Raw Data:

Novels – 16 ↑

Short Stories – 1 ↑

Manga/Graphic Novels – 4 ⭤

Comics – 4 ↓

Average Rating – 3.44 ↑

Pages – 4781 ↑

Words – 1369K ↑

The Bad:

Lapvona – 1/2star of vileness

Speaker for the Dead – 2.5stars of cerebral navel gazing

Web of Spiderman Annual #1 – 2.5stars of 13 year old boy wish fulfillment

The Good:

The Black Cauldron – 5stars of middle grade goodness

The Queen of Swords – 5stars of old school fantasy kicking butt and taking names.

The Yellow Sign – 4.5stars of Fantastic Madness realized

Movie:

Shrek the Third was a silly continuation of the franchise, but one I still enjoyed quite a bit despite it admittedly going into stupid territory instead of clever territory.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Cave People – MTG 4E
• Blogshido: The Way of the Blogger
• Celestial Prism – MTG 4E
• Seasons of the Tree of Day and Night
• WordPress Reader Issue
• Channel – MTG 4E
• Chaos Lace – MTG 4E
• Literature Meme
• Circle of Protection: Artifacts – MTG 4E

Personal:

Well, this was a tough month for me. I had an eye bleed (my second in 2 years) and had to get another shot in my left eye to deal with it. If that doesn’t clear it up, I could very well be looking at eye surgery. 3 decades of being a type one diabetic (insulin dependent) are starting to hit me. I honestly expected a heart attack before this. I’ve been mentally prepared since about 16 for the heart attack, so this eye thing has kind of blind sided me (ba dum tish!). In all seriousness though, it is a serious issue and one I’ll be having to deal with from now on. While not as scary as Mrs B being sick at the beginning of the year, this is scary enough and has left me very unsettled. It also pretty much overshadowed everything else for me.

On the fun side of things, Dawie and I were able to play some Warhammer 40K Magic the Gathering. Using whatsapp we took turns and had a couple of rousing games. The final one came down one life point separating the winner from the loser. That’s the kind of Commander game I like. I played the Necron deck while Dawie played Tyranids. Here’s a pix of the commander of the necrons:

Plans for Next Month:

I’ve got the final Shrek movie to watch and review. Then comes the very hard (for me) chore of figuring out what I’m going to watch and review next. For whatever reason, movies and tv shows are just wicked hard to review. Watching them seems like work sometimes and then adding talking about them? But I’ll soldier on. I’ve talked with people at various times about potential projects, but I never end up writing them down and so I forget.

So it will be review, review, review. I’ve got a few ideas for non-review posts but they’ll probably be spur of the moment silliness. My days of addressing current social issues with deep and thoughtful posts are done. Senator Bookstooge, that hoary headed font of wisdom, has retired from the political arena. I’ll leave it to the young bucks.

I’ve also been thinking how crowded my posting schedule has become. It is becoming more of hindrance than anything. To me and to the readers. I’ve come across blogs where so much posting goes on that it is hard to keep up. I don’t want to become that and I’m already well down that path. So something has to change in that regards. I’ve got a couple of ideas.

One is to simply cut down the number of book reviews I do. The problem is that I’ve tried that and while I always have the best of intentions, well, it never seems to work out the way I want. I just keep reading those books! Of the making of books there is no end and of the reading and reviewing of books there is no end either. Sigh.

The second option is to start another blog and post certain categories there and not here. Off the top of my head I’d probably put the magic cards, manga and comics over there. That would immediately free up 3 days a week here. So I might actually have some empty days, which would be nice. The main problem is that while the actual work load wouldn’t increase, the act of figuring out what goes where and dealing with all the setup of a new blog, could be daunting. Plus, since I’m such a stickler, I’d be figuring out all the silly stuff like tags and links. What about my Author Index? Suddenly I’d be having to link to two blogs to deal with that. I can just foresee there being problems, which is why I’ve always kept everything at one blog every time I did a blog.

If there is a third option, or if any of you have some ideas, I’m all ears. Input would be appreciated. This is something I’ll be giving some serious thought to over the coming month and will try to arrive at a decision for July.

Raw Data:

Novels – 13 ↓

Short Stories – 0 ⭤

Manga/Graphic Novels – 4 ⭤

Comics – 7 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.25 ↓

Pages – 4049 ↓

Words – 1123K ↓

The Bad:

Captain of the Monte Cristo – 1star of pure crap

Web of Spiderman #6-9 – 2stars of drivel and bologna

The Good:

The Knight of Swords – 5stars of Eternal Champion’ness

Murder by the Book – 4.5stars of Nero Wolfe. ’nuff said

Galahad at Blandings – 4.5stars of Wodehouse succeeding at making me jovial.

Movie:

Shrek 2 was a great movie. While not quite as “deep” as the first movie, I found it to be funnier. Looking forward to talking about the third one in May.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Conceptualization Beta
• Burrowing – MTG 4E
• Happy Resurrection Day! 2023 Edition
• Carnivorous Plant – MTG 4E
• An Ode to Energy Drinks
• Carrion Ants – MTG 4E
• PSA – WordPress: We Need Ads, Lots of Ads
• Dungeons & Dragons Book Tag
• Castle – MTG 4E

Personal:

Mrs B was fully asymptomatic so she was back to her regular self. Working, eating, visiting, she was back. I hadn’t realized how much of a burden it was until even the shadow of her illness was gone.

We ate out a LOT this month. My mom and Mrs B were going to go to a women’s retreat at my former church one weekend but the entire staff came down with covid in about 24hrs, so it was cancelled. So mom stayed with my bro and sisterinlaw and we spent the weekend visiting a lot. We also took a young couple at church out to dinner to get to know them better. Man, it made me feel old. I’m only in my mid-40’s but they are in the early to mid-20’s and recently married and I was just laughing on the inside almost the entire time. It was great!

Part way through the month a memo went out that our hours were going to be changing to 48hrs per week. That was going to be a killer and I wasn’t sure how we were going to actually do that. Thankfully our office manager told us that the reality was our hours (field crew) were going to be staying the same and so I’m still at 40-45hrs, which is fine. That was a big relief.

On Resurrection Sunday we were invited to an Easter Dinner with a family at church. They also invited another couple. Unfortunately, the female half of the other couple tends to talk non-stop when she’s not completely comfortable, to the point of cutting other people off and not letting conversation flow. We were hoping that since she and her husband are comfortable with us (we’ve gone out to a great mexican place several times) that she’d be ok. It didn’t work out that way and our plans to get to know the host family came to naught. They nor us could get a word in edge-wise. It simply reinforced my view that people, even when you like them, are jackasses.

I did get pretty close to posting only 1 post a day for the whole month. Much better than in March. I’m proud for not going crazy again 🙂

Cover Love:

Cassilda’s Song edited by Pulver was the clear winner for the cover love this month. The tattered, yellowish robe is close to what I imagine the King in Yellow himself wears.

Plans for Next Month:

I know I have moved a lot into the visual medium a lot more than even 2 years ago. Comics, manga, MTG picture posts, I feel like my focus is shifting. I don’t know how comfortable I am with that. And I say that because I am thinking of adding a once a month post depicting some artwork. I’m still tossing that idea around in my head, so we’ll see if it happens this month or not.

Other than that, it’s business as usual. Book reviews on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the occasional but random Sunday and Saturday. Magic posts on Mondays, manga on Wednesdays and various comics on Friday. Then random stuff on random Sunday and Saturdays 😀 Routine is a great thing!

Raw Data:

Novels – 19 ↑

Short Stories – 0 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels – 4 ↑

Comics – 7 ↑

Average Rating – 3.38 ↑

Pages – 5653 ↑

Words – 1707 ↑

The Bad:

Book of Joe – 1.5stars of Talker destroying my faith in Anspach & Cole

Blitz – 2stars of complete disappointment in the latest Chequy Files story

The Good:

The Book of Three – 5stars of middle grade fantasy goodness

Fathers and Sons – 5stars of even better than last time re-reading

Movie:

Shrek was a lot of fun. As long as you can get past the bodily function humor that permeates the entire movie like a toot in an enclosed room.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• PCP: Facing the Future
• Brainwash – MTG 4E
• Conceptualization Alpha
• The Bookstooge Chronicles: The Junior Year
• Brass Man – MTG 4E
• Frederick Douglass – Freedom to Journal the 18th
• Why I Still Paper Journal
• Bronze Tablet – MTG 4E
• For Where Your Treasure Is…
• Brothers of Fire – MTG 4E

Personal:

I think Mrs B is finally on the other side of her flair ups and vasculitis. She’s in the process of finding a competent GI doctor, so even that is a huge step in the right direction. She’s lost close to 20 lbs since New Years, so we’re doing what we can to fatten her right up. Thankfully, she can eat again full time. With her doing better, I am doing better. I can tell because my intense desire to write every single day is disappearing. I suspect soon I’ll be back to journaling once a week. And my overwhelming need to blab on my blog should decrease too.

March was a super bad bear of a month in terms of weather. We got more snow and winter storms in March than we did the entire winter leading up to it. Wet heavy snow made life miserable for a couple of weeks and made me realize that I actively dislike New England winters. But it didn’t last long, which was a blessing.

I read so much. It helped that I decided to buddy-read Web of Spiderman with Dave AND to read multiple issues at once. Sometimes I can get fixated on something (like reading only 1 comic of a particular character each month) to its detriment and my own. Reading multiples at once and lumping them all together keeps me interested and doesn’t overwhelm everyone with a ton of posts. But I just tore through books like nobody’s business. I better slow down though. Reviewing that many books leads to burn out, like I found out last year.

And can I say, THREE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 5star books this month? I know a lot of that had to with Mrs B finally feeling better, but even still, I have had six 5star books so far this year. To put that in perspective, I only had four for the entire year of 2022. So I can cruise for the whole rest of the year if I wanted to. Of course, I just hope this means I’m going to read a whole slew of fantastic books during the remaining months in ’23 😀

Cover Love:

The Death Tower,. Oh man, is that cool or what? I just love the Bantam editions of the Shadow.

Plans for Next Month:

Not post so much. Seriously. I had 9 double post days for March. 40 Flipping Posts. Nobody needs to blog that much, not even me. So I’m going to try to cut back, kind of like a speed addict. I already know I have 1 double post day coming up this Monday, but after that, I’m going to try reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaalllllllly hard not to. Wish me luck. And thank you for your forbearance, it is greatly appreciated.

I realize I have been posting a lot of visually oriented stuff (Magic cards, manga and comics, journal posts). I’m going to start spacing them out each week just a little more. Magic will remain on Mondays. Wednesday’s are now for Manga. Friday’s are now going to be my comic days.

April 9th is Easter, also known as Resurrection Day to us Christians. I’m debating about trying to write a new post for it or just recycle one of my older ones. Plenty of time to decide!

Other than that, I don’t have any plans besides book reviewing. I’ll write the non-book reviews whenever the nonsense bug strikes.

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..