Raw Data:

Novels 14 ↑

Short Stories 2 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels 2 ⭤

Comics 5 ↑

Average Rating 3.30 ↑

Pages 4084 ↑

Words 1309K ↑

The Bad:

Titus Andronicus – 1.5stars that Shakespeare should have been ashamed to write

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #14 – 1.5stars of utter lack of story telling skills

The Good:

Anubis Gates – 5stars of re-read magical goodness

Fullmetal Alchemist #2 – 4stars of manga doing what manga does best

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Author Index Update
• PCP: The Meeting
• Blue Ward – MTG 4E
• PCP: The Land of Fire & Water
• Bog Imp – MTG 4E
• The mysterious case of the missing reference
• PCP: Libraricus
• Bog Wraith – MTG 4E
• PCP: Icestorm
• Bottle of Suleiman – MTG 4E

Personal:

Unfortunately, February was not much of an improvement over January. No ER visits and Mrs B is feeling ok, at the moment, but that could change at a moment’s notice and so we’re pretty much living on tenterhooks and taking life one day at a time.

Weatherwise, February was fantastic. Made work a real treat but the end of the month showed that March is probably going to be a brutal winter lion month instead of a gentle lamb spring month. Ahh well. Winter is here 😦

Plans for Next Month:

I’m going to start watching the Shrek franchise for my movies so I’ll be doing one a month for a bit.

There will be double posts every Monday and Thursday’s. Just wanted to give you the heads up. I know I’ve been posting a lot and it looks to be continuing for March. Wednesdays will be all manga, as I’m ready to start reading more each month of both One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist.

Hoping to do several posts about journaling too. I’ve got 5 posts in mind about journaling, so as long as I can get my butt in gear and get them written, that will take up Saturdays and be some of the double posting I am planning on do on the weekdays.

And start the buddy read with Dave for the comic “Web of Spiderman“.

Goodness, it sounds like a lot when I type it all out like that. But really, if I wasn’t planning those things, I’d be planning something else. I’m just an inveterate planner, for good or bad, so I just roll with it until I burn out and then I plan my convalescence 😀

Raw Data:

Novels 13 ⭤

Short Stories 0 ⭤

Manga/Graphic Novels 2 ⭤

Comics 3 ⭤

Average Rating 3.19 ⭤

Pages 3238 ⭤

Words 1002K ⭤

The Bad:

Cat Magic – 2stars of cult programming masquerading

Bone #16 – 2stars of complete and utter filler

The Good:

Santiago – 5stars of re-read goodness

James and the Giant Peach – 5stars of just the right book hitting at the exact perfect moment.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Bookstooge Reviews 2022
• Blight – MTG 4E #savethepinapples
• A Sabbath Letter #3
• Wintermint Dumpstagramm – Double the Fun
• Blood Lust – MTG 4E
• A Requiem: Bookstooge, and Silent Smartfood Popcorn, Strike Back!
• MTG: A Lot of Sol (Ring)!
• The Die Hard Book Tag
• Blue Elemental Blast – MTG 4E
• The Christmas Present – The Intro
• Blue Mana Battery – MTG 4E
• PCP: Cover and Intro

Personal:

January has been one of the worst we’ve had in about a decade. Even worse than last year’s January when we both got covid and had to go to the hospital via ambulance.

I got a light case of food poisoning between Christmas and New Years. On New Years, Mrs B had the start of a crohn’s flair up that turned into the worst one she’s had in 10 years. Then she got vasculitus and we’re still dealing with that. Urgent Care visits, ER visits, dr visits, specialists being as unhelpful as possible, it all came together to make life as close to a living hell as we could imagine. While Mrs B is doing better now and her primary care doctor has started her down the right path of specialists to see and taken care of getting her out of work, Mrs B still has a good way to go before she’s healthy again. This has obviously been preying on my mind the entire month.

Also, Mrs B takes a monthly injection and her specialist has completely dropped the ball on getting the authorizations for that. Thankfully, since I am me, and expect the worst of everyone and every situation, I had prepared for just such an eventuality. But it means the safety cushion is now gone so I have to start building it back up again.

Outside of work, I pretty much retreated into our condo and outside of church, had zero social time in real life. I’m still pretty raw emotionally right now and it doesn’t take much to hurt me, hence the limited real life social thing. There’s no need to take it out on other people who are just asking an innocent question.

What this whole time has also shown me is that when I am in the middle of a situation, I have ultra-mega-tunnel vision. I can’t trust myself to look at the big picture or to think properly. Not being able to trust myself is very unpleasant and for an introvert like myself, extremely unsettling.

Because I’ve been so unsettled, my writing has gone up about 10,000%. I figured I was going to have many days in January where I had no posts and was kind of looking forward to doing nothing. But when I stress, I write. So I wrote every day here on the blog and actually already have half of February taken care of too. My personal journal writing became a daily thing instead of a weekly thing. The Cervantes Journal I showcased in November? I’m already 2/3rds of the way through it. It used to take me a year to go through one of those. I’ve also been reading my journal from my junior year in Bibleschool and I hope to be talking about that sometime in March. It’s slow going because as emotional as I am now, I was a daily rollercoaster of ups and downs in my 20’s. It’s making my Freshman Journal look pretty even-keeled!

Multiple rain and snow storms have also meant work has been unsettled and so it feels like every aspect of our lives is in turmoil right now. All small stuff, you know, but like I said, tunnel vision makes it hard to get perspective. Even with church I am dealing with some interpersonal stuff, which while not bad, is just one more thing that makes me go “Oh come on, I do not need to deal with this right now”.

I am tired and am not sure when I’ll get to stop being tired. And so as you can see, the words just spew out like a raging torrent.

Plans for Next Month:

Pretty much exactly like this month. No movie, can’t handle it at the moment (not that I’m not watching stuff. I’m actually watching quite a bit more to try to turn my brain off). So Magic Mondays, books, manga’s and comics, some more of the PCP (Project Christmas Present) and if I get really words’y, probably some silly double posting just to vent and get it all out.

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ⭤

Graphic Novels – 4 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.27 ↑

Pages – 3723 ↑

Words – 1259.5K ↑

The Bad:

Unsouled – 1.5stars of disgusting web novel disguised as a real book

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #12 – 1.5stars of utter ignorance on the subjects being written about

The Good:

A Christmas Carol read by Patrick Stewart – 5 stars of pure audio goodness!

In the Best Families – 4.5stars of Nero Wolfe NOT being Nero Wolfe

Movie:

Event Horizon was a great horror space movie that could have been better.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• The New Golden Rule
• Black Mana Battery – MTG 4E
• Journal the 17th – Cervantes: Letter to the King
• Black Vise – MTG 4E
• Writing Prompts – How to Disable Them on WordPress
• PSA: How To Read 100+ Books A Year
• Black Ward – MTG 4E
• [Repost] 50 Questions Answered by the Inestimable Bookstooge
• This is your story book tag
• Merry Christmas!!! (2022 Edition)
• Blessing – MTG 4E

Personal:

Mrs B and I got sick near the beginning of the month but it wasn’t covid and it wasn’t serious. A couple of days out of work and we were good to go again.

Life was just busy from Thanksgiving til now. I think that contributed towards the sickness actually. One Saturday I slept for almost 12hrs.

I spent a lot of the month getting Mrs B’s Christmas present ready. It was a collaboration so I had to coordinate with some other people and one of them I had to collaborate through a 3rd party, so it was a lot of work to get things done that would have taken half the time and effort if I could have had direct contact. Oh well. It’s done now and turned out very well.

Plans for Next Month:

Well, just like always, I STILL have to deal with my upcoming Year in Review Post. I always leave it til last minute, always bemoan the fact in this final Roundup post and never actually do anything to change that. If I wasn’t so awesome, I’d be disgusted with myself 😉

I do plan on adding Manga back into my reading mix so that “open day” disappears. Might end up leaving Saturdays open for last minute silliness, we’ll see. I had talked about something, with somebody, sometime, for my next movie idea but I didn’t write it down and so have completely forgotten all the details. If that was you, would you mind saying what it was in the comments? Thanks. Otherwise, I might just let movies slide for a couple of months while I flail around looking for something suitable. Magic on Mondays will go on as usual.

Work continues apace on the Author Index and I’m in the P’s now. If I can keep up this momentum, I should be able to wrap this project up in 2023. Or I might stall out. It’s a tossup at this point.

See you tomorrow as I blab about the whole of ’22 then.

Raw Data:

Novels – 21 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.07 ↓

Pages – 6116 ↑

Words – 1919K ↑

The Bad:

Dead Silence – 1star of totally awesome space horror RUINED by scyenze and romance

Hunting Zero – 1star read that killed this already dead series for me.

The Good:

American Assassin – The ONLY 4star read I had this month. sigh….

Movie:

Muppets Now, while quite enjoyable, had some serious flaws as an episodic show, in my opinion. There hasn’t been a season 2 yet and I doubt there ever will be.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Ashes to Ashes – MTG 4E
• 9/11 – An Unbearable Weight of Remembrance
• Ashnod’s Battle Gear – MTG 4E
• Hotel Bookstooge – Now Open For Business
• Aspect of Wolf – MTG 4E
• Backfire – MTG 4E

Personal:

What a busy, busy month. The only way I got through all the blogging was knowing that October was going to be totally different (more on that in the next section). After August’s R&R and realizing I was on the edge of burnout, I spent this month strategizing. It helped me mentally and emotionally (you try being an introspective introvert who hates people yet still wants to be liked).

Work still continues to be the dominant part of both my and Mrs B’s life. We are both working overtime every week and the holiday season is approaching (Mrs B has already seen Christmas stuff getting readied to be out on the sales floor, boooo!). So Mrs B is only going to get busier and my own work shows ZERO slow down. We’re still running about 2 months behind (so if you call and hire us, we won’t be able to get there for 7-8 weeks) so this winter is probably going to be as busy as ever. I’m tired just thinking about it.

The weather started to change, which was much appreciated. Some mornings it was chilly enough so you could see your breath but the afternoons were still warm enough that t-shirts and shorts were more than enough. With the drought we’re having I don’t know what is going to happen for the foliage. Glad I’m not a leaf peeper.

Utilities are skyrocketing in price. The electrical company instituted a price hike that comes out to about a 50% across the board hike. It’s all in the “service” part of the bill so you can’t even offset it by trying to use less electricity. Once the cold weather hits and we have to turn on the furnace, and the natural gas bills start coming in, well, it’s going to be an expensive winter. Thank goodness I have 3 can of campbell’s chunky soup in reserve!

On the good side of things, Mrs B and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. God has truly blessed us together and we are so thankful He led us to the other. We don’t take it lightly. The stability we provide for each other is priceless.

I’ve also been playing the board game Doom with my brother every 3-6 weeks and that has been a blast. I keep taking pictures of the board and mini’s when we’re playing but my goodness, it is HARD to get even decent pix out of it, much less good ones. I’m going to keep trying though and maybe in the next month or two I’ll have a mini’s update about it.

The Hotel Bookstooge opened up fully for business. That project was probably the biggest one I’ve undertaken in regards to blogging in my whole experience so far. I’m very glad it’s finished and now all I have to do is decide what’s next!

Ended the month being sick with the flu and bronchitis. I was out of work all of last week and this week, while I went back, I was moving like a dead man. I can’t wait until I’m all better.

Plans for Next Month:

I’m still reading up a storm but for October, while I’ll be posting reviews, said reviews will only contain all the data I put in the very beginning. Pretty much going back to my roots of 2000-2001 and how I reviewed books then. That cuts about 90% of the writing so that pressure just isn’t on me. That will have the twofold effect of relieving the pressure and also letting my word well recharge. I won’t even be adding covers. We’re talking straight up text posts. LITTLE text posts too.

Depending on how that goes I might carry that format on for the rest of the year. Once my words get recharged and I keep on doing the minimum for reviews that will allow me to start writing some non-review posts again. It’s been months since I’ve written something based on an idea that popped into my head at 2pm or some such thing. I need the spontaneity back and I can’t do that if all my words go to just reviews. I’m a blogger, not just a book reviewer and it is time to take that aspect back.

I suspect October will be a recovery time for me and not a “hey, look at me blogging about Whatever” kind of month. Lots of tiny review posts. I’m hoping it will also help me to clear my head about blogging in general and using wordpress in particular. I’ll still be commenting away and if you have any questions on any of the reviews, I’ll be glad to answer, in the comments..

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ↓

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.17 ↓

Pages – 4271 ↑

Words – 1303.5K ↑

The Bad:

The Best of Lester Del Rey – 1/2star of the Worst!

Bethink Yourself – 1star DNF of war is bad, blah, blah, blah

The Good:

Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 1 – 4.5stars of awesome cosmic horror

Battlefield Earth – 5stars of nostalgia that has run its course

Movie:

Muppets Most Wanted was a fantastic movie and I loved it! Enough that I’ll be buying it on bluray.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• MTG: Angry Mob
• Who am I Book Tag
• American Independence Day
• An Introduction to Magic (video)
• MTG: Animate Artifact
• Currently Reading: Battlefield Earth
• Out of WordPress Jail!
• MTG: Animate Dead
• ♪Give Me a Ticket for an Aeroplane♪
• You’re My Pumpy-umpy Umpkins
• The Trip

Personal:

Got sick at the beginning of the month and missed the July 4th extended weekend. That was a real bummer. Going to California for a couple of days was a nice relaxer time though. Other than that, work, work, work. With the housing market still being wicked hot (despite the best efforts of certain people), my work is NOT slowing down like I thought it might. Maybe later this year in winter I’ll get a break? I can hope.

On the book side of things, my numbers were looking pretty good. My average rating went down but with the various stinkers I had I was expecting that. So all the other numbers going up was great. I like my numbers going up.

On the blog side, the numbers are all over the place and still make no sense to me. Of course, it feels like people are either taking breaks or flaming out. In all honesty, it just takes one person leaving blogging to make me feel that way, so it’s not hard to get to that place, sigh. It is not hard to mess with my head 😉

One of the big lotteries here in the US, Mega Millions, got up to over 1 Billion dollars. Talk about a boatload of cash! I obviously didn’t win. But even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t be telling all of you and shouting it out on my blog, now would I? I might be one of the world’s biggest egotists, but I’m not that stupid 😀 But it was really fun to think what it would be like to win that.

Plans for Next Month:

I got nothing. Just trying to pump those reviews out and not fall too far behind. I’ve still got like 8 reviews to write just to get caught up and every day that passes brings yet another to write. Oh, I might try for a Binstagramm post. I hear it’s the next big thing online. One post and I’ll become an Internet Celebrity. But don’t worry, I won’t forget all you little people.

Raw Data:

Novels – 13 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.34 ↑

Pages – 3667 ↑

Words – 995.5K ↑

The Bad:

Dead Souls – 2stars of incomplete and rambling ridiculousness

Morningside Fall – Unrated DNF’s always make me sad 😦

The Good:

Hostile Takeover – 4stars for the latest Arcane Casebook entry

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #6 – 4stars of Turtles fighting Space Triceratops!

Movie:

The Muppets, a 2011 reboot, was decent. Not really exciting, but not bad at all.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• [reblog] WordPress: Starter Plan – Paying More for Less
• The TBR Tag
• Aladdin’s Ring – MTG 4th Edition
• Bookstooge | A Loner But Not Alone
• [Guest Post] Asterix the Legionary
• Ali Baba – MTG 4th Edition
• CR: Morningside Fall
• Vanilla Coke Zero – It’s Baaaaack!
• Amrou Kithkin – MTG 4th Edition
• Amulet of Kroog – MTG 4th Edition

Personal:

Ohhh, this was a wicked busy month. It felt like we were doing something every single day, even though we weren’t.

We also had cell phone issues. We were using a budget carrier but they were bought out by Dish Network. And to keep the current rate we would have had to sign up with Dish, which since we live in a condo is impossible. And if we didn’t sign up, our plan would triple in price. So I spent a good while trying to figure out a budget alternative. Most cheap plans by the bigger carriers were at least double what we had been paying plus having to buy new phones on top of that. We’ve ended up going with Google Fi and got everything moved over this past week. Now it’s just using it and seeing where the kinks are hiding out so we can straighten them out.

Work was low key for the first half of the month. I was holding steady at 40hrs a week and that extra hour of leisure time was fantastic. Then things went back to normal and once I’d come home and cleaned up and checked my comments on WP, I’d look at the clock and it would be 7pm already. Aye yi yi. When’s that recession going to hit so I can take some time off!?

Plans for Next Month:

I was doing some searching on my site and realized that the search wasn’t doing what I wanted, so I’m going to be adding the series info back into the post titles, so the titles will be getting busy again. Also, my reviews shouldn’t be just one liners. I gotta admit though, it sure was nice! But I felt your pain at trying to comment on such succinct posts, so back to the bloated flabby fleshpots of Egypt we go.

Also going to be doing a little bit of traveling near the end of the month. So I’ll be out of commission for a couple of days; probably do me some good to take a break 🙂 Posts will be going up but they’ll be scheduled and I won’t be around to comment.

Recently had a doctors visit where I was told I was overweight (I am) and that I needed to start getting exercise outside of work. So I am hoping to start walking 2 miles 4-5times a week in the evenings. I suspect that will cut into my blogging time as well. So between work and exercise, we’ll have to see how things go.

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ⭤

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.03 ⭤

Pages – 2735 ↓

Words – 817K ↓

The Bad:

The Gathering Flame – 1star read that killed the Mageworld series for me 😦

The King in Yellow Tales – 1star DNF of utter poetic insanity (and not the good kind!)

The Good:

Monster Hunter Bloodlines – 4.5stars of Cowboy Pirate Murder Ghost awesomeness!

Three – 4stars of pretty good re-read’ness

Movie:

Sherlock Season One was very enjoyable to watch but it was a good thing I did a buddy watch with SavageDave. I simply couldn’t blog very well about it. Every post was a real battle to write.

A Study in Pink, The Blind Banker and The Great Game.

The Muppet’s Wizard of Oz on the other hand, well, it was so bland and boring that it made oatmeal think it was Tabasco Man! and I was practically on cruise control for writing this. Easy-peasy.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• The NOPE Tag
• Air Elemental – MTG 4th Edition
• [Repost] Burn!
• CR&Q: Monster Hunter Bloodlines
• FREEDOM Friday Reblog
• Alabaster Potion – MTG 4th Edition
• RIP: Patricia McKillip
• Aladdin’s Lamp – MTG 4th Edition

Personal:

The month started off pretty good. Church was going along swimmingly, the weekends were filled with fun things (like the DOOM boardgame) and even work was going well.

While things overall went well, a couple of stress points hit me pretty hard. Nothing at all serious, just stupid things that I let mess with my head. Being an introspective introvert certainly has its downsides. I’m hoping that I’ve worked through them but I guess I’ll be finding out in the coming month

The price of gas is starting to be a serious consideration now, as is the price of food. Trying to be much more “planned” in even our little trips (so no more 3 little trips to the grocery store because we feel like it) and list making for grocery shopping has become a “must” again.

Cover Love:

With all of the artwork that I’m putting up with the Magic the Gathering cards, I think I’ll be passing on this section for the rest of the year unless something REALLY stands out.

Plans for Next Month:

I am approaching word burn out. Many of my non-review posts this month were picture oriented and even the NOPE tag had me struggling and I left a bunch of the questions unanswered. To help combat that I’m going to be turning Mondays over to the MTG cards completely and moving the manga to another day. I will also be making my reviews very much of the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down variety instead of writing a lot of what I thought. I’m hoping a month of “I liked this book” or “I didn’t like this book” will help my word well to recharge.

Also, back to one Muppet movie/show a month; no more Sherlock tv series. I just can’t do multiple movie reviews regularly.

Raw Data:

Novels – 17 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating 3.43 ↑

Pages – 5652 ↑

Words – 1825.5K ↑

The Bad:

Jim Henson: The Biography – 1star of Puff Piece’ry

Death-Reach 2 – 2.5stars of Mediocrity

The Good:

In the Court of the Yellow King – 4.5stars of Utterly Delicious Madness

Earth Unaware – 4.5stars of Card Writing at His Best

Movie:

Fraggle Rock Season 3 was just as fun, just as frenetic and just as loud as the previous 2 seasons.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• How I Got Into Anime & Manga
• [Repost] Bookstooge Speaks Out: on Narcissism
• Project X: W
• The Weather Tag
• Project X: X
• Currently Reading: The Jim Henson Biography

Personal:

On the book side of things this was a great month. Numbers were up across the board and I read a lot. Of course, the month ended on a down note but I’m hoping that means April will be even better as I got the bad stuff out of the way.

Personally, this was a kick in the pants kind of month. Last Roundup&Ramblings I talked about how my coworker was super grumpy the whole month and was making it hard to enjoy work. It turns out he was dealing with a diverticulitis flareup but wasn’t telling anyone. He ended up in the emergency room and then came back to work the next week. I just shook my head and hoped he didn’t keel over while I was working with him.

My journal ran out and so I had to buy another one. Sadly, it took an extra week to get here and so I ran out. The horror of not having a journal to write in was pretty horrible and I think I’m shell shocked now. I’m hoping to do a post showing the new one sometime next month.

Taxes. I did our damnable taxes this month. That was yet another kick in the pants. We ended up having to pay a sizable amount over and above what had already been taken out in fething payroll taxes. I was spitting mad and if a politician had walked in front of me, just like Jason Bourne or John Wicke, I would have killed them with a pen. I know exactly why they went up and their names rhyme with *deleted*

Spring is definitely here. One day I was in shirt sleeves at work, no jacket, hat or gloves needed! Of course, the downside is that the deer ticks are now out and I have to inspect my clothing and myself every day after work and start keeping my work clothes in a separate clothes hamper for their own separate washing.

Cover Love:

Caves of Ice, a Ciaphas Cain novel by Sandy Mitchell. This is an alternate cover that really showcases the spirit of the book: violence on a frozen world with almost no hope of survival. Warhammer 40K really puts the “grim” in grimdark! and if you ever wondered what a chainsword looked like, well, now you know.

Plans for Next Month:

I am going to be starting up a new series of posts to take over from the Project X series, which will be ending. I have a scheduled post where I explain it all next Monday.

With 23 books this month, I’m probably going to ease up and not read quite as much in April. So there will either be days where I don’t post or the posts will be a bit lighter in tone as I ramble about whatever takes my fancy. With a couple of exceptions I have been writing non-stop since July of ’21. While no where near burn out, I want to make sure I am pacing myself appropriately.