Category Archives: Reviews

Kelly Kettle review / first impressions

I had been intrigued by the Kelly Kettle / Ghillie Kettle a long time, as I had been by rocket stoves and all other sorts of camping / survival gear and fire-related things. (The Kelly and Ghillie are pretty much the same thing, but the KK is a US company, the GK version is a UK company, with slightly different options and variations, such as KK has stainless steel, GK is Aluminum only). It’s a small, simple, wood-burning “debris and twig” system designed to boil water quickly on little fuel, and also do general cooking/heating. The bottom line on that claim to fame: It does boil water very well on little fuel, even poor quality/wet fuel, and is OK as a general twig stove for GP cooking.

Details below. Continue reading Kelly Kettle review / first impressions

Book review, “The Forgotten Slave Trade”

I just finished “The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam“, by Simon Webb. Absolutely great book. It actually covers a lot more of the history of slavery than JUST white Islamic slaves, because there are several closely related parts of the slave-trade that all need to be spelled out to make the whole picture make sense. It doesn’t cover Native American slavery, south or east Asia slavery, but most of the rest of it gets hit. Continue reading Book review, “The Forgotten Slave Trade”

Interesting Heretics review

Heretics of St. Possenti just acquired a new review. The first two-star. To say that it’s, er, “interesting” is an understatement. Have a look.

Not a verified purchase. Nothing specific. Pretentious, self-important phrasing. Appears to equate “Christian” with “white,” in spite of some of the characters quite explicitly being of non-white ethnicity, like the Aziz, the Coptic Egyptian, and Master Wang. Quite likely more than a bit of projection. Seems to have misunderstood… well, nearly the whole thing. But then, it wasn’t aimed at fools, morons, or females, so I guess that is not unexpected from someone who is a major contributor to comments and reviews in the “makeup” category on Amazon. Makeup – the very definition of “false face.”

Another review

Another review up at Men of the West. Very kind words. Be really funny if it got me nominated for a “inspirational/spiritual writing” award that I’d come in dead last for : – )

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Reviews are interesting. The CH review had a funny line: it said there was a lot of “logistics porn” typical of “post-apocalyptic” novels. Indeed, it said, that HosP was a post-apocalyptic novel, but one where the blasted and desolate landscape was not the physical one, but the spiritual one. I’d never thought of it that way, but… yeah. That’s a reader who gets it, and phrases it in a way that I’d never have thought of, but is very apt, almost poetic, in its eloquence. That’s one of the fun things about reviews – the can give insight and perspective on how others see what you said in ways that are helpful.

1+1 Sale, Today Only (now expired)

A shameless plug of self-promotion post. Today only (14 Dec).

Castalia House is running a 1+1 Christmas sale: buy one physical book (hardbound or paperback) and get one free Castalia House e-book (details at the link). In fact if you want to buy more than one physical book, you can get an equal number of e-books without limit (well, other than the number of titles they have out, of course). Since Back From The Dead (the first half of The Stars Came Back) is now out in print it’s an eligible item. So if you are a reader, or know readers and are looking for a gift, here’s an opportunity.

A good-sized list of books, and I have yet to read a bad Castalia House product.

GoodReads

GoodReads is a book review site that was bought by Amazon a while back. It claims to be the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. It’s also rather interesting in that they do not require a person to have actually read a book to review it, and they do not appear to have any consistency of policy at all WRT the enforcement of their own rules as to what posts or comments are considered acceptable.

I received an email that said: Continue reading GoodReads