Welcome to the Book Blogger Hop! 

What To Do

 

With so many venues currently shut down, many entertainers have suddenly found themselves completely unable to do what they love or even earn a living. However, just because the spotlights are dark doesn’t mean there aren't other ways to bring your craft to the masses. Here are just a few ways to share your talent, and maybe pay a few bills in the process, without leaving your home.

Everyone's favorite ventriloquist's dummy is back in Goosebumps Slappyworld: My Friend Slappy by R.L. Stine. To be more precise, Scholastic released the book on October 6th, 2020, and due to unfortunate events, I am just now getting around to read to review it.

My Friend Slappy is the 12th installment of the newest incarnation of the Goosebumps franchise. Goosebumps SlappyWorld debuted in 2017 with Slappy as the narrator, and occasionally he plays the villain within whatever story he's telling. The main character in this tale is 6th grader Barton "Sluggs" Suggs. When he's not being bullied by his classmates Kelly and Travis, he's hanging out his only real friend, Lizzie Hellman. Well, that's until his father gives him a special present - a ventriloquist's dummy named Slappy!

Barton quickly learns that Slappy isn't your typical dummy, as he can walk and talk just like a human being, but there's a twist - Slappy is pure evil. Yep, that's right! At first, all Slappy wants to do is terrorize Barton, but he changes his mind once he learns the boy needs a best friend to show him how to get back at Kelly and Travis.

In the world of Goosebumps, the saying "Best Friend Forever" isn't a good thing, and poor Barton's new pal becomes a living nightmare for him.

Final Thoughts

I don't know about other Goosebumps readers, but I was starting to get a Slappy fatigue. Don't get me wrong, I love the character, but each new story involving a ventriloquist's dummy feels the same. A 12-year-old protagonist would either receive Slappy as a gift or somehow stumble upon Slappy by themself. Then Slappy comes to life and turns the kid's life upside down.  

My Friend Slappy starts with the exact formula, but thanks to a few interesting twists, the story has a different outcome. Barton is the protagonist in this tale, and he's more fleshed out than typical your typical Goosebumps character would be. The poor kid has to deal with bullies and Slappy at the same time.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Goosebumps SlappyWorld: My Friend Slappy. It's one of the better entries in the Slappyworld series, but the "shocking" ending could have been better.

Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer!

12/13/20 - I would have had this post pre-written last night, but sleep got in the way, so here I am working on it now. It's one of those mornings where my brain is awake, but my eyes aren't. My eyes have been a bit wacky for the last few days because of the weird weather. Lubricant eye drops and a humidifier both help to some degree. 

I have some good news - I finished pulling out the carpets from my parent's house, or more specifically, I took everything out of an unorganized room, ripped up the carpet, and cleaned the floor. I moved back in the heavy desk, filing cabinet, an old sewing machine cabinet, and three bookshelves. I set up three plastic folding tables in a U-shaped pattern, which my mom is using for sewing, cutting, and ironing. Then I put together a 9-cube organizer bookcase, and I also installed a coax cable in the room for a small TV, which can now pick up local channels. FYI: I did all of this in one day.

What Am I Reading?

For the first time in a long time, I got a little reading done. I read and reviewed two Amish eBooks, and yesterday I finished reading Goosebumps Slappyworld: My Friend Slappy by R.L. Stine. And I'm currently on page 130 in the Christmas tale The Noel Letters by Richard Paul Evans. 

My next reads will be Whispering Hearts by V.C. Andrews, Weeks: Book 2 by Jasyn T. Turley, and Writers of the Future, Vol. 36, all of which I want to get read and reviewed before Christmas Day.

What's in the Mail?

12/12/20 - On Friday afternoon, an Amazon driver left a big box on my doorstep, and I have to admit I was confused until I opened it. Inside this oversized box was a bookmark that reads "Drink Good Coffee Read Good Books," and there was also a gift receipt message from a long-distance friend. Then today (Saturday), there was another Amazon package from my friend, but this time it came by USPS and the packaging was smaller. Inside it was another bookmark, which reads "Never Judge A Book By Its Movie."

Welcome to the Book Blogger Hop! 

What To Do

What was the last book you started to read but couldn't finish?

Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer!

2/4/20 - Yeah, it's been several weeks since my last Sunday Post. For the past month, I've been removing carpet from my parent's house. It all began with me helping my mom put up new curtains in a bedroom, which somehow lead to me pulling up the carpet. Surprisingly, there were finished hardware floors underneath. 

Believing the floor was the same in the hallway, I went ahead and pulled up the carpet. The good news is the hallway has hardwood flooring. The bad news it's unfinished. I spent the majority of November removing staples and nails, filling/repairing holes, scrubbing/sanding, and staining the floors and the stairs.  

Tomorrow (Saturday), I'll be removing carpet from an office/sewing room. I've already pulled up a corner, and the floor looks good. And there's no tack strips to remove. Taking out the carpet will be the easy part. Moving all the furniture is what's going to kill my back. Yes, I have a furniture dolly, but maneuvering things out of the rooms will be a challenge. 

The keyword is "rooms." 

My mom wants to switch her sewing/office room with the big spare bedroom. So I plan to move the mattress and box springs into another room, take apart the bedroom and move it out of the way. I'll lift the heavy desk onto the dolly and carefully roll it into the bedroom where the bed used to be. (FYI: A lot of my mom's sewing stuff has already been moved temporally to the bedroom closet.) Once I get the carpet pulled and the floors cleaned. Then I'll set up the bed and move in the chest of drawers and nightstand from the other room. And I've been informed I'll be putting up new curtains in that room. The bigger room does have carpet, which I've already removed room the closet. If everything goes as planned, I'll work on the floors in that room on Monday, which is going to be so much fun because I get to move the desk again!

Thanksgiving was the bare minimum. And, no, I'm not referring to the turkey, stuffing, and pecan pie. The only people there were my parents, my uncle, and myself. My grandma couldn't be there because she's at a nursing home. She's doing well, besides the fact that they moved her to a smaller room on the other side of the building. Why? Well, so they could shut off the heating to several wings to save money. The nursing home didn't inform us of the move. We found out from my grandma over the phone. They claimed the TV she had on the wall was there before she moved into her previous room, and they were refusing to move it. I bought the TV for her and made sure the maintenance man installed it when they switched her rooms last year. Let's say my mom was more than mad when she talked to them. I had kept the feet for the TV and dropped them off at the nursing home. Eventually, they did move the TV to my grandma's new room, which we haven't seen because they still don't allow visitors there because of the virus.

Speaking of the virus, my aunt (who's only six years older than me), her husband, and their three kids didn't come to Thanksgiving dinner because their oldest son tested positive for COVID-19. He caught it from his 6th-grade teacher, which I'm guessing there were other students infected, too. He quarantined for two weeks and had no symptoms. Even though he returned to school on Nov. 23rd, we all thought it was best not to gather for Thanksgiving.

What Am I Reading?

 

I didn't have much free time to read in November, so that means I never got around to reading Bird Box by Josh Malerman and its sequel, Malorie, which I had borrowed the latter from OverDrive. I had to return the book before I ever got a chance to read it. It's no big deal. I have a feeling Amazon might have Malorie on sale for the holidays. If so, then I'll buy it.

 

The last I checked, I'm on chapter 7 in Goosebumps SlappyWorld: My Friend Slappy by R.L. Stine, which I'm hoping to finish over the weekend and get the review posted next week. Then I'll be reading Rebekah's Quilt and Rebekah's Dress by Sara Harris for an upcoming book tour on December 10th. No, I'm not waiting until the last minute to read these. I just received the review copies two days ago.

Also, I'll be reading the following books in no particular order The Noel Letters by Richard Paul Evans, Weeks: Book 2 by Jasyn T. Turley, Whispering Hearts by V.C. Andrews, and Writers of the Future, Volume 36. The latter is a book that I've had in my possession for many months and have never finished reading it. I'm determined to get it read and reviewed before Christmas.

Additionally, I received word from OverDrive that the book I had on hold, The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson, was available, so I checked it out. When am I going to read it? I don't have a clue, but it's there on my Kindle, if I have the time.

Tremors: Shrieker Island

What's in the Mail?

The 2067 Blu-ray is the only newish thing received in the mail. I've already watched and reviewed it.

 

There are a lot of new books on my bookshelf. I picked up two new James Patterson titles - Deadly Cross and Three Women Disappear. I cannot explain this, but I bought Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline, despite the fact I never finished reading Ready Player One. Now I'm going to have to give the first book another go at it before reading the sequel. I found Fear Street: The Fire Game by R.L. Stine at a thrift store, which is one of the rare Fear Street titles not in my collection. At Dollar Tree, I picked up The Heart Forger by Rin Chupeco and The Killing Forest by Sara Bladel. I had ordered Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco because I couldn't find it in stores. Lastly, I bought the paperback The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis after watching the limited-series on Netflix. 

Recent titles on Kindle are Star Trek: A Choice of Catastrophes by Steve Mollmann and Michael Schuster, Star Trek: DS9: Millennium by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek: Infiltrator by W. R. Thompson, Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame by Diane Carey, Star Trek: The Final Reflection by John M. Ford, Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth, Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare, Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, Star Trek: Voyager: The Farther Shore by Christie Golden, Star Trek: DS9: Unity by S. D. Perry, Star Trek: Crisis of Consciousness by Dave Galanter, Star Trek: TNG: The Light Fantastic by Jeffery Lang, and Star Trek: The Face of the Unknown by Christopher L. Bennett.

Yes, I also bought the Kindle version of The Queen's Gambit. After I had purchased the paperback, the eBook went on sale, so I got it. I probably won't have time to read it until after the holidays.