Book #49 of 2022: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich There are fleeting moments in this contemporary novel that work for me, generally involving author Louise Erdrich’s #ownvoices observations of microaggressions towards Native Americans like herself. As a whole, though, it’s a very disjointed effort, especially after the coronavirus pandemic arrives halfway through the volume, followed …
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Book #48 of 2022: The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott In this pseudonymous Agatha Christie novel, the author takes careful aim at classism and upward mobility, each of which was in a state of flux following the upheaval of the second World War. Writing in 1948, she paints a tragedy of a …
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TV #14 of 2022: The Shield, season 1 This is not an easy program to watch, even by the standards of other crime dramas. (Take a glance at the content warnings I’ve listed below, and realize that many of these behaviors are present in the ostensible good guys of the series.) It’s fantastically written, directed, …
Book #47 of 2022: The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #4) The grand finale to the Thomas Covenant saga moves slower than one might predict, given the apocalyptic atmosphere and scant amount of time remaining for the Land. The sun and stars have all gone out, the Worm …
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TV #13 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 2 It’s hard to adequately judge a nine-episode run of a half-hour animated comedy, but with the exception of maybe the Goonies-homage premiere I don’t think any of these sophomore installments stands out as a classic of the program, and the writers are clearly still fiddling with the …
Book #46 of 2022: The Other by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #40) This is one of the more difficult Animorphs volumes to read, I think, because it shines an ugly light on a bigotry in Ax that I don’t believe we’ve seen before. It turns out that our noble alien visitor, along with most of …
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Book #45 of 2022: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1) On a basic plot level, this is the story of a half-Indian teen trying to convince everyone in her small town that they’re soon to be caught up in the events of a slasher-style massacre, identifying patterns …
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TV #12 of 2022: Scandal, season 5 This political melodrama remains ridiculous, verging on outright self-parody, but this season is at least a minor course-correction to the spy nonsense that was dragging it down in previous years. Rowan is frustratingly still around as a master manipulator, but his B613 organization has stayed dismantled, and for …
Book #44 of 2022: Devil in the Device by Lora Beth Johnson (Goddess in the Machine #2) I’m not quite as impressed as I was with the first volume in this YA duology, and I think this sequel spends too much time on the existential angst of a character discovering they’re an A.I. grown in …
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TV #11 of 2022: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 4 This mid-century comedy continues to shine in its lavish period trimmings and signature Amy Sherman-Palladino banter, but the series has lost all sense of its protagonist’s motivation or personal storyline at this point. She’s determined to be a standup comic but is refusing all opening …
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