Book #109 of 2026: This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum Overall a fairly generic Gone Girl knockoff, in which a guy shows up at his best friend’s house to record the podcast that they host together, only to find that she and her husband are each missing amid signs of a struggle. …
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Book #108 of 2026: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #2) [Note: this is an updated version of my review from 2020.] This is the second volume of its series by internal chronology, but I maintain that these stories are best approached in publication order instead. …
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Overall rating: ★★★☆☆ Previously on Film Franchise Fridays:
Movie #32 of 2026: Clerks III (2022) This latest View Askewniverse release has two distinct modes, neither of which is entirely effective. It’s partly another slice-of-life drama like its predecessors, though less about low-wage drudgery at this point and more just catching up with the two main characters, who by now are small business owners …
Book #107 of 2026: The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum Seventeen-year-old Hollis is a troubled kid, getting into fights at school, suppressing a certain suicidal ideation, and resigning himself to the fact that he’s going to be stuck in his dying blue-collar small town forever. That makes him the perfect victim for the …
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Book #106 of 2026: Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian (The Strata Wars #1) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.] This collaborative foray into the urban fantasy genre leaves a lot to be desired, and reading between the lines of the co-writers’ public statements, it sounds like the …
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TV #31 of 2026: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, season 2 On an episodic level, this second and final run of the late-aughts Terminator show works alright, I guess. The character dynamics of a fraught relationship between mother and son and the awkward peace with their spectrum-coded cyborg ally remain compelling, and the action sequences …
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Book #105 of 2026: Minute Cryptic by Angas Tiernan and Liam Runnalls Cryptic crosswords are a sort of puzzle, more common in England, in which the answers to clues involve creative wordplay rather than outside trivia. Generally the solution will be a synonym for either the start or the end of the prompt, with the …
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Book #104 of 2026: The Rock Rats by Ben Bova (The Asteroid Wars #2) Author Ben Bova’s Grand Tour stories of outer space exploration continue to be hit-or-miss for me, and this title unfortunately isn’t one of the better ones. There’s the core of a neat idea here, involving the small community that’s grown up …
Book #103 of 2026: Doctor Who: White Darkness by David A. McIntee (Virgin New Adventures #15) Largely a back-to-basics reset for the series, bringing the Seventh Doctor and his companions Ace and Bernice to Haiti in 1915, amid the unrest that ultimately led to an American invasion and occupation of the island country. While not …
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