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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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Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Movie #52 of 2026: Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) A good movie but not a great one, in my opinion. I like that this installment has a distinctive energy and shape to its plot compared to any of the prior entries in the series, focusing not on a blue-collar business of hunting ghosts in New York City… Read more
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Book Review: Killman Creek by Rachel Caine
Book #169 of 2026: Killman Creek by Rachel Caine (Stillhouse Lake #2) Morbid curiosity got me to return for this sequel, and I still don’t really see how Rachel Caine and her later posthumous cowriter managed to stretch the series out to seven books in the end. But this is a decent followup to Stillhouse… Read more
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Book Review: The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O’Keefe
Book #168 of 2026: The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O’Keefe (The Devoured Worlds #2) I’m still interested in the characters and setting of this Altered Carbon-esque space opera, but this middle volume of the trilogy feels a bit aimless compared to its action-packed predecessor. It doesn’t help that we’ve left the pressure cooker situation… Read more
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TV Review: Kevin Can F**k Himself, season 1
TV #46 of 2026: Kevin Can F**k Himself, season 1 This 2021 series goes far on the strength of its central gimmick, which is that whenever the titular character is on the screen, the whole thing is written and filmed like a twentieth-century multicam sitcom, complete with bright lights, heavily stylized acting and writing, canned… Read more
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Book Review: The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Book #167 of 2026: The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow A lovely time-travel fairy tale, in which a modern scholar — not from our world, but one that at least has guns and automobiles and newsreels, with a general impression of early 20th century Britain / Garth Nix’s Ancelstierre — is sent 900 years into… Read more
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Book Review: Danse Macabre by Stephen King
Book #166 of 2026: Danse Macabre by Stephen King This nonfiction title is long and rambling and only sort of about its professed subject, which is the author’s effort to catalogue the horror genre and assess what makes certain examples effective or not. He does hit at some valuable insights here and there — what… Read more
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TV Review: Homicide: Life on the Street, season 6
TV #45 of 2026: Homicide: Life on the Street, season 6 Last season ended on a seeming shakeup of the central department, with news that all Baltimore detectives would now be rotating regularly through different assignments going forward. In practice when this one resumes, however, most of the old crowd are back, and there are… Read more
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Movie Review: Ghostbusters (2016)
Movie #51 of 2026: Ghostbusters (2016) I had never seen this third Ghostbusters movie (sometimes listed under the subtitle Answer the Call) until today, and all I really remembered hearing about it was that a) it was a reboot and not a sequel and b) it was vaguely Gamergate-adjacent in that some bitter incel trolls… Read more
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Book Review: Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros
Book #165 of 2026: Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros A curious little book of Empyrean short stories, set both before and during the events of the novels that have been released thus far. These thirteen tales are all fairly discrete from one another without any cohesive larger narrative, and they each follow a different viewpoint… Read more
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Book Review: Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by Andy Borowitz
Book #164 of 2026: Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by Andy Borowitz A well-meaning but ultimately frustrating read, which I only picked up because my temple men’s group selected it for our book club this month. To be clear, I share author Andy Borowitz’s general liberal / Democratic politics, and… Read more
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