each volume (I was feeling in a VERY wordy mood) and then just scheduled the reviews for each monday. Just like in November, that kind of pace worked really well for me. I don’t know exactly why nor do I particularly care, as all I DO care about is it is  working.  Bring on the FIGHTING!!!

 

Misc. and Personal:

I totally slacked in reading this month. January is going to have me reading like crazy to get that 3 week cushion back. I used it all up this month 🙂  Of course, with the Parental Pods, Miss Betsy W & her friend and the Bombfunk’s and the Bookstooge’s all together for Christmas, for nigh on a week, I was doing a lot of things besides reading.

Christmas went well but I started getting sick the Sunday before and was flat out by Christmas. Mrs B caught it from me post-Christmas, so there’s not been much going on after Christmas except trying to recover and drinking of lots of herbal teas and hot water.

Thankfully, I was Tagged by Norrie and so had an easy post on a weekend. I also did another 6Degrees post and that allowed me even more breathing room.  Thank goodness for people who continually tag and remind me that I can do book related, non-review posts!

A lot of time was also spent on writing up my thoughts on 2018. I’ve got that mostly taken care of by now and my Annual Review should be coming out January 1st.

No Cover Love this month as nothing really stood out to me. I’m not going to throw a “pity” cover love to something that I don’t actually love.

The End.

 

 

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November ’18 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

16 Books

5557 Pages

3.50 Average Rating (WAY UP from last month!)

 

The Bad:

The Darkside War – 2.5 Stars (potty mouth millennial SF)

 

The Good:

Chasm City – 4.5 Stars

Alphabet of Thorn – 4.5 Stars

 

Manga:

Shaman King continues to treat me well. I only read 2 volumes this month but I read them back to back and then spaced the reviews a couple of days apart. I like the rhythm that gave me. It completes enough of a story arc to satisfy me while not overwhelming me. With Christmas coming this month (and our whole immediate family getting together for almost a week over at Mr & Mrs Bombfunk’s house) manga might be the first casualty of a busy month.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Reviewed Antman & the Wasp. Considering there was a gap between it and Thor: Ragnarok of 6 months, I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say no one has to worry about this blog ever turning into a movie review blog. It’s fun to review something a little different, and 6 months might be a bit far between, but I sure don’t plan on making movie reviews a once a month thing.

Survival Saturday came back and while not a smashing success with only an “OK” Broccoli & Cheese soup, neither did we feel like it was something we’d trade to other Survivors of the Coming Apocalypse.

Was able to vent my spleen a bit with a good rant about that filthy Communist invention, The Oxford Comma. Demon Goat contacted me afterwards and said his collecting of souls who use it is WAY up so I’m hoping that ripples back and people realize just how terrible it is. And stop using and supporting it 😉

Had another bout of the stomach flu (which while not requiring an ER visit, did keep me from work for several days) but I was better by Thanksgiving so I was able to partake of the delicious food such a time entails. I also did some actual Giving of Thanks.

We had our first snow storm this month (we got 5inches – 12.5cm) and between all the rain, snow and sickness I didn’t get a lot of work in. Instead of reading more, I ended up dicking around on Youtube and watching various people implode/explode, etc about the latest offering from Wizards of the Coast, the Ultimate Masters Set. Too pricey for me at almost $300 for one box but it has been fun to watch people scream like banshees with their heads cut off!

 

Cover Love

McKillip’s Alphabet of Thorn wins in the Cover Love category. Kinuko Craft, the artist, just captures the essence of the novel so aptly.  If Mrs Craft wasn’t already married and I was single and she wasn’t XX years older than me, I’d be tempted to marry her just for her art!  Ahhhh, Kinuko, the fates were cruel to us.

 

 

 

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October ’18 Roundup & Ramblings

 

 

Raw Data:

17 Books

5773 Pages

2.97 Average Rating

 

The Bad:

Dust of Dreams (existential excrement by the boatload) – 1.5 Stars

Fail Harder (irresponsible jackasses who should die) – 1.5 Stars

Wizard’s First Rule (clunky writing that destroyed my memories) – 2 Stars

 

The Good:

A Thousand Words for Stranger (Telepathic Jane Austen in Space!) – 4 Stars

 

Manga:

Tore through four volumes of Shaman King. Now that the setup is pretty much done, it’s shonen battles, which means some long slugging matches are coming up. Might end up slowing down my pace just a tad.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

While I read a bit more this month, it was ALL crap. My average was below 3stars for goodness sake. I am thankful for at least one 4star book.

Got Sick and kind of whimpered on for the last 10 days of the month. Didn’t read anyones posts, didn’t even reply to comments. Thankfully, that seems to be passing and I’m hoping to spring back into pure unadulterated Bookstooge Action this weekend with a Survival Saturday Post.

Did a Tag and a 6Degrees post. It was good to write some non-review stuff. Especially considering all the crap books I plowed through and then had to write about.

Surviving a Bad Book got some good numbers since I mentioned a book that a lot of people know. Always helps to stir the pot if everyone already has an opinion.

Other than that, this was a rainy blah month that crept along like a whipped cur and then threw up in my shoes. I am so thankful October is OVER WITH.

 

Cover Love

Once again, just like last month, no cover grabbed me and said “Worship me!”. I am including the Harpist in the Wind cover because I feel it really shows Darrell K. Sweet’s style. He did so many covers over the years and once you learn what his stuff looks like, you simply can’t miss it.

 

 

 

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September ’18 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

15 Books

4677 Pages

3.27 Average Rating

 

The Bad:

Ghostly Echoes – ½ Star (Blatant Social Justice lies denying Biological Fact)

The Deaths of Tao – 2 Stars (Didn’t like Main Characters)

Empire – Unrated (definitely all me. Just didn’t care about the Warhammer Universe any more)

 

The Good:

The Pickwick Papers – 6 Stars (Perfect in Every Way)

Revelation Space – 4 Stars (Great Space Opera)

Hilldiggers – 4 Stars (Polity just keeps getting better and better)

 

Graphic Novels and Manga:

Started in on the Shaman King manga and read the first 2 volumes. I REALLY enjoyed them and am having to consider how much I want to read next month. Do I stick with 2 volumes and kind of ration my enjoyment or do I just dive on in and read a volume every week? I enjoyed it enough that a volume a week would not be a problem. It feels good to feel good about reading manga again 🙂

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

This month FELT wicked busy even though every single blog number says otherwise. My book numbers were the same as last month, my page numbers were actually down almost 150 pages, my post numbers were about the same, the comments section was down and a couple of the more active people I follow were either MIA or on a much reduced schedule.

The reason it felt so busy is because of work and real life. During the first week of this month my coworker gave his notice on Monday and was gone by Friday. This has left me as the sole full time Field Tech. It means I’m working by myself a LOT more and that means a lot more walking and not being nearly as efficient as a two man crew. I come home exhausted. I’ve also noticed some white in my goatee this month. I suspect the old salt-n-pepper look is only a year or so away.

The scheduling thing continues just fine but one unlooked for side effect is that it has effectively killed my desire for spontaneous writing. I used to write my reviews when I needed a post and if I needed a post or had verbal diarrhea, out came a non-review post. Now that I type on command for the book reviews, I just don’t feel like writing for fun. Kind of like jogging for a hobby versus training for a marathon. I’m going to give it to the end of the year and if it makes me continue feeling like blogging is work, then I’m going to ditch the scheduling and go back to the hodge podge of whenever I feel the heck like it. While scheduling is great, I prefer to fill my writing needs so it feels fun. I’ll just have to wait and see.

Ok, onto some of the posts. PSA: DNF was a decent one and I’m glad I got it out there. It also had the decency to generate a bunch of comments and I found out more about you all than I was expecting. It also was the top viewed post of the month (no surprise there!).

My 100 Book List post helped me continue my work on this blog and to be a good counterpart to my About Me section. I’ve stickied it to the side of my homepage so new people can easily find it when deciding to follow me or not. Preferably “not” so I don’t have to argue with them and show them how they are pretty much wrong about everything. It’s really tough being Mr Right.

And speaking of Mr Right, I’ve been Mr Right for 10 years this month. Mrs B and I celebrated our 10^th Wedding Anniversary and we think we’ve got this whole marriage thing licked. Hahahahaa. Now that I’ve said that, watch, the next 10 years will be unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before.

Not much else really. Didn’t have the urge to write beyond what I had to. Really hoping I can be more engaging in October, here and on others blogs.

 

Cover Love

None of this months crop really appealed to me. I think from a purely visual standpoint, A Shaman in Tokyo was the most striking, just like a manga should be.

 

 

 

 

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August ’18 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

14 Books

4828 Pages

3.25 Average Rating

 

The Bad:

A Path to Coldness of Heart – 2 Stars (for the Pedophile wizard)

Critical Failures – 2 Stars (profanity and not one likeable character)

The Dead Town – 2 Stars (zero tension and not much plot)

 

The Good:

War Masters Gate – 5 Stars

Play the Man – 4 Stars (non-fiction. First one of the year!)

Heir of Sea and Fire – 4 Stars (Mckillip. ’nuff said)

Queen Bitch – 4 Stars (pure fun despite the rather appalling title)

 

Graphic Novels and Manga:

Path of Doom was the only visual medium for this month. While I enjoyed reading about a Superman who was a real Super Man, this graphic novel also drove home that my comic times are mostly behind me. I don’t plan on buying any more comics and any reading of my own will probably have some other purpose. For example, I am planning on re-reading Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Man Without Fear next month and try to get a VERSUS post out of it the month after that.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Oh man, where to start. Let’s get the bad out of the way I guess. My boss’s son passed away in July so my boss was MIA for all of July but started the recovery process in August. Unfortunately, he was still pretty out of it (as you can imagine) and this led to some pretty big math errors in the office, which had real world results, which were bad. I was caught in the middle, as I was the guy the contractors saw doing the work. Having to go back to a site and change things which put off their schedule by a week and a lot of money was not fun. Plus it was a bloody hot August so 3-4 liters of water a day while at work was just normal. It made for long days where I’d just come home, clean up, sack out and be in bed by 9pm.  I think we’re on the other side of that whole situation though and I think it was a wake up call to my boss about how he’s still being affected so now he just won’t brush it off.

Only wrote a couple of non-review posts but I have to admit, I was proud of the reception that my Honesty & Book Reviewing post received. It led to almost 100 comments (Whoo!!!) and gave me the perfect setup for another in September about DNF’s. It is also now my second most “liked” post, tied with A History of…Reading and only beat out by my rant on that execrable piece of trash, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I guess honesty  still pays dividends in the  book world!

While I gave up on Culling those who follow me, I had to stop following a couple of people who hadn’t posted in over a month. That is my cutoff point. If someone just disappears without warning for a month, best of luck but I won’t be sticking around to see what happened. Now, on the other hand, if you let your followers know you’re going to be MIA, then heck,  I’ll gladly stick around. But I just hate having my chain yanked all over. You are not the center of the Universe.

Because that would be ME!

 

I managed to write about another trilogy of books that I loved in Thriving on a Good Book – Grimnoir Chronicles.  It really shouldn’t be so difficult to write about the books I love but talking about them years after the fact is surprisingly not easy.  I need to keep practicing so I get better at it.

My Side Project is done. I’m hoping to put the results, 50 books I have hated and 50 books I have loved, up tomorrow in a single post.

 

Cover Love

If the book Fortress in Orion  had been half as awesome as this cover suggests, it would have been fantastic.  At least I got an awesome picture out of it.

Robert J. Sawyer is a liar!!!

 

 

 

 

 

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July ’18 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

12 Books

4008 Pages

3.5 Average Rating

 

The Bad:

The Return – 2 Stars

 

The Good:

Nicholas Nickleby – 5 Stars

Prador Moon – 4 Stars

The Man with One Name – 4 Stars

 

Graphic Novels and Manga:

Nada, zilch, zero, none. I’ve got a Superman graphic novel on tap for August though and I’m hoping to get back into a manga series in September. I’m thinking either Kare Kano (His & Her Circumstances) or W Juliet. I own both and have read them both so I’m hoping which ever I read turns out better than that horrible experience with Oh My Goddess! If you have thoughts or opinions on either series, feel free to weigh in. I’m pretty undecided at the moment.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Started the month off with a mid-year Roundup Report. I like all those numbers and not having to wait until the end of the year to roll around in them, like a pig wallowing in mud, was great. Also, since I’m not part of Goodreads or Booklikes, that have “goals” with banners and everything, this helped keep me on track for my unofficial goals.

Started the Thriving on a Good Book series but we’ll see how long it lasts. It is surprisingly hard to write a lot about the books I like, unlike how the words flow like a veritable river when I have had a bad experience.

VERSUS went right along with the Mano A Mano post I did. Testosterone was flowing like blood in a Tarantino film this month. Of course, neither of them was as ridiculous(ly fun to write) as the Saint Bookstooge Gives Answer post where I answered your questions. My goodness, the questions I got were so much fun that I just HAD to give vent to complete silliness.

Survival Saturday. The foods I’ve got are all boil in water stuff, so obviously they’re hot foods. I refuse to make hot stuff like that when it is 90degrees out. Considering that August is usually the hottest month of the year for us, I suspect next month I’ll let this pass as well. I just can’t muster up the courage to face this stuff when I’m dying from the heat.

In the background, I’ve been continuing to update all my semi-recent (2012 and up) reviews and am currently in late 2014. Also in the background, but much bigger for me, is that I’ve started scheduling things 2-3 weeks out now. After having a talk with Professor Dickieson on his blog and getting some good encouragement, I took the last week of June and the first week of July to really pile on the reading and just bank the reviews. That has allowed me to get about 3 weeks ahead in reviews. I’ve heard of people doing this ever since I’ve been blogging but it just never seemed to work for me. But now was the time and I do plan on trying to keep that up with at least my regular reviews and series posts. The really silly stuff is almost always spontaneous though, so I’m not totally going scheduled.

Church has been going well and Pastor Mike has started a series where he is going to synopsize each book of the Bible for a sermon for the whole Bible. He calculated that will take until the end of 2019. That is the kind of planning I LIKE! And considering he was able to have a sermon on Leviticus and Numbers where I came away feeling better, that says something pretty good too.

 

Cover Love

In keeping with the testosterone that I flung around, this months cover love winner was pretty easy. Conan: Red Nails nailed it. While the cover was cool, the full picture was just awesome. I’ve included that instead of a high res cover.

Mrs B says “He’s ugly”. I remain unaffected because Conan cut off that man’s head with a DAGGER!

 

 

 

 

 

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Mid-Year 2018 Roundup

I know I just did the Monthly Roundup & Rambling yesterday but I’ve seen the Mid-Year Freak Out tag going on all through June and I like the idea of a Mid-Year look at how things are proceeding

Now that the year is ACTUALLY half way over (yes, that is a jab), let’s look at some numbers shall we?

 

Books Read:

98 – On track for passing 150, check!

 

Pages Read:

31,190 – On track for 50K, which is my unofficial goal each year now.

 

Average Star Rating:

3.25

 

Most Viewed Post so far:

Algorithm of Power is so far ahead, almost triple the views of any other post, that I doubt anything I write for the rest of the year is going to surpass that.

 

Most Liked Post of so far: 

I can’t figure out how to see this data. I can see Top Liked overall using the sidebar widget, but can’t seem to drill down on just 2018 stuff. If you know how, would you let me know?

 

General Info:

3300+ visitors

3000+ comments – to be accurate, half of those are me 🙂

130 Posts

78K words written -that’s a 300 page novel! (Just call me the next Brandon Sanderson, hahhaaha)

 

Best Book so far:

I have given no book the coveted “Best Book of the Year” tag yet. I guess I better get cracking! Or I’ll have to ret-con some of my high rated, favorite books. I suspect that is what is going to happen.

 

Worst Book so far:

Gods of the Mountain. Not that the book is actually the worst, but the author’s demanding attitude where he began acting like he paid me to be his editor, definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

Sandworms of Dune was horrible in the worst of ways by being so mediocre that vanilla pudding was exciting in comparison and Curse of the Wendigo had some horrible moral content.

 

Cover Love:

I am torn between Jackaby and Stranger of Tempest. They are very different from each other and so trying to choose between is rather hard. So I’m going with both!