Hallowmas
Chad Schimke
A haunted Hallowe'en Horror Short. Kids making a horror movie enter a real horror.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Hallowmas
Hallowmas
Chad Schimke
A haunted Hallowe'en Horror Short. Kids making a horror movie enter a real horror.
Dead End
Cassandra Sato #0.5
Dead End
Kelly Brakenhoff
Upper management err on the side of complacency when a Tsunami warning is issued and students and the general public fail to acknowledge a danger they cannot see. Like the people who remained on the side of Mount St Helens before it blew. Or all those people who denied global warming before the hurricanes and tornadoes arrived.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
In The Stillness
The Colin Buxton Series #0.5
In The Stillness
C.C. Gilmartin
A series prequel. Two lads are altar boys to an alcoholic priest. Drew earns a living as a rent boy, Colin joins the London Met as a cop and so begins the career to follow.
Battle of Britain: Canadian Airmen in their Finest Hour
Battle of Britain: Canadian Airmen in their Finest Hour
Ted Barris
314 pp.
Previously read his account of Canadian Involvement in the Dambusters but this time a hard cover book.
I'd not known before of Polish airmans' participation in Britain. That pilots were trained in Canada and planes built here I did know. The Gimly Glider used one of the old bases and another is in Debert, NS.
The British air force was buried in a preoccupation for bureaucracy and paperwork. A commander arrived at his new base to discover his only flyers were seagulls. Asked if his fleet was air worthy a base commander reported that he had planes and airmen but not a single spanner, spark plug or oil can in sight.
Faced with a rainy day and looming due date I sat down and read the last 100 pages in one setting. In true understated Canadian style Canadian flyers did not blow their own horns, they let their actions speak for themselves. The one sour note is the lack of recognition given the Polish flyers.
Monday, October 28, 2024
Bomber
Bomber
Len Deighton, Richard Burnip (Narrator), Malcolm Gladwell (Introduction)
This book was among a list of audiobooks recommended me by Hoopla when I cast about for bedtime listening.
The Valour and the Horror was a 1992 mini-series created by the McKenna Brothers, the second 2-hr. episode: Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command featured an account that echoes the sentiments presented here. The Royal Canadian Legion was outraged and vigorously panned the presentation as defaming a Knighted hero proving that one man's villain is another's hero.
First published in 1970 when Gladwell was aged seven.
Atrocities are in the eye of the beholder, or the recorder of history. The enemy commits them, the winners did what was necessary to gain victory.
Like the line that the ground crew own the aircraft, they only loan them to the pilots. [The penalty for non-return is often death or enemy capture.]
The story line switches back and forth between the British flyers and their air bases and the towns and cities they try to defend and the German flyers and their similar bases and towns. The account is rather clinical lacking in emotional response to the devastation being reigned down upon civilians in the streets and shelters.
The author doesn't choose sides in dispassionately describing bombing and the fighter planes that attacked and defended the bombers. And in explaining the destruction, deaths, and injuries that were inflicted on the ground and the infrastructure burned or blown up.
There are no winners in war, only those whose losses are greater.
Note that the recording is 24 hours long.
The Friar's Lantern
The Friar's Lantern #1
The Friar's Lantern
Greg Hickey
The book is narrated in the second person by a unnamed character referred to as you. That this is a followup to the prequel novel, The Theory of Anything: A Short Intellectual Crime Novel until the person referred to as you shows up at Dr. David Solon's murder trial. What we learn is the fact not revealed in the previous book that the robber David encounters in the alley was none other than his wife's murderer.
The inference here is that the you here is the reader and throughout the book the reader is given either/or choices with shortcuts that lead to other points in the book.
As with the prequel the pace of the story is retarded by excessive detail that tends to become boring. Rather than create a sense of reality it just makes the reader wish the author would get on with it.
Once more the narrator is lost in probability theory. The subtle difference between chaos theory or randomness is lost on the average reader such as myself.
Even though the reader is given shortcuts depending on their choices I'm tempted to read both. Finally though I reached the end no wiser for my choices.
Sunday, October 27, 2024
Veiled Threats
Talnarin #1
Veiled Threats
D.E. Chapman
First book in a series of five.
Malik and Abel are brothers who in the opening chapter lose their parents in an attack on their home and escape via an underground tunnel to wander through the woods climbing trees to escape ravening beasts. The brothers possess mystic powers. Not sure what to make of it all yet. They make it to their Uncles home where Malik is reminded that with the death of his mother he has become a King. He is introduced to his guard and a seer predicts his Queen. Too much too fast and there it ends.
Friday, October 25, 2024
Superior: Under the Shadow of the Gods
Superior: Under the Shadow of the Gods
Barbara Chisholm (editor), Andrea Gutsche, Russell Floren
Like Michener the authors begin their discussion of Superior with a creation story involving lava flows and tectonic plates. Some of the jargon used is lost on a lay person.
It goes on to document conflicts with First Nations which continue to this very day.
The boom and bust economy repeats itself here, big shots exploit a resource until it is exhausted then pull out leaving their workers unemployed. The cycle is repeated with fish, forests, ore.
As the survey of the coastline begins in the Sault Jesuit Missionaries lay the groundwork for the European Capitalists that followed them. Those Capitalists may have had little interest in the Pagan's Souls but they recognized the value of the contacts the Jesuits provided them.
Much of the book describes shipwrecks, the Edmund Fitzgerald a prime example. And dramatic rescues and the men who performed them.
The building of Highway 17 is quite another tale. As was Van Horne and the CPR.
Agawa Canyon on the Algoma Central Railway
My trip didn't hit peak foliage. Since the mine closed the track is no longer properly maintained and the train crawled near walking speed. The allowance was not cut back so there was very little to see along the way bit bush.
Canada still retains 51 staffed lighthouses. A thousand including famed Peggys Cove were termed redundant. In flagrant disregard for the welfare of its lighthouse keepers bean counters ceased the practice of providing ships to deliver lighthouse keepers to and from remote islands. With Island lights up to 65 miles from shore this became a death sentence for many.
Not to be forgotten are the characters who inhabited this wild rocky shore. I particularly like the codger who sat his rocking chair reading and finished his chapter before looking up to say "Hello".
In prison solitary confinement is considered a cruel form of punishment but lightkeepers in bad weather were often abandoned for months at a time and fishermen, trappers, and miners often embraced a solitary existence. Making pets of beaver, groundhogs, squirrels, and even snakes provided companionship and rodent control.
The first people who came to Superior's North Shore came for its natural resources: Furs and Fish, Forests and Mines. When the asset was depleted they departed. Others came or were brought to build highways and railbeds. Today those same highways bring tourists intent on admiring the area's natural beauty.
Thursday, October 24, 2024
A Fable of Blood
Legend of Tal #0.5
A Fable of Blood
J.D.L. Rosell
A Sword and Sorcery Short given as a freebie to spark interest in the series that follows. Assume Tal is short for Talmage a name I know due to the Bachman family. To say that the story is violent would be an understatement.
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
A Whisper of Smoke
A Whisper of Smoke
Pauline Creeden, Melinda R. Cordell
Fantasy set among Vikings in what appears to be England. Love Smoke the owl. Skeggi at 16 is raising his four brothers. He's also a dragon rider in training. His 14-yr-old brother is rebellious and refuses to take any responsibility for his younger brothers adopting a slacker attitude. Skeggi suffers the ignominy of having been defeated by the practice dummy. He survives despite being frequently knocked onto his back or being planted face first in the dirt.
Smoke the owl is his most important asset. This is a prequel for a series to come and it ends with a hint of romance.
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Untamed Country
Wilderness #46
Untamed Country
David Robbins, David Thompson (Pseudonym)
Read by Rusty Nelson
The audiobook unknown to Goodreads.
This series stretches to 70 volumes a thing unknown to me when I first encountered these audiobooks. TV series employ multiple writers in an attempt to keep their program fresh; a single author is likely to go to the well a few times too often.
The scene here is the American West. Settlers not unlike the Wilders in Little House felt stifled by the laws and constraints of civilization and moved West where they encroached on Indian Territory. The law they sought to avoid was not around to constrain banditry.
Two footed-menaces were not the only perils.
Saturday, October 19, 2024
WOLF PACK
Wilderness #20
WOLF PACK (Unabridged MP3-CD) by David Thompson, (Wilderness Series, Book 20), Read by Rusty Nelson
David Robbins
Or David Thompson his pseudonym.
A frontier family fight off marauding Indians and predatory thieves to depend their valley home. Children have to grow up quickly in this environment if they are to survive.
Friday, October 18, 2024
The City's Heart: Murder Mystery involving the unraveling of Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracies of a Murdered Judge
The City's Heart: Murder Mystery involving the unraveling of Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracies of a Murdered Judge
Maxwell Titchen
Murder Mystery
A Judge and his family are gruesomely murdered and an entire cast of staff heard or saw nothing. Nothing was stolen which makes revenge look like the prime motive, but whose.
And upon closer inspection the secret misdoings of a well-beloved justice are uncovered. Secrets it may be dangerous to expose. The city's heart may be rotten to the core.
Police corruption rears its ugly head and the cavalry arrives in time to save the day.
One is drawn into this story from the start. If authors could bottle and sell this talent they'd be millionaires. The text needs editing.
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Dirk Goes To Church
Dirk Goes To Church
Ron Lahr
In Rome the Cardinals meet in secret conclave and vote until someone gets elected Pope. In Dirk's world a thousand priests rumble in an arena until the last man standing leads. Sounds a lot like a US Presidential election.
David and Goliath
David and Goliath
Edie Montreux
Strange cover photo that proves to be the head of a tarantula. The David in question here specializes is freeing magical creatures and freeing a spider the size of Frodo's nemesis from a brothel whose name is Goliath was this David's task, not slaying it. Since this giant has had years of experience watching the action with its eight eyes it gives David a freebie. And since it's a male it didn't eat him.
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Wind, Sand and Stars
Wind, Sand and Stars
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Terre Des Hommes en Francais.
As the pilot sets out on his first mail run he hears about a fellow pilot who didn't make it. As we know from history that was his own ultimate end. Betokens a great deal of mail that never made its destination. Sort of like the famous pony express. Of course its the cost in human lives I should be thinking about.
The last episode describes crash landing in the desert and coming within moments of dying of thirst before the pair run into a Bedouin and his camel.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Soldier's Savior
Alden Security #1
Soldier's Savior
Joy Danvers
The military is a bastion of racism, homophobia, and sexual abuse; or as David describes his parents having the trifecta of bigotry, racism, and misogyny. Concealing because it's not safe to be out is one thing, but being closeted in self-hatred is quite another. Will say that I prefer so-called sweet romances that concentrate on relationships and not on phone sex. Having read other books by this author I should have known what to expect. I still can't get used to the idea that female authors and readers are obsessed with gay males getting it on. And this pair engage in teenage-like congress in the back seat of a crew cab. The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation and neither do we though I wish the participants kept it private there. PDAs whatever the sexual orientation stretch the bounds of etiquette. Can't say I was prepared for Provincetown on Dyke Day.
So John has accepting parents and David not so much. Societal change happens slowly and the pair finally get to marry. And a mother walks the bridegroom down the aisle.
The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel
American Novels #1
The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel
Norman Lock, Grover Gardner (Reading)
I read Huckleberry Finn in a Hardcover First Edition loaned me by a friend of my Mother's. Imagine what that book is worth today.
This author imagines an aging Huck reminiscing about his days floating down the Mississippi on a Raft with Jim. This is not a book for children.
As narrator Huck switches between reminiscence and his present day adventures set in the 2070ies. Leaves one wandering, have we made all that much progress after all these years.
The author has Huck refer to Mark Twain's book on several time but none so ironic as when Huck is asked if he's read the book.
Sunday, October 13, 2024
Jesus Goes to Hell on Vacation!
Blasphemy! #2
Jesus Goes to Hell on Vacation!
T.J. Klune
Well why not. Toadying up to goody two shoes can be exhausting.
Begins with the background to Jimmy Davidson's arrival in Hell. He and Satan are monogamous.
Who'd a thought, Jesus is brown skinned and gay; here attracted to a red demon with knobby horns, a fiery halo and a tail. What's more remarkable God approves.
And the Trumps are in Hell where they belong.
Saturday, October 12, 2024
Blasphemy!
Blasphemy! #1
Blasphemy!
T.J. Klune
Until I buy into the high concept involved here which involves Satan personified I have to ask: the Devil has a house in Hell, sleeps in a bed with blankets and has a telephone and major domo? Theologically I don't believe in Hell as a physical location and question the idea of evil personified just as I seriously doubt heaven as a physical location with pearly gates and streets paved with gold peopled by winged angels playing golden harps.
Satan here is fifteen feet tall and has a huge member, of course. Carl helps him with his wardrobe. In Hell all our usual conceptions are reversed. Bad is good.
Unions are a necessary evil but the idea that Satan has Union Issues is delicious. The difference being that Satan wouldn't just fire them all. And God swears like a trooper.
We've all had our issues with computers and considered them evil but Hell Inc has an office tower full of them.
God talks to his brother Satan every Tuesday at 10 AM on Skype. Do they use Norton Antivirus? God takes a shit each morning 9:15, anal retentive? Not an early riser and this review will never be seen on Amazon. Wonder where it flushes?
Satan meets Jimmy Davidson and the little fucker weirds out even the Devil even to giving him a blow job.
For the record:
Stationary is fixed in place, you write on stationery.
A twink with muscles is a Twunk.
Well this is Blasphemy.
Friday, October 11, 2024
Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life
Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life
Thomas Moore
Audiobook read by the author, obviously not THE Thomas Moore who died in 1852. Got over that one.
A cloistered life of meditation and even a vow of silence is no longer in vogue as evidenced by the mean age of those in Convents that are rapidly closing. Despite Benedict's reactionary attempt to close the doors monks today live out Christ's command to feed my sheep and do it unto the least of my brethren. This monk would seem to have abandoned his cell.
Edge of Extinction - First Contact
Edge of Extinction - First Contact
Landon J. Riley
Would seem the author's first published work and the start of a series to come. Call it a Sci Fi space opera action adventure. Well written and immediately captivates anyone who enjoys this genre. Jaxon is the ultimate Space Cowboy aided by his AI companion and helper Orla.
EIGHT OUNCES A DAY
EIGHT OUNCES A DAY
Kevin Stevenson
Goodreads lists this as author unknown. Read it's not for sale on Amazon.
When virologists at the centre where Reed is a cleaner release a deadly plague Reed heads for the hills and becomes a survivalist. One of his tasks is fighting off with deadly force interlopers who would steal his food.
Secrets of the Dead
Secrets of the Dead
David F. Berens
The joys of modern technology. I do most of my reading on an Android Tablet from Samsung. When I click on this e-Pub file in the folder system it opens in my Nook App. When I try to re-open the book in the Nook App I'm told the file is corrupt and can't be opened. (Read, I didn't buy it from B&N, it was a freebie, thank you David.) And having read the entire novella Nook can no longer make that claim.
This reads like the introduction of a crime series it is. Nick Sullivan makes Cassidy Carmichael an offer she can't refuse and in listing her curriculum vitae he omits mentioning her embarrassing past as a lady of the night--she had to eat.
Submitted this to Amazon. They may not like it.
Tuesday, October 08, 2024
The Event Horizon Murder
The Event Horizon Murder
Greg Hickey
For the record the freebie offered was a court scene that featured the cross-examination of an officer's testimony. The interesting aspect of it all is that the pair are on a cordial first-name basis out of court.
Monday, October 07, 2024
The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas
The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas
Jim Harrison
An author unknown to me. The photo on Goodreads does the author no favours.
Three utterly different novellas. One biographical, the others dystopian. Were I reading rather than listening I'd probably not have finished.
Sunday, October 06, 2024
Fiery Mary & the Dog Days of Summer
Fiery Mary & the Dog Days of Summer
Valerie Willis
A vagabond backpacker has to contend with having been robbed and coming adrift amid language challenges and superstition so serious it stops work in the middle of harvest season in Yugoslavia. Religion is a serious business in a country where belonging to the wrong ethnic group can get you killed. And the Devil is very real.
In fact superstition seems very real in this strange tale.
Saturday, October 05, 2024
The World Inside my Plastic Mirror
The World Inside my Plastic Mirror
Christopher Francis
My first reaction is that over 300 pages is rather long and intimidating even if Harry Potters ran to 700. No .mobi, or .pdf file behaves properly in Kindle on my Android Tablet. A .pdf reader does work. Nook does read e-Pub format.
Understanding women is an eternal mystery to males and pre-adolescent girls are a particular annoyance. Of course their male counterparts are acne-ridden, smelly, giggly, insecure.
I associate Aubrey with names for boys. Can't believe she was desperate enough to fit in with those girls to climb into the cramped trunk of a car. Car tires have sidewalls, the fenders define the sides of a trunk. Page 32
heard not head pg 62
past not passed pg 96
The author sets his story in Burlington Ontario. Macys is in Burlington Mall. Smartphones are one thing and children have been known to run up massive charges on social media and gaming sites. Thirteen-year-olds with credit cards seems a recipe for disaster. Acquaintances gave their daughter a credit card for emergencies when she went off to university and she put them massively in credit card debt in short order. I didn't buy my own clothes or have money that was mine to spend until I went off to university.
Thirteen-yr-olds using make-up? Bad enough my fellow worker seemed to bathe in a 45 gallon drums of aqua velva. Do schools have scent-free policies?
And worlds collide in Aubrey's locker. Truent is from another planet but he's human and speaks English. Otherwise his thought processes and mental abilities are completely different. He wills doors to unlock. But the bigger issue is what can Aubrey do with a boy or boys. She can't take them home to her parents, and how to explain matters to the wider world or civil authorities.
The story ends abruptly leaving the fate of Truent and his buddies unresolved.
Thursday, October 03, 2024
Rise to the Horizon
Rise to the Horizon
Hyunah Kim
The story of a damaged thoroughbred and the horse whisperer Axel who tries to save him. The author seems obsessed with the man's beauty.
The author inserts herself into her tale as Axel's girlfriend.
This is the story of a boy and his horse, nothing else matters.
Wednesday, October 02, 2024
Black Ice
DreadfulWater #8
Black Ice: A DreadfulWater Mystery
Thomas King
And once more we enter the world of Tom King which has a turn of phrase and logic, or lack thereof, of its own. King loves to play on cliches and turn them on their heads. Cops and donuts being a favourite.
In this outing Thumps has assumed sheriff duties while Duke mourns the death of his wife. A large slobbery dog enters the picture. Golf becomes Wuty's latest craze. And Thumps becomes involved in a case that involves money laundering and secret government wrongdoing. Thumps is in over his head. Freeway's kitten has grown into massive male tiger. Somehow he keeps them fed.
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