Book #260 of 2021: The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #4) The penultimate volume in this Wagnerian space opera is a welcome step back up in quality after a third novel that I personally consider a bit slow and talky. This one is an improvement on all …
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Book #259 of 2021: The Decision by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #18) The sci-fi concept of Zero-space in this series is one that doesn’t necessarily stand up to close scrutiny: it’s the empty dimension where Andalite spaceships go during faster-than-light / warp travel, but it’s also where a morpher’s excess body mass is temporarily deposited …
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Book #258 of 2021: The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron (The Legend of Eli Monpress #1) Eli Monpress is a very silly character — a thief pulling audacious heists and kidnappings in country after country apparently just to amass history’s largest total bounty on his head — which is not necessarily a problem, except for …
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Book #257 of 2021: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black This standalone YA fantasy novel hasn’t completely won me over, but I like it a lot more than author Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince, which has a somewhat similar premise of fairyland intrigue. (The central romance here, for instance, strikes me as …
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Book #256 of 2021: The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories by Agatha Christie As in the detectives’ respective novels, the five stories in this collection about Hercule Poirot are of variable quality, the one about Miss Marple is a touch stronger, and the two about Parker Pyne are a bit worse. (The latter’s whole schtick …
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Book #255 of 2021: The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years by Emily Oster So far Cribsheet is still my favorite data-driven parenting title by economist Emily Oster, but this latest one is a solid self-help book for household organizing and thorny decision-making about raising kids particularly …
TV #71 of 2021: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, season 2 Just like its initial run, a lot of the bits in this season of the sketch comedy show take weird and unpredictable turns by the end — which sometimes yields absolute hilarity, but more often produces a skit I only partially …
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Book #254 of 2021: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon This provocative title relates the current scientific consensus that most weight-loss programs of diet and/or exercise simply don’t produce long-term stable results for most users, explores the systemic way that our culture is organized around the assumption of …
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Book #253 of 2021: The Underground by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #17) On the one hand, raids on the Yeerk pool already seem like the most generic and frequent Animorphs plots by this point in the series. On the other hand, this is the novel that gives us a specific variety of oatmeal as a …
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Book #252 of 2021: Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Expanding on a viral New Yorker article, this short book from author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares her experience with mourning her father, who passed away in June 2020. (He didn’t die of the coronavirus, but travel restrictions aimed at containing the pandemic kept her …
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