TV #18 of 2022: Moon Knight, season 1 I’ve enjoyed the first half of this six-episode miniseries as a character study of a meek man coming to realize his blackouts and sleepwalking are the result of undiagnosed Dissociative Identity Disorder — and that his opposite persona is a confident ex-mercenary who’s also the superpowered avatar …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire by Jonathan M. Katz
Book #69 of 2022: Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire by Jonathan M. Katz This book is primarily a biography of Smedley Darlington Butler, a now-obscure figure from the late nineteenth / early twentieth century who was once a household name as a military leader-turned-reformist. In …
Book Review: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann
Book #68 of 2022: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann (The Outside #1) A brilliant extension of Lovecraftian cosmic horror into hard sci-fi, in which certain equations and lines of scientific inquiry can rupture the laws of physics and open a window into the unknowable, madness-inducing chaos writhing outside reality. My strong suspicion is that we’re …
Book Review: O Beautiful by Jung Yun
Book #67 of 2022: O Beautiful by Jung Yun This novel is a real powerhouse, as scathing as it is insightful about white and male entitlement in small-town America. (The protagonist is sexually assaulted by her airplane seatmate in the opening chapter, and things don’t get any better from there.) She’s a fledgling reporter on …
TV Review: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 6
TV #17 of 2022: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 6 Overall I would call this the strongest run yet of DS9 — and the Star Trek saga at large, for that matter — although that designation does come with a few glaring exceptions. First is the episode “Profit and Lace,” a thankfully standalone / …
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Book Review: Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 by Harald Jähner
Book #66 of 2022: Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 by Harald Jähner This historical account of Germany following World War II is detailed and well-researched, tracing how the country’s population began transitioning from perpetrators, victims, and complicit bystanders of the Holocaust into participants in modern western democracy once more. But …
Book Review: The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly
Book #65 of 2022: The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #5) A solid legal thriller like most in its series, but one with some unfortunate pacing issues and a letdown of an ending, in my opinion. Nevertheless, this volume is interesting for showing a bit more serialization than the Harry Bosch-adjacent novels …
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Movie Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Movie #9 of 2022: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) Crossovers are reliable crowd-pleasers that a ‘cinematic universe’ of joint continuity is custom-built to fulfill, and even outside of colossal team-up events in the main Avengers line, Marvel Studios has gotten good mileage in recent years out of sticking one superhero in another’s movie. So the …
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Book Review: The Familiar by K. A. Applegate
Book #64 of 2022: The Familiar by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #41) Following another particularly gruesome battle in which the Animorphs barely escape with their lives, their leader Jake staggers home, too exhausted to comfort his traumatized girlfriend Cassie or take his usual precautions like changing clothes or checking himself for signs of blood. He’s …
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Book Review: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
Book #63 of 2022: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd A fun but very trope-heavy research adventure, sort of like The Historian meets The Shadow of the Wind by way of Secret History. The heroine’s estranged father dies suddenly, and she finds an old highway map among his possessions that seems worthless yet for some reason …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 