Reading Activity roundup

My reading continues apace, but not a lot of new series that I have tried that I thought were exceptional, but I'll be adding some reviews for them regardless.

Existing series that I have read recently:

Victor of Tucson 7 and 8 - Plum Parrot has continued to deliver a strong story.  It's really remarkable the quality hasn't wavered.

Unintended Cultivator 6 - Still good.  Some foreshadowing.

Iron Tyrant 3 - A rare instance of the 3rd book being better than the other two.

Path of Ascension 9 (I think) - Powered through because I'm already 8 books into it.  The end was excellent though.

Ultimate level 1 book 8 - Lots of things have changed since the early books. I'm not sure where this one is going, but I will be reading book 9

Reading activity roundup

Reading Roundup

So as I said, I am not going to put up full reviews of books that are deep into a series unless they're exceptional (good or bad).

These are books I've read recently that are deep into a series.  I don't think I DNF'ed any of them so take that as a nominal endorsement.

Silver Fox and the Wester Hero Book 8

Buldoun's Blunder - Aether's Rival Book 10

Ultimate Level 1 -Book 7

Rise of the Living Forge - Book 3

Quest Academy - Book 4

Ultimate Level 1 - Book 8

CBR - what's going on?

I apologize for the lack of reviews but I have made a conscious decision to focus my reviews on books that are early in a series.  So if I read book 8 or 9 in a series, I'm not going to put up a review for it unless it completely goes off the rails.  By the time you get that deep in a series, expectations are set, and people know if they like it or not.  

This decision has had the predictable result that if I spend a week reading book 9 of Silver Fox and the Western Hero or Buldoun's Blunder, I won't have anything to put up.  I have been trying to branch out and try new series so the Author tags are going to get some new entries.

I have some reviews lined up, I just need to get them queued up and published.

Farewell 2024

Well here we are, 2024 is over, and it's a whole new year.

I don't know if this picture is a sunrise or a sunset, and that's oddly appropriate because it could be the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025.

2024 was a pretty crap year for me, mostly because of the loss of my brother by another mother.  In July I was struggling with coping with the grief, so I took the step to see a grief counselor, and she was very helpful.  I feel like I have gotten past the primary danger there.  I have struggled with having any creative energy and while I have kept up my reading, I have not felt like doing reviews.

I'm going to try reviving CBR, and we'll see if I can find the motivation to keep up with it.  Lord knows I have a large backlog.

In Memorium: The best man I've ever known

So last Saturday I went to a gaming event with my best friend.  I've known this man for 34 years.  He was the best man at my wedding, and I was a groomsman at his.  Our sons were born 2 months apart.  I have had to talk him down a few times when things were going sideways for him.  I'm not exaggerating when I say he saved my life when my life went sideways.

He dropped me off at my house on his way home.  He lives 3 blocks from me.  Thirty minutes later my wife hears sirens.  Pulse Point says it's at his house.  Their neighbor texts my wife that one of his sons (5 kids) is in the front yard hugging the neighbor. That was enough to send me down there.

He had called 911 before handing off the phone to his  15 year old daughter, then collapsed.  She started CPR on him, and switched off with his 20 year old son.

The EMT's worked on him for an hour before taking him to the ambulance.  His wife was out of town at a work conference, and she asked me to go to the hospital with him. I took his 20 year old son with me and he was pronounced dead almost as soon as we got there.  I will never forget the anguish in his son's voice when he screamed "You mean he's fucking dead?!!!   Why!?  I'm only 20, what the fuck am I going to do now?!"

My wife said I may have gotten 5 more kids, and honestly I'm ok with that.  We mutually pledged to take care of each other's families if anything happened, and I guess it happened.

I'm not sure when CBR will pick back up, but now you know why it just stopped.

Fair winds and following seas my friend.  I will see you on the other side. You will be missed.

Blog update

For the few people wondering, I didn't have a post yesterday because I have been sick, and just haven't been up for doing a post.  I have some books queued up, but translating that into posts takes brain power, and that's been in short supply

Post holiday update start

Hey everyone, apologies for the long gap, but Christmas was busy busy, and I had lots of things to work on.

I'm going to get started with reviews today and I have a pile of them to do.  I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year.

Apologies to my followers

I suddenly realized it's been about 6 weeks since I last updated this.  I'm still alive, but I've been playing a LOT of Starfield.  It's the most fun I've had in a video game in a long time.  I think I just passed 200 hours.  It's not perfect, but no game is.  I'm still having fun, and still haven't done everything. Don't believe the haters, give it a go.  4.8/5

I have been doing some reading, so I'll get this place updated soon.

Blog update!

What!?  Two updates in one month?  Well, no, but tomorrow I get Starfield and I wanted to get caught up with stuff before I get a distraction.  I really hope it's as good as it looks. Look for another update in a few weeks.

Update done!

Well friends, it's been longer than normal between updates, and we're already at the tail end of summer.  I hope you've found some books that you are enjoying reading.  The fall and winter look good for releases.

This is what I have on my calendar.

•  8/18 Aster Fall book 6
• 9/13 Path of Ascension 4
• 9/27 Unbound book 8
• 10/3 Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever
• 10/18 Mark of the Fool 5
• 11/20 Alexis Carew book 7
• 11/21 Beware of Chicken 3

June update complete!

So my loyal readers, that's all for this month.  My to-read pile is out of control so there's a lot that I'm going to be working on. Hopefully there are some winners in there. Fortunately for my sanity, the pending releases in July and August are pretty limited, so not much is on the "Upcoming" list. I imagine there will be some releases I don't know about but this is what's on my calendar.

A big hand is due to Will Wight for successfully landing the Cradle series and avoiding the "just one more book" trap.  I do wonder if we'll see Lindon and Yerin again.

So what I have on my list upcoming is:

Aster Fall 6 - August 18th

Monster Hunter Memoirs - Fever - October 3rd

Alexis Carew book 7 - November 20th

Beware of Chicken 3 - November 21st

Monthly blog update done

Ok, so maybe I missed "monthly" but it was close.  Some quick bullet points that don't get their own post:

• He Who Fights with Monsters book 9 came out.  It's good, if you're a fan of the series you probably don't need me to tell you it's out there, just go read it.
• Upcoming and current releases:
• Unbound book 7 (Out now)
• Cultivating Chaos 4 (Out now)
• May 17th, Path of Ascension 3
• May 23rd, Electrified book 2
• May 24th, BattleMage Farmer 5 
• June 6th, Cradle book 12 
• June 6th, Victor of Tucson book 2
• June 6th, Reforged (sequel to Forgemaster)
• June 13th, All the Skills book 2
• August 18th, Echoes of War (Aster's Fall book 6)

Blog mega update complete

Hey sorry for the long delay guys, this has been a busy month.  A LOT of really good books came out and I have been doing a lot of gaming stuff.  Here are some pictures from the convention I went to this weekend.

Near-future upcoming releases, and such

Hello to my readers, as bizarre as that looks to write.

Since my last update I've obviously been reading a lot, but it being the holidays and all I didn't have time or inclination to update CBR.  That has been taken care of as of today and I'm happy about it.

Cupcake girls was really good. It had as the hip people say today "All the feels".  I mean holy crap.  Can't recommend that series enough.

That being said we have some much-anticipated sequels coming out starting tomorrow so I'm going to throw them out.

•  Path of Ascension 2 - Tomorrow Feb 7th! https://www.amazon.com/Path-Ascension-LitRPG-Adventure-ebook/dp/B0BGJN8BV8
• Revealed (Jade Phoenix 2) - Thursday the 9th!   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BTPRRK4K
• Unbound Book 6 - February 15th   https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BN6S7Q5P
• Battle Mage Farmer 4 - Feb 21st   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BL8YD7LL
• Mark of the Fool 3 - April 11th
• He who Fights with Monsters 9 - April 18th
• Apparently the Firewall series is up to 3 books, if I find time I'll try book 2.

CBR update

Apologies to everyone, my reading pace fell off a bit over the last few weeks, and I haven't had much content to put up.  I have a stack of about 5-6 books that I have started and haven't finished, but haven't given up on yet either.  I have 3 reviews to do and I hope to get them done today.

Update about CBR

Hey look it's a non-review post!  I intentionally keep this type of stuff to an absolute minimum, mainly because the purpose behind the blog is book reviews.

To make things easier to find, I have started tagging (labeling) all my posts, and I thought it would be good to point this out.

Tag

• Review - The post is a book review (duh)
• <last name of author>  - If an author gets more than 2 reviews, I start tagging his reviews with his last name.  I don't bother for one-offs because if it's bad I won't be coming back to them (probably).
• General crap - Stuff about the blog, possibly a rant
• Definitions - Stuff like this
• Hall of Fame - A tag I intend to be very rare, but given out to books I especially enjoy.  I will endeavor to keep this specific to the *book* and not just blanket every author I like with it.

Books - what I like, what I don't like

 Everyone has different tastes in books, so here are some things I like and what I don't.

Likes:

Main character that has some confidence.  If an MC is constantly navel gazing about how lucky he or she is to have Sally (or Sammy) Love Interest actually like them, well that's going to get old quick.

First person POV

Characters that feel like they're real

Dislikes:

POV shifts - If you have a book which is essentially 2 or 3 stories which you jump between I'm going to drop it pretty fast.  It breaks the narrative, it pulls me out of one story bubble and puts me in another.  I'm old, it annoys me to have the story pause and have a different one start.

Stories where I dislike the main character.

Welcome! - The rating scale defined

 Welcome to the Curmudgeon's Corner Book reviews.

This scale started as a joke, but seemed to gain some kind of legitimacy, which is a never-ending source of bemusement to me, but after many many weeks of being bugged about it, I started this blog to aggregate my ratings.

I read a lot of books on Kindle Unlimited, so most of these books will be available through KU.

Now hopefully if I give a book a poor rating I don't get an author being butt-hurt in the comments, but his rating is just my opinion and if you write a book and I don't like it just means I don't like it.  Doesn't make it bad, just not to my taste.  So man up and accept that people are different.

Oh yeah, and I am probably not going to be terribly PC, so there's that.  You have been warned.

Curmudgeon scale

·       1 star:  Caused me physical pain, and possibly injury.  Did not finish.  Will avoid further works by the author.  Proceed with extreme caution, and possibly liberal alcohol. 

·       2 star:  Did not cause me physical pain, but still did not finish.  Probably won’t give the author another chance.

·       3 star:  Finished, but question whether or not that was wise.  May or may not give the author another chance.  Reading the sequel is 50/50 

·       4 star:  Finished it.  Decent.  Will probably read the sequel 

·       5 star:  Finished, enjoyed it thoroughly.   Highly recommended. 

·       5+ star:  Rare rating where the book rates at the top of the 5 scale  If you don't read this you probably hate fun.