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Featured
Blog Launch
Hello! My name is Joe Kessler, and I’ve been blogging in one form or another since 2004. This is the launch of my new home for that, where I’ll be posting book reviews and other short pieces of writing. I’m also debuting a Patreon site for anyone who would like to support my efforts through… Read more
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Book Review: Book of Time by John Peel
Book #70 of 2024: Book of Time by John Peel (Diadem #11) The middle-grade / YA Diadem line was released in waves under a succession of publishers: first Scholastic for the original six novels from 1997 to 1998, then Llewellyn (who gave the saga a temporary new subtitle of “Worlds of Magic”) for the next… Read more
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TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 3
TV #17 of 2024: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 3 This season starts out a little slowly, but it certainly hits its stride again by the end, with the episode set on Deep Space Nine and the one with the unexpected return of wayward ensign Peanut Hamper as particular formula-breaking standouts. At its best —… Read more
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Book Review: The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi
Book #69 of 2024: The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves #3) This is the seventh book I’ve read from YA author Roshani Chokshi, and while I’m glad I finally got around to finishing this particular trilogy, I think this is where I part ways with the writer for good, as her style… Read more
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TV Review: American Gods, season 2
TV #16 of 2024: American Gods, season 2 I’m finally circling back around to this show almost six years after I saw season one, so my memory of it isn’t necessarily the clearest. (Luckily, I reread the original Neil Gaiman novel so many times as a theology-obsessed teenager that it’s burned pretty strongly into my… Read more
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TV Review: Seinfeld, season 6
TV #15 of 2024: Seinfeld, season 6 I don’t know if this qualifies as a hot take nearly three decades after the fact, but I personally think that Seinfeld is a stronger, funnier, and more distinctive sitcom when it leans away from its instincts for wacky zaniness and into the pedantically mundane (the opposing Kramer… Read more
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Book Review: The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama
Book #68 of 2024: The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama As a follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 title Becoming, this 2022 release from former First Lady Michelle Obama isn’t nearly so noteworthy. Whereas that debut work was a powerful but straightforward memoir, this one blends the autobiographical genre with self-help,… Read more
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Book Review: When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown by Kenan Thompson
Book #67 of 2024: When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown by Kenan Thompson An entertaining if disjointed memoir from the lifelong sketch comic, currently enjoying an unprecedented third decade at Saturday Night Live. I’ll repeat that: at 21 seasons on the show and counting,… Read more
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TV Review: Shōgun, season 1
TV #14 of 2024: Shōgun, season 1 An exquisitely-rendered adaptation of the classic historical fiction novel about simmering political tensions and warfare in 17th-century feudal Japan. I can’t compare it to the 1980 NBC miniseries, which I haven’t seen, but I’m impressed with how closely this one hews to the original book in its plot… Read more
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Book Review: Olivetti by Allie Millington
Book #66 of 2024: Olivetti by Allie Millington I understand that when the premise of a book includes half of its chapters being narrated by a sentient typewriter, you kind of have to suspend a lot of your disbelief going into the thing. All the more so for the twelve-year-old other narrator and the overall… Read more
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Book Review: Dream Girl by Laura Lippman
Book #65 of 2024: Dream Girl by Laura Lippman This 2021 thriller feels like a take on Stephen King’s Misery for the #metoo era, in which a bedridden white male writer is held accountable and ultimately held captive by an overbearing nurse figure for the sins of his past, oblivious to most of them though… Read more
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 