TV #15 of 2022: Scandal, season 6 This penultimate outing starts with a bang, and winds up structuring its entire year a bit like a whodunnit mystery. For a while, the show is almost hypnotically-recursive, returning Rashomon-like to Election Night again and again, each time filling in yet another person’s perspective along with some additional …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Book #57 of 2022: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon As a satire, this 1966 novel about an apparent conspiracy surrounding an illegal alternate postal system is sporadically effective, with a handful of amusing developments and witty turns-of-phrase. As pretty much anything else, it’s not really what I’m looking for in a story. …
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Book Review: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Book #56 of 2022: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith A deeply-moving account of author Clint Smith’s visits to sites across the country (and one abroad, in Senegal) that have links to slavery, from former plantations like Angola Prison and Jefferson’s Monticello estate to …
Movie Review: Luca (2021)
Movie #7 of 2022: Luca (2021) This Disney-Pixar adventure about an underwater creature who appears human when dry is probably unlikely to go down as an all-time classic, but it’s still charmingly fun. The coming-of-age storyline involves the hero first hiding and then embracing his true self alongside an older boy who shares his identity …
Book Review: Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North
Book #55 of 2022: Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North Author Claire North has written some of my very favorite novels, but this is one of her efforts that doesn’t quite hit the mark for me. The premise of the setting is sound: a post-apocalyptic future where holy priests try to recover digital …
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Book Review: The Black Box by Michael Connelly
Book #54 of 2022: The Black Box by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #16) Another solid detective story — author Michael Connelly’s 25th book overall, released on the 20th anniversary of his original Bosch vehicle The Black Echo. Befittingly, this volume involves a cold case from two decades prior, of a foreign journalist found murdered in …
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Book Review: The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
Book #53 of 2022: The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy This 2015 title offers a decent crash-course on the history of the region that became today’s country of Ukraine, although author Serhii Plokhy spends a bit too much time on the events of early eras, which in addition to their …
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Book Review: Back to Before by K. A. Applegate
Book #52 of 2022: Back to Before by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #4) The fourth and final Megamorphs volume opens in media res, with the bloody aftermath of a recent Animorph skirmish against the Yeerks. By this point in the wider franchise, we don’t need any specifics about that particular mission; we can simply …
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Book Review: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine
Book #51 of 2022: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine This volume is an expansion of the original New York Times Magazine article that was published to honor the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia, highlighting American history through …
Book Review: Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko
Book #50 of 2022: Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko (Raybearer #2) 2020’s Raybearer remains a strong debut, rich in #ownvoices West African-inspired worldbuilding that still feels distinctively a creation all of author Jordan Ifueko’s own, with flourishes of mild-melding polyamorous coteries a la Sense8 or Octavia Butler’s Patternists. But I actually think this sequel closing out …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 