Gord’s Comments (group member since Apr 06, 2017)

Gord’s comments from the Vampires, Weres and Fae! group.

I'm in as usual

A: All Systems Red
B: Butts: A Backstory
C: Cryptid Club
D: Dark Frost
E: The Elusive Samurai, Vol. 1
F: Faithless
G: Garlic and the Witch
H: Hunter x Hunter, Vol. 03
I: It Happened One Summer
J: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 1—Phantom Blood, Vol. 1
K: Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear (Light Novel) Vol. 13
L: Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 12
M: Moonlight and Magic
N: Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting
O: Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu, Volume 10
P: Princess Jellyfish 2-in-1 Omnibus, Vol. 2
Q:
R: Reincarnated as a Sword (Light Novel) Vol. 1
S: SAKAMOTO DAYS 4
T: The Treasure of the Black Swan
U: Under the Table
V: Vampire Hunter D
W: Written in Red
X:
Y: Yu-Gi-Oh! (3-in-1 Edition), Vol. 6: Includes Vols. 16, 17 18
Z: Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor

0/50

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Just four more hours of work left in the year. I would have had all my work done yesterday but incompetence by others led to delays. Regardless I've got about 30ish minutes of work today and then it's time to cruise into the new year.

For the record, glitter is the devil.

Cee wrote: "This is such an enlightening challenge.

I’ve been enjoying keeping track of how much I save."

Exactly. It's been real eye opening in regards to how much this hobby of mine costs and how much the library helps me save.

January: $617.83
February: $704.53
March: $465.26
April: $705.66
May: $714.46
June: $732.91
July: $770.27
August: $626.26
September: $1,020.03
October: $539.77
November: $589.76
December:

Total: $7,486.24

I watched Shin Godzilla this evening as I found it on Crunchyroll and that was a pretty solid movie.

Well things are not looking bad so far. I've just been sorting out paperwork and getting myself settled in. It looks like I might have a couple of things to get done and then a bunch of stuff to get put away which isn't bad. I'd still rather be at home reading but I guess I can't complain about this to much.

I leave in about 1.5 hours from now and I feel like the stereotypical teen from a movie "no mom I don't want to go". I have no idea what I'm facing today. It could be 2.5 days of sheer chaos, absolutely nothing, or something in between. I highly doubt there will be much in the way of new orders this week so there is that I guess. There is also the fact that most work will have to be done by tomorrow as very little will be shipping on Friday. Can't I just say I went to work when in reality I just stayed home and read for a few more days?

One last update before I return to work

-3 Stars
I snagged this because it was short and helped with a few challenges. The best kind of challenge book honestly. This book wasn't bad but it also had a lot of peculiarities while also triggering a whole lot of nostalgia for me. The primary focus of this book was the death of a young Chechen woman outside of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. There was also a second mystery involving the death of a young woman in London but the two cases had nothing to do with each other. This is where the weirdness begins. Apparently in the first book the police officer from Ottawa was sent to London to work a case involving a Canadian diplomat. She ends up working with the main contact from Scotland Yard (or maybe the metropolitan police?) and they become friends. In this book that case is over and she returns to Ottawa. Both characters stay a part of the story though. So you have these two cases going on where the story swaps back and forth but outside of this small connection they have nothing in common. For the longest time I was waiting for some big twist to come that would link the two cases together but it never happened. About half way through the case in London just up and disappeared not to be addressed again until the final chapter. The case is never actually solved and we are just left hanging at the end. Why did you introduce this story line for it to go no where? I'm assuming that it will be solved in the third book (which I'm not reading) but it just felt weird. There was all this set up, all this investigation, and then nothing. For the case in Ottawa it just kind of meandered along and then all of sudden the case is resolved when some guy gets arrested for shoplifting. Our MC shows up and goes "ah you are really such and such person and you did the killing". What? Where the hell did this come from? Then things escalate like a Ferrari off the line. Suddenly you have this threat of Islamic terrorists, a terror cell, illegal immigration, forged document ring, etc. Again though before we really start getting into anything our MC basically shrugs and goes "meh, that is the problem of another department" and the story line ends. This isn't even getting into some of the weirder small things that bugged me about this book. Things like calling the suspect an expert marksman because they could hit a human torso from across the street with an assault rifle. Or how the London case was weirdly obsessed with the victims weight. You were constantly reminded that the victim was a big girl. Not in a malicious way but at the same time it felt kind of weird.

Now for the nostalgia aspect of the book. This book was set in January 1998 in Ottawa. One of the big aspects of the book was the massive ice storm that rocked the area that year. I lived on the other side of the country but I remember that event well. The Chechen refugees takes me back to the summer of '99. I was on a summer course in Ontario for cadets and we spent the summer sleeping in tents on the base because the normal barracks that would have been used were full of refugees from Chechnya. One of the witnesses talk about having to leave soon to get to their shift at Zeller's which is a name I have not heard in a very long time. Then there was the word tabernac. Tabernac is French Canadian swear word and probably one of the first swear words I learned in another language. With my life experiences this is a word I heard a lot for a while and it's seared into the back of my brain. There is still a small teenage part in my brain that snickers every time I see this word in a book and I kind of loved seeing it here.

Overall this book was dry, the budding romance between the two characters was awkward, and everything just felt like the introduction to a bigger and better plot that just never happened.

-4 Stars
My monthly installment of emotional damage. I've been very open in regards to my love of this series even for all the pain that it has caused. I don't think this was the strongest book in the series and it comes down to tone. This book is essentially two story lines that are interconnected. One story, the one that the book opens with, is a high octane, high stakes, active shooter and hostage situation. The other story is much slower paced small town murder mystery that is there to explore the characters. Either story line by themselves would be great but something about putting them together just didn't work for me. In particular the small town mystery was rather interesting with a rather shocking reveal that I didn't expect. Regardless of how I felt about this book I am ready for next months book.

-4 Stars
This was a manga that I've been aware of but never read. It popped up in the library feed and here I am. This is a josei manga or a manga marketed for adult women. This is an area of manga that I have little experience with. It's not as big of a section of manga and a lot of it just never gets translated. This was an interesting read honestly. Kind of a time capsule of life in the early 2000's. You have this apartment building that is for women only. The residents of this building are all women otaku's who are NEET's. NEET is an acronym for Not Employed, in Education, or in Training. There are a lot of story elements going on in this story. There is a budding romance, there is a development project buying up all the land in the area including the apartment all these women live in, the young male MC is a cross dresser (with reasons why), there are political elements. It's an interesting start to a series and I'm interested to see where this goes.

-4 Stars
More Komi fun and shenanigans. I'm really enjoying this series and I'm glad I picked it up.

-3 Stars
This was a random snag from the library that finally came in. It's a simple story of friendship, romance, and baking. Our young MC loves to bake and can come up with recipes on the spot. She gets noticed by a famous food critic and is invited to one of those food competition shows. It's middle grade and the message is a bit on the nose but it's still a decent book.

-3 Stars
Another random snag from the library and I have some conflicted feelings. On one hand I love the set up and the world for this book. It's kind of got a medieval Mediterranean vibe to it. The character is faced with this inescapable evil and must set out with a party to figure out how to defeat it. The artwork is great and the world building is interesting. I think the biggest problem with this book is the length. It's just to short and the book doesn't have time to properly explore the world, it's themes, or expand on the characters. So when it gets to the big reveal at the end it just feels undeserved. I'm not going to spoil the ending as this is a fairly new comic but I just don't feel like there was the set up for it. Also, slight nitpick, I'm not a fan of vague names like the The Distance for the big evil.

-4 Star
A stupidly cute manga about how cute cats are and then those cute cats giving massages.

-5 Stars
More comfy camping vibes from one of my favorite manga series.

-3 Stars
Another random snag from the library. Right before Christmas there was a big release of several things on my holds queue hence all the random snags. A high school romance where the jock discovers his interest in boys all with a heaping scoop of paranormal stuff on top. It's not a bad comic. There was a unique twist with the art in this one. There are two authors for this comic and each author took a turn drawing a chapter for the comic. The art styles would switch between each chapter. Enough that you could tell they were different but not enough that it was jarring. It was an interesting idea.

I've kind of decimated my reading pile from the library and I need to restock this week. On audio I'll be starting as I need to finish it this week. Today I'm reading as a final relaxed read before heading back to work. Depending on how busy things are at work will really determine what and how much more I read this week.

It's been a pretty good holiday season and I've got some ideas floating around inside my head for some changes in 2023.

It was 18 days off and part of me knows it was over two weeks ago that I was at work but another part is "where did the time all go?". My biggest problem right now is trying to remember all my login passwords at work.

I'm kind of bummed right now. I only have one more day of vacation left and I can already feel my mind starting to shift back into the work mindset. There are things that I need to get done before I go back to work. There is also that part of my brain that is trying to plan out my work day even though I haven't been there in 2.5 weeks and have no idea what is going on. There is a part of me that is looking forward to getting back to a regular schedule. Don't get me wrong the vacation has been great and I've finished some "light" reading but there is also that part of me that likes the schedule, the stimulation of work, talking with people besides myself.

I finished up Indelible and while I liked parts of it the sum total just didn't work for me. It's still a good book but I think the pacing kind of threw me off. I just want to talk about this without having to tiptoe around spoilers so spoiler wall.

(view spoiler)[
This book opened up by kicking down the door and immediately putting the pedal to the metal. That opening was intense as all hell and I was strapping myself in for another intense book in this series when all of a sudden the anchor came out and killed all the intensity. We go from an active shooter/hostage situation to packing for a vacation to Florida. It just such a massive tonal switch that it just yanked me out of the book. These two different story lines were so far a part that it made switching between them rather hard. I also feel a bit cheated. The super intense story line that kicks open the door in chapter one becomes essentially a B plot to the small town drama. I almost wish that the author had just made this book some sort of prequel book and dropped the whole active shooter situation honestly. I enjoyed the mystery in Jeffrey's small town and I think that my only real complaint with it was caused by the active shooter story line. The need to hide the identity of who the shooters were felt like it dragged things out a bit. There were a few times about 3/4 of the way in where I was close to screaming "Just sit down and fucking talk already. Enough with all these secrets and trying to hide things." Now the big reveal about Robert was totally unexpected for me. I knew he didn't do it but at the same time I just wasn't sure what the heck was going on there. So when he dropped the bomb that he was gay I was a bit shocked. The sheer amount of self hate that the man has was also incredibly tragic. I don't know if he ever pops up again in the story but I seriously hope the man was able to get some help and find some love in his life. As for the big reveal at the end I kind of figured it out early on. There was to much smoke around Robert/Jeffery for there to actually be anything there. I wasn't fully ruling it out but it seemed highly unlikely. That to me left Hoss or Richie and Richie seemed like to a red herring to me. Hoss just seemed to fit in my head and that reveal was good.

Overall this book was good but I just felt that it wasn't the strongest in the series for me. (hide spoiler)]

The author, Jean Paré, of the famous Company's Coming cook books passed away on Christmas Eve. Not sure if those cook books were a thing south of the border but I remember my moms kitchen having several well used copies floating around.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/loca...

Ahh yes, I pick up Indelible and the characters are absolute pieces of shit in the very first chapter. It's been a minute since I read the last one and I almost forgot what these books are like. Thanks for reminding me book.

I went for a walk this afternoon and man do I feel better for doing so.

Merry Christmas, Happy Halloween, etc, etc, etc.

*slithers back into his cave*

I'm reading this short book just to knock out a challenge task and there is something that just both making me laugh and frustrating the hell out of me. It's a mystery and the police are investigating the death of a woman who was shot in the back. They are claiming that the murderer has to be an expert shot because they shot the woman from across the street with an AK47. How is that an expert shot? Average street - 50', max range of an AK47- 985'. The book doesn't specify that the shot was specifically placed either. It was just a shot into the woman's back. You know, the largest and easiest target to hit on a person. A blind man could probably make this shot.

It's weird things like this that just bug me in books.

I updated my 2022 sheet for 2023. I'll be honest I cut out most of the sheet as I just didn't care about most of what was tracked. Basically I track the basic details of the book (author, publication date), the start/end date, page count, genre, stars rated. I'm also keeping the feature to track your dollar amount as that is interesting to me. I've also got some notes for series to read for both manga and normal books. About the only thing I'm left pondering is if I want to split fantasy in fantasy and urban fantasy and if I want to add a SoL genre tag.