August ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

Books: 13

Pages: 3578

Average Rating: 2.92

 

The Bad:

Torchship Captain – 1/2 star

Empire of Silence – 1 Star

 

The Good:

The Mating Season – 4 1/2 Stars

Galactic North – 4 1/2 Stars

 

Miscellaneous:

My pagenumbers and average really sucked this month. Having several dnf’s and quite a few low rating books just dragged everything down. It did lead to a lot of clearing on my kindle and tbr though, so that is good I guess.  I’ve also decided to get rid of the Ravenloft series, even though I stated in Dance of the Dead that I was going to give it one more chance. With the changes I’ll be talking about later in the post I literally don’t have time to give chances to series that already have a proven bad track record.

I did another “Quote” post and I have to say, I rather like doing that. Kind of an update about what I’m currently reading. Does double duty. Always glad to let posts do more of the work around here. It’s about time they started carrying their weight!

I Won some writing gloves that keep your hands warm in the winter. Of course, with it being high summer now I’ll have to wait a couple of days months before winter actually arrives. I have high hopes for them though. Even if they were made by wu jiao at midnight, at Chairman Mao’s grave.

Got back on the #6Degrees bandwagon. I’m hoping to do this more often, at least every other month, instead of the completely random inclusions that I’ve been doing. It’s fun, it allows me to go through my backlog of old reviews and it helps motivate me to add links to old reviews here on WordPress. Win, win, win for everyone. The problem with bandwagons is that it is pretty easy to fall off of them. If it gets too bad, I might have to join #6degreesAnonymous and get myself on a 6step program.

Wrote up the last #worldbookczar post and interviewed HAL1000. Seemed like a pretty trust’able accounting program. I mean, any program created by Keffin Flyyv and who worked with Trin, well, if you can’t trust THAT program, who can you trust?

Had another Book Catch post. Thanks again to all of you who suggested the term Book Catch. I’m really liking it and it works perfectly. Of course, THIS book catch wasn’t one that had me all excited or anything. Quite the opposite. However, it is the perfect lead in to the changes I’ve been not so subtly hinting at all month.

 

Personal:

This will probably be a tad long, so bear with me.

I’ve been working at my current employer since 2000. Went part time from ’08-15 when the economy tanked (land surveying is the first hit when things go bad, especially when what is going bad is mortgages). I was certified as a Field Tech, level II back in ’06 (there are approximately 5 levels) and had some hazy notion of eventually getting my State Surveyor’s License and moving into more of an office position. That all kind of just fell aside and nothing has ever come of it. When I came back full time to surveying in ’15 I started working with older guys (50’s+) and realized that I didn’t want to be a 60 year old out in the field. Mentioned to my boss about maybe moving up to a Level IV and got response something like “That is a great idea. Go for it”. Not being a self-starter or one who easily figures things out on my own, that kind of died. I need some guidance and direction.

Then last year our second full time field guy left for another company (where he was promptly let go after a couple of weeks) and I was stuck with doing the work with either the robotic instrument or having a couple of the office people fill in a day here, a day there on jobs where 2 people were absolutely necessary. I kept waiting for another field crew guy to be hired but when it hadn’t happened by March of this year I realized it wasn’t going to.  I updated my resume but still didn’t do anything. I’m a creature of habit and getting out of a rut 19 years old was beyond me. In May or June I stopped working on Fridays because I was just worn out.

In June one of the main people in the office gave his notice (he’d been with the company over 25 years) and I was kind of expecting to be drawn in and trained to take over some of his responsibilities. Well, when nothing happened, once again, I realized I had to make some changes. So I sent out my resume to 3 other survey companies. Had several interviews and accepted an offer from one of them. Not a pay increase, but working with another full time field crew and the promise to start me as an Office Tech AND the promise to guide me through the process of getting my license (if that is what I really want) really made me happy. Company New has a guy transitioning out and I’ll be slowly transitioning in from 1 day a week until full time probably by the end of the year. That’ll give my old company plenty of time figure out what to do.

What this means is that I’ll be working more (45 hour weeks is the standard at the new company, where I’ve been doing 35’ish at the old) and once home working on my very rusty math skills. Algebra, geometry and trigonometry, here I come. I figure an hour each evening for math lessons.  So a lot less time for reading and blogging. Once I start full time in ’20, I figure I’ll be lucky to do 2 books a week and it’s probably going to be more realistic to plan on 60-75 books a year. I also suspect that the number of people I follow in wordpress is going to drop as I have less time for blog reading. I have no idea how that is going to go, but just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I’ll probably not be as active.

It is going to be a lifestyle change that will affect my online time. Exactly how everything is going to change is really unknown (even with me boldly stating what I did in the last paragraph) and until the changes happen, it is all conjecture. But change is in the air and it WILL affect my reading and blogging. Just wanted to give you all fair warning. I certainly don’t plan on disappearing though (which seems to happen to many bloggers when things change) so no fears on that end of the scale.

Thank you for reading.

 

Cover Love:

This month’s cover love is for one of the books that I dnf’d. Figures. Great looking cover though!

 

 

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July ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

17 Books

4703 Pages

Average Rating of 3.29

 

The Bad:

The last couple of volumes of Shaman King

 

The Good:

Death Wish – 5 Stars & Best Book of the Year tag

O Jerusalem! – 4.5 Stars and a wonderful way to kick off my foray into Non-fiction

Dark Intelligence – 4.5 Stars and Neal Asher just doesn’t disappoint.

 

Manga:

Oh, what do I say about this? I knew I had to binge read Shaman King to get through it but realizing the series had been cancelled and the manga-ka having to wrap things up in 1 volume made for an extremely messy end. It also made for a bleeding month of boringness for those of you who regularly follow me. My numbers did take a big hit because of how I crammed 12 volumes in but I knew that going in. I would like to thank you all who read, liked and/or commented on them all. I know for a fact that it wasn’t easy from your end either and I appreciate the tip of the hat of support.

Now that Shaman King is done, I think I’m done with manga for the foreseeable future. I might read the occasional volume here or there, but nothing like what I attempted with Oh My Goddess or Shaman King.  I’ve changed enough that 90% of manga is no longer targeted towards me and I just need to realize that.

 

Movie:

Didn’t do a specific movie only post but did review both of the Death Wish movies in comparison to each other and the book. A Triple Shot of Death Wishes. You didn’t ask for it, but I gave it to you anyway!

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Did a really fun Ratings as Sandwiches post that I had a blast writing. Because of it, I’ve been eating toasted tomato sandwiches every week now, so good!  Wrote my own version of the End of the World As We Know It and realized I’m just not any sort of musician, not even a bad one.  Started the month off right with a Quote from Death Wish and that seemed to set the tone for my reading. If I was a Roman Catholic, I might have taken the Seven Deadly (Book) Sins post more seriously, but alas, as a Protestant, I didn’t.

August is going to be filled with Mrs B traveling to see her Parental Pods and one of my Parental Pods making a swing through the area. Thankfully, I’m staying put so no one has to worry that the planet will go out of orbit due to all this excessive “traveling” business that is going on.

♪Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,♪
♪When the clouds unfold their wings of strife?♪
♪When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,♪
♪Will your anchor drift or firm remain?♪

That’s me,  Bookstooge, your friendly, neighborhood planet anchor. Remember kids, Gravity is a conspiracy by The Man to keep you down!

 

WBCI: (World Book Czar Initiative)

Quickbeam went off the deep end and made me reaffirm my lofty goal of paving the planet. Next month will be with HAL 1000 and I suspect that will be the final WBCI post. Much like the Surviving a Bad Book series, the WBCI is running out of steam.

 

Cover Love:

Dark Intelligence wins this one. Asher writes great SF and some of his covers are pure SF’ness itself. I love it!

 

 

 

June ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

15 Books

5099 Pages

Average Rating: 3.30

 

The Bad:

Valor – 1 Star DNF

The Hyena and the Hawk – 2 Star disappointment from one of my favorite authors

 

The Good:

Target Rich Environment – 5 Stars all the way!

The Hobbit – 5 Stars and the good times are rolling!

Our Mutual Friend – 4 1/2 stars kept the party going!

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

I only did TWO non-review posts this month. One was a Currently Reading (which I liked doing and I might try to do those a bit more often) and the other was the Fall from Grace about Star Wars and Bookstooge. A truly masterful yet tragically poignant post.

However, when I have two 5star reads AND a 4 1/2star read, well, you know it was a good month of reading. I deliberately wrote a review almost every other day and cut out almost all tv watching this month so I could read a couple of extra books. Of course, with Our Mutual Friend my page count went pretty high too. So another statistic that went swimmingly. My average rating was down from last month, but with a lot of middle of the road books you can’t expect anything else. Plus, 1star books totally destroy a month’s rating; they’re worse than the titanic!

Yet I didn’t read one single volume of Shaman King nor did I really want to.  I found that alarming because I started the series so strong and I really want to finish it. so I’ve decided to finish off the series in July. I know I’ll burn myself out on the series and on manga in general, but I’ve been approaching that point anyway so might as well go for the gusto, as one little boy named Calvin would say. This does mean that your feed is going to be packed with manga. I’ll try to post a couple of other type posts throughout July but you are getting your warning here and now. I do expect my numbers to plummet so I’ve prepared my mind for the onslaught of not being so famous for a month. It will be a real trial for me but I guess being humble is something we all need once in a while.

 

Cover Love:

As much as I despised the book, Valor had the best looking cover. It is pure awesome sauce from a visual standpoint!

 

 

 

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May ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

12 Books

3428 Pages

3.38 Average Rating

 

The Bad:

The Wrecking Crew – 1.5 stars

 

The Good:

Kellanved’s Reach – 4 stars

 

Movie:

Didn’t do a real movie review,  just reviewed a fake movie that I made up in my head. Sometimes those are the best kind of movies, and sometimes, like John Hobo, they’re the worst kind!

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Man, this month was something. Readingwise, it was middle of the road land the whole month. My average was up but that was because I didn’t read more than one stinker this month. I’d prefer my average to go up because I read so many SUPER books.

The car situation has been rectified. We went down to 1 car for a couple of weeks and I did double duty driving Mrs B to work and picking her up as well as taking myself to and from work. Very thankful we got another car and that it passed inspection with no issues.

Non-review writing, I feel like I wrote up a storm, even while the reality is that I just changed from doing scheduled things to whatever crossed my mind. I did a Currently Reading post to show you all the list of what I rotate through,  revealed My Secret Identity,  talked about Chainsaws & Guns (from a real perspective, not a psycho mass murdering perspective), posted how Mrs B saved me from a Life of Crime, did a Book Catch and then had a good talk/discussion PSA post about Commenting on Other’s Comments.

I enjoyed writing this month and I have a feeling I’ll be stopping any monthly type of non-review post.  Not sure if that means I’ll be writing less or not though. Working on my backlog of old reviews takes a lot out of me, even when I don’t have to type very much at all. Just writing those little bits is enough to dry up the well of my writing desire. Of course, the alternative is to have posts like John Hobo every week. Nobody deserves that!

WBCI: (World Book Czar Initiative)

Didn’t write one up this month but I do plan on having Quickbeam the Ent on for June. Please look forward to it.

 

Cover Love:

Reusing the pix from my Book catch post but I really liked the cover to Kellanved’s Reach. Best book of the month and best looking cover. Given all the middle of the road stuff, I guess I’m ok with this.

 

 

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April ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

 

Raw Data:

Books – 12

Pages – 3732

Average Rating – 3.21

 

The Bad:

The Hatching – 1/2 Star

Malice – 2 1/2 Stars

 

The Good:

In the Forests of Serre – 5 Stars

Hard Times – 4 1/2 Stars

 

Movie:

Elektra was bad, but in the “so bad it’s fun to watch and make fun of” vein of badness. With movies like this though, it is a wonder that Super Hero movies ever made it off the ground.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Let’s see, what did I do this month? A bunch of crap, that is what. A 6Degrees Post, wished everyone a Happy Resurrection Day and then posted about my latest endeavor in the world of Magic the Gathering.

I have to admit, this month I pretty much mailed it in, as I just didn’t feel like writing and let my 3 week buffer disappear down to zero. I’m writing this post the night before instead of like 10 days.  That lack of desire to write is why I’m not going to be doing my usual weekend routine posts in May. I need a break from a schedule and I’m going to try to break out of this writing blahh’ness by just writing spur of the moment and see what happens.  I’ve been averaging about 2 posts every 3 days for the last several months and I think I need to bust loose and pretend to be creative again for a bit. Even if I completely fall on my face, I’ll be fine with that. I just need to do something different, as I’m falling into a routine and getting sick of it. Who knows, maybe I’ll go REALLY wild and post a review ON THE WEEKEND! I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Or am I? *scary ghost noises*  See, that is what I need to be writing like instead of stifling my soul with corporate posts like political World Book Czar posts and stuff. I gotta be free!

On a personal note, one of our cars unexpectedly didn’t pass inspection and so we’ve spent all of April looking for another. No luck and we might end up just eating the repair cost to get the car fixed and passed for another year. Unfortunately, every car we’ve checked out this month has fallen through in one way or another. Blah! One of the things both Mrs B and I feel strongly about is not going into debt, with a few exceptions. Car payments on a new car is not one of those exceptions. So the next 2 years are going to be interesting (as we already know that our other car isn’t going to pass next year. It barely passed this year and by next year will be really rusted out and not road worthy)

 

WBCI: (World Book Czar Initiative)

Ildico gave us good reason to fear the Great Unknown reaches of space. If Attila the Hun isn’t safe, NOBODY is.  Thankfully, Ildico promises a free tinfoil hat to everyone when she becomes World Book Czar.  Now there’s a woman you can feel confident voting for!

 

Cover Love:

While I posted this in the review, In the Forests of Serre,  I still find it absolutely amazing. Beauty feeds the soul indeed. Sadly, feeding the soul doesn’t help with a writing slump.

 

 

 

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March ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

15 Books

4732 Pages

Average Rating – 3.17

 

The Bad:

The Scarlet Letter – 1 Star

Pacific Rim: Uprising: Ascension  – 2.5 Stars

 

The Good:

Carry On Jeeves – 4 Stars

The Engineer Reconditioned – 4 Stars

 

Movie:

Penelope was a big surprise in that I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought based on the fairytale’ish premise.  For April I have to go count the votes to see which of the bad pre-mcu superhero movies I have to fall on my sword for.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

This month was a lot better for reading than February but personally it sucked.  Kind of the exact opposite of February in fact, I was lucky to get 2 days a week of work and when things should have been picking up by the end, what with temps climbing and the snow disappearing, they didn’t. I did a lot of sitting around the house and that just isn’t good for me.  It affected my desire to write and by the end of the month the last thing I wanted to do was write, online, in my journal, anywhere.  I was definitely “Moody” all month.

Part of it is that I read double the amount of books I did in February and hence had to write twice as much. I think I’d gotten out of practice with all my youtube watching then. See, a bad habit already coming back and biting me in the butt.

Thankfully, Attack of the Ninjabread Men was pix heavy and allowed me to write very little. That’s the other thing. I have been so mean in spirit that I have deleted over half the comments I’ve made on everyone’s blogs. Probably would have alienated just about everyone and not a single one of us needs that kind of thing going on. Thank goodness for the delete button.

 

WBCI: (World Book Czar Initiative)

Lex Luthor was kind enough to to allow an interview and while “someone” let Superman know where he was going to be and at what time, leading to his arrest, Lex seemed like he really wanted to be the World Book Czar. I was pretty intrigued by his ideas for a Bookinator 800. What could go wrong with preventing all the bad books, right?

Next month I’ll be talking to Ildico, better known as Mrs Attila the Hun. Feel free to leave any questions here or on Lex’s interview.

 

Cover Love:

I think that Vampire of the Mists is going to take this one. All the other covers just seemed to say “eh” to me and at least this had the old timey Bella Lugosi vibe going on. Nothing like the classics to attract my attention.

 

 

 

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February ’19 Roundup & Ramblings

 

Raw Data:

8 Books

2815’ish  Pages

Average Rating – 2.06

 

The Bad:

Everything?

 

The Good:

The Black Pearl – 5 Stars

The Tiger and the Wolf – 4 Stars

 

Movie:

RED was a great movie.  But with a cast starring Willis, Freeman, Mirren and Malkovich (and some others), it would be hard for this movie to have gone wrong.

 

Miscellaneous And Personal:

Well, no manga this month. The Crippled God kicked my legs out from under me, which I knew it was going to do. What I didn’t expect was that the next several books would then proceed to kick me in the ribs while I was down and stomp on my fingers. I just couldn’t bring myself to go read manga in that condition. Thankfully, the month started well and ended well. It was just a pig excrement sandwich in the middle.

That did lead me to writing up a storm but it was just drivel. What else can you call 25 years worth of Star Wars Covers?

Did a Tag of Rage and then calmed down with a nice #6degrees post.

While the month just stank for reading,  on a personal level things went swimmingly. Had enough work, had enough fun and had enough good food. Oh, speaking of food, did the  Survival Saturday post. Sadly, not a very good time.

I was totally attacked by spam comments this month  60-100 “doxycycline” spam comments almost every day. Considering that every single one was aimed at the World Book Czar Intro post, I am wondering if I’ve stirred up a hornets nest among the Powers that Be. I wouldn’t put it past them to hound me with their pet spambots! #thetruthisoutthere #tinfoilhatswork

 

WBCI: (World Book Czar Initiative)

Had the first successful interview with potential World Book Czars. Czar Nicholas II was very friendly and genial but by the end seemed to lack a certain something that a World Book Czar needs, namely, a complete skull without any bullet holes in it! Poor Nicky…

Just remember, in March I’ll be interviewing Lex Luthor, so ask those questions you’ve always had!

 

EMAIL ALERT:

For those of you who follow me through email, I am starting the process of creating all new posts for my old reviews that were lumped together in monthly or yearly posts. I’m starting in 2000 and working my way forward. Please be aware this is happening and take appropriate steps. That is all.

 

 

 

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