Reviews and Comments

Ji FU

fu@millefeuilles.cloud

Joined 1 year, 10 months ago

Trying to find a better way to track books I want to read than a random spreadsheet. I had used readinglog.info which was provided by my local public library until they shut down the program. Luckily, I regularly backed it up via their CSV export. I've used Library Thing for years, but adding books for "To Read" really screwed up a lot of the other features of the website, like recommendations, etc. I really love Free Software & the Fediverse particularly. My primary social media account is on Friendica @fu@libranet.de for now everything I post here is automatically "re-tooted" there.

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Nick Offerman: Gumption (AudiobookFormat, 2015) No rating

As a follow up to his autobiography, Paddle Your Own Canoe, the star of Parks …

I'm only on disc 2 but so far I'm pretty disappointed. He's an atheist jerk. Offerman is pretty adamant that angels are mythical creatures like faires and Pegasus, that those who evangalize (he says try to convince people to join their religion) are breaking the spirit, though not the law, of the first amendment, and that Jesus hangs his head (when doing what he commissioned us to do as his last action in Matthew). Also he seems to be of the option the 2nd amendment is for protecting the right of hunting, like the right to keep and bare a fishing pole.

Marcus Sedgwick: Blood Red Snow White (Hardcover, 2017, Turtleback Books) 3 stars

Good but not great novel of one man's small part in revolutionary Russia.

3 stars

This book was pretty good, but one thing it is not is juvenile fiction: sex, murder, adultery, orgy, I don't want to expose my young adult to any of that. Thankfully it wasn't too graphic, though the description of the Tsar's son's hemophilia was more than enough to make me quesey and put the book down more than once.

The first part is told like a fairy tale. I'm usually not too big on symbolism, to the point I argued with my hush school English teacher that it didn't exist. Regardless it's quite clear the bear is the Russian people and Vlad and Leo are Trotsky and Lenin.

I almost thought that part was actually more interesting than the actual historical fiction part with English author Arthur Ransom and his Russian mistress. I was surprised that Ransom returned to England to be with his daughter for a time as in …

Audrey Niffenegger, William Hope, Laurel Lefkow: The Time Traveler's Wife (AudiobookFormat, 2008, HighBridge Audio) 2 stars

The Time Traveler's Wife is the debut novel by American author Audrey Niffenegger, published in …

Not very good

2 stars

I went into listening to this audiobook not really knowing a lot about it save its title and that it was popular enough to have been made into a movie.

This is not really a science fiction book at all, even though the title would lead you to believe. The Time Travel of the title is no Jules Verne character but a 21st century heart throb who has some kind of disease that forces him into other points in time without his ability to anything about. He can't take anything with him, so he always shows up naked, so he spends most of his time running and trying to find clothes. Somehow one of those naked adventures was to meet a 7 year old girl who would end up being his wife.

At the begining they author made it very clear that there are no multiverses, there is no possibility …

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Robert Barron: Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? (Paperback, 2014, Ignatius Press) 3 stars

This book is perhaps one of the most misunderstood works of Catholic theology of our …

Heavy theology that says not only can you but you SHOULD have hope.

3 stars

I don't know why I keep reading these heavy theology books. Well I do know why, I'm hoping to learn more about my own faith so that I can better communicate to those who need more "there" there than I do in order to believe. Yet I went away from this not really learning anymore than I did from reading discririptions of this work and the author's Wikipedia page.

Basically, we know hell is a real place. Jesus made this quite clear. The Church can verify if someone is in heaven (the Saints who have been beatified) but we have no way of verifying for certain that someone is in hell. The Bible teaches that God desires that all men be saved, so who are we to claim that God does not save all men?

Personally I am not a universalist (someone who believes everyone will go to heaven) but …

reviewed Independence! by Dana Fuller Ross

Dana Fuller Ross, Phil Gigante: Independence! (AudiobookFormat, 2009, Brilliance Audio, Distributed by MicroMarketing LLC.) 4 stars

The year is 1837. The American West is untamed, uncivilized, and largely unclaimed. U.S. President …

Adventure, romance & conspiracy

4 stars

I gave this book as a gift to my father years ago when I was hoping to get him to do something other than watch T.V. westerns all day. He got so into it that by the next time I visited he had borrowed like a dozen books in the series from the library. He said he stopped reading them when he realized it was a romance. I wanted to see what he got all fusted about.

How you couldn't figure out it was a romance within the first few chapters, I have no idea. But not like trashy romance novel with a bare-chested man on the cover and steamy sex scenes more the widow who doesn't need no man, and the mountain man who don't need no woman who think they hate each-other end up needing to rely on each other.

Story starts with Andrew Jackson trying to organize …

reviewed Batman, No Man's Land by Greg Rucka

Greg Rucka: Batman, No Man's Land (2000, Atria) 4 stars

Gotham City, leveled by a massive earthquake, has become a lawless battleground, and to make …

Good adaptation in novel form of comic book event

4 stars

Rucka was one of the authors who contributed to the late 90s "Batman No Man's Land" event over the course of 83 separate comics. He writes the novelization in a way that gets the story across while still wanting to go out and buy 83 twenty-five-year-old comic books.

The story goes that an Earthquake destroyed much of Gotham City, and then a hurricane and because it would cost so much to repair, and Gotham was already notorious for being a government sink hole due to all the crime the feds declared it a No Man's Land and was cut off from the rest of the country, blew up the bridges, put mines in the seas and told Gotham good luck and good riddance.

The normal baddies stayed behind: Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Poison Ivy & Black Mask. Plus the to be expected regular dudes just trying to make it in gangs. …

Michael MacCambridge: Lamar Hunt (Hardcover, 2012, Andrews McMeel Pub.) No rating

The definitive and official biography of one of the 20th century's most important and beloved …

This is the other non-fiction I might pick up next. I borrowed it from the library years ago, and it was due before I finished. I got it for Christmas that year and I'm worried that if i don't pick it up soon I'll forget where I left off.