Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

I want SO bad to do an imitation of the introduction to 'Huckleberry Finn' in this opening. As a matter of fact, if you haven't read 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn,' you shouldn't be wasting your time on THIS bit of drivel (and I refer to this review, not the book. The book is not drivel), you should read those. Mark Twain INVENTED American literature, and dang near invented the best of American morality at the same time. Before him, American writers (maybe a few exceptions) wrote in this hoity-toity literature-snob kind of way, because they were ashamed of not being Yurrupean. Here's the link to Gutenberg for Tom Sawyer , and here's the link to Huckleberry Finn . Go on, if you haven't read them, read them NOW. This will wait. It's not THAT important. But do try to return, because Peter's second book in the Laredo Trilogy is cheery, clever, congenial, darling, gratifying, ineffable, lush, pleasurable, rapturous, ravishing, scrumpt...

NO: I CHANGED MY MIND. THIS IS ONLY A REVIEW OF THE FIRST VOLUME! Okay, the little extra is this: I've got to toss in a quick review of 'War To The Knife," which is the first book in the Laredo trilogy. I reviewed the work on Amazon on November 13, 2014, but at that time I was not cross-posting Amazon reviews to my then-moribund blog. Furthermore, my review was really a non-review. I knew that I wanted to read a book by Peter Grant, but as it turns out, there are AT LEAST two Peter Grants who publish books in the Amazon KU program, and I inadvertently got the other one.  I figured it out when I got to the first explicit gay porn scene; I stopped with the mention of the zipper, so I don't know HOW explicit it was, but I knew that I had the wrong Peter Grant. (The other Peter Grant was done no harm by my error, as I read at least 10% of the book by that point, and under the provisions of KULL at the time, he received full payment.) But then, it turned out to be beneficia...

I've been a fan of Tom Kratman since around 2003, I believe, beginning with "A State of Disobedience," and a fan of Keith Laumer's Bolos for even longer. I love the power of the Bolo. I love their affection for their people, and their devotion to duty. I love reading that they do an internal system diagnostic that takes exactly .00000036 seconds. But what I really love about the Bolo is not their strength; what I really love about them is their weakness. You simply can't have a story about an invulnerable hero, or even an invulnerable villain. That's why Superman has to have Kryptonite and Lois Lane. they provide the means by which he may be attacked, and so the stories become cliffhangers: how will he get out of THIS one? There's always one thing about a Bolo story you can count on: someone is going to become more human. Sometimes it's a Bolo, sometimes it's a person, maybe even an alien, but there will ALWAYS be a point at which the invincible ma...

Under normal circumstances, I would not blog two reviews in one day. HOWEVER, for circumstances discussed earlier ad nauseum, I have experienced nothing like normal circumstances for about a month or more. I have owed Cedar this review since (gulp) May 19. Cedar, by the way, is on her way to LibertyCon, and will be getting married tomorrow. I wish her and First Reader Sanford Begley a most wonderful celebration of their life, and hope the thunderstorm that's ripping through north Georgia at the moment will suck all the bad weather out of Chattanooga. In any event, I am assured that she will show her shoulders, and that sight alone will disperse rainclouds, or at least shame them into compliance.   The Young Lady Grows Into Her Power , June 24, 2015 By  Amazon Customer  (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from:  The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) (Kindle Edition) Vulcan's Kittens was a great beginning, and God's Wolfling is a great book 2. There had BET...

Alma Boykin, that richly rewarding delightful writer from Texas, has a couple on KU that you need to get  borrow now, because if you wait until then, her income drops a bit. That's ME talking there, not her; it's because Amazon is rationalizing the payout under the KU program. That's a good thing, but it's also a good thing to send Alma some extra dough while you can. If you wait until July 1, then she won't get more money by loaning the book than she would get by selling it. Both of these a sweet satires on the foolishness of politics, or at least, American style politics. They are short stories, and rather than belabor the point, I'm just going to quote my Amazon reviews:   A tasty watermelon, chunked at the heads of those who presume power , June 24, 2015 By  Amazon Customer  (Woodstock, Georgia, USA) This review is from:  Mammals and Amends: or Bad Politician, No, No! (Kindle Edition) Sometimes, idiocy is its' own reward. At other times, the idiocy is so...

I am very grateful to Castalia House for providing me with review copies of Mr. Wright's work. Their kindness to me exceeds the minimum a reviewer might expect from a publisher; I was also supplied with non-Hugo nominated work, simply because the publisher loved the work and wanted to share it with me. I'm gonna ramble, because at the end, I'm going to say something I don't want to say. Forgive my pedantry, it's just a cover for cowardice. John C. Wright is a master at an art form that seems to have fallen into disfavor, the novella. The word length for the categories go as follows: novel, 40K+; novella, 17.5k - 40K; novelette, 7.5K - 17.5 K; short story, less than 7.5K. Wiser heads than mine can explain the rationale for the divisions; until you come up with a better source, I suggest you take a look at the Mad Genius Club and use the search function. Here's a basic definitions page , it will work until you have a blues man in the back and a beautician at the w...

This is SUCH a long overdue blog post, and there are multiple reasons for it. I'm going to toss out quickly that I had a series of hardware failures, followed immediately by pneumonia. And then I'm going to confess that it goes much deeper than that. See, I'm a BOOK reviewer. I review BOOKS. And other written things, like novellas and short stories. I don't review PEOPLE. I review BOOKS. Now, it is ABSOLUTELY and wonderfully the case that my book reviews have given me the chance to interact with people, lovely people, people who write books, and people who read books, and, oh, just LOTS of wonderful people with whom I carry on snerky little conversations about life, the universe, and everything. But mostly, I review books. Then, the Hugo Nominations come out, and to my delight, THREE of my friends are in the running for Best Fan Writer: Dave Freer, Amanda Green, and Cedar Sanderson. I know them in their fan writer identity, because I follow their blogs, individually as ...

I don't jam my beliefs or practices down the throats of others, but those beliefs and practices are literally a matter of life or death for me. And that's how I ended Part1, and started Part 2. And it's the theme of the whole series. I have to start by telling you I'm sick about the murders last night at the Emanuel AME Church Wednesday night Bible study in Charleston, SC. You all know that I refer to my wife by her extended title, which includes the phrase 'praying black grandmother.' That is a title with MEANING; I believe I am alive today because I had a praying grandmother. And last night, after Bible study, in addition to the pastor, six women and two men were murdered. I know the names or ages of none, but there is a quote from a family member that his Granny was among those killed. Was it six praying grandmothers and two praying grandfathers? I don't know, but I DO know that none of those present at Wednesday night Bible study  last night were a threa...

I don't jam my beliefs or practices down the throats of others, but those beliefs and practices are literally a matter of life or death for me. That's how I ended part 1, more or less. It's important enough that I repeat it here, and expand and extend. There are some things I believe that aren't really a big deal. I believe my decision to ride Honda motorcycles instead of some other brand has been a good one. Am I right, or wrong? Even I don't care very much about that. It mattered more, back in the day when I was riding with a club, because everybody thought their own motor was the best. Now, doesn't matter much. In fact, a little while ago, I told my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant foxy praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, that I was going to sell the house and buy a Harley, with a nice heated back seat for her comfort, and we were gonna hit the road. Never gonna happen, but it shows that my belief about Honda motorcy...

Y'all. this ain't fair! I was downstairs in my man cave when I started hurting, so my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa Patterson​, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, decided to move me upstairs to the bedroom, where there is air conditioning. She helped me carry stuff upstairs, specifically, she carried my pinto beans and corn bread. I grabbed the laptop & keyboard and WIRED mouse, and then she made a return trip to get my water and medicine. SO: I set the laptop down on our twin recliner (where I sleep), and then sat down on the bed (where she sleeps & me too when I can), only to discover that my pants were on fire. Not really, but it felt like it. She had set my pinto beans and corn bread on the BED!!! and I SAT in the PINTO BEANS!!! And it was HOT!!! And then she LAUGHED at me as I'm ripping off my boxers to separate my pristine flesh from boiling pinto bean juice!!! See, I don't really object to having my rear...

While I was in the Army, 42 years ago (that's pretty freaky, actually), I was told that because I was a Christian, I was a tolerant bigot. It bothered me. A lot. I was cool with the tolerant part, but I sure didn't like the bigot label. The young man who gave me that label was a bit of an authority figure to me. In his mid 20s, he was MUCH older than I was at 19;, he was a Spec-4 or Spec-5, and I was but a PFC; he had served a tour in Viet Nam, and I was at my first duty station there in Germany. All that conspired to put me a bit in awe of him. That was likely evident, and it gave him license to play with my head a little. When I spluttered, he explained: I was a bigot, because I regarded my beliefs as being correct, and others as being incorrect; I was tolerant, because I did not attempt to force anyone to believe the things that I did. "Oh," I thought. "That seems true to me. I must be a tolerant bigot." After a minor (very minor) bit of mulling the thou...

Internet friends, I want you to know that I am writing this blog post with a disabled keyboard, supplemented by the 'on-screen keyboard' app-thing for when some of the letters go away. It's become that important to me. I AM going to check this for errors, but if you see that a letter is missing, that's the reason. Note: t, p, and 1 are the most likely to go. In fact, I'm amazed that sentence just worked... Here's the precipitating issue: I started to write Hugo run-up reviews several weeks ago, right after the nominations were announced, in fact. MOST, not all, of my reviews were Hugo related, although not necessarily of current 2015 nominated works. In some cases, and in one particular case (Tour of Duty, by Michael Z. Williamson) there were other factors involved in making my selections. I was cranking right along when I started having computer malfs. First one laptop died, then another, and I simply CANNOT articulate well using the painfully slow keyboard on ...