Book #135 of 2025: The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with one of the editors.] Stephen King’s 1978 novel The Stand is a massive post-apocalyptic classic — over 1100 pages in its revised …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
TV Review: The Sopranos, season 2
TV #44 of 2025: The Sopranos, season 2 Even more so than in its debut, this second run of The Sopranos feels built around its quieter domestic scenes rather than the explosive moments of mob violence that periodically surface to puncture them. Richie Aprile, for example, is instantly recognizable as a certain character type: the …
Book Review: At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard
Book #134 of 2025: At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #2) The Hands of the Emperor is my very favorite novel, which perhaps paradoxically is why I took my time in getting to this direct sequel. While Hands remains a great entry point for the wider Nine Worlds …
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TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 20
TV #43 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 20 Doctor Who’s 1983 season may not have any all-time classic stories, but overall it’s a fun watch that I would say is stronger than the sum of its parts. The big idea for the twentieth anniversary run was to feature returning villains in every serial, and …
Book Review: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Book #133 of 2025: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco I haven’t loved this 1980 Italian classic as much as I expected to from the premise, which seems like it should be right up my alley: two fourteenth-century monks investigating a string of suspicious deaths at a secluded monastery. They aren’t called detectives, …
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TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 15
TV #42 of 2025: Bob’s Burgers, season 15 I’m rounding up a bit on the basis of the delightful (if sadly relatable) finale “InsomniBob,” which finds our hero growing increasingly unhinged as he sacrifices sleep for extra creativity time in his ‘night kitchen,’ but overall, this is another winning season from the Bob’s Burgers crew. …
Book Review: Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
Book #132 of 2025: Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley Reading almost like a cross between Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, this 2025 novel traces a tumultuous creative partnership throughout the first decade of the 21st century. (The title has a double meaning — not …
Book Review: Murdle: Volume 2 by G. T. Karber
Book #131 of 2025: Murdle: Volume 2 by G. T. Karber Roughly comparable to Volume 1, in that it’s a collection of bite-size murder mysteries in the form of 100 logic-grid puzzles of increasing difficulty, linked together into a loose ongoing storyline. Once again, half of the entries incorporate not only straightforward clues, but also …
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Book Review: Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt
Book #130 of 2025: Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt (Virgin New Adventures #7) A continuation (and end) of the Cat’s Cradle arc solely in that the TARDIS remains largely out of commission while it finishes its repairs, thereby stranding Ace and the Seventh Doctor in modern rural Wales. There they proceed …
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Book Review: Oathbound by Tracy Deonn
Book #129 of 2025: Oathbound by Tracy Deonn (The Legendborn Cycle #3) It’s rarely a good sign when an author revises the projected length of a series midway through to tack on some additional volume(s). This particular YA fantasy story, for instance, winds up taking quite a lot of pages and yet accomplishing very little …
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