Movie #4 of 2021: Star Trek Generations (1994) Filmed and released shortly after the final season of The Next Generation, this film reprises that show’s main cast along with William Shatner (and briefly, James Doohan’s Scotty and Walter Koenig’s Chekov) from the original Star Trek series, to officially pass the cinematic torch over from TOS …
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Book #203 of 2021: Survivor by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #4) Author Octavia E. Butler famously came to hate this volume in her Patternist series, letting it fall out of publication in 1981 (a sentiment still honored four decades on by whoever now holds the copyright). It’s never been officially released as an ebook or …
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Book #202 of 2021: Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell (Simon Snow #3) The new Simon Snow sequel is another loose entry in a series that reads ever more like fanfiction of someone else’s work. The previous volume at least had its great American road trip providing a basic sort of structure, but …
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TV #59 of 2021: Star Trek: Voyager, season 1 The overwhelming feeling I have about this particular sci-fi spinoff so far is one of wasted potential. I can see the Lost in Space angle that the writers are going for, isolating a starship far from the known setting of the rest of the franchise and …
Book #201 of 2021: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon This is a strange narrative that changes shape at multiple junctures, so I’m loath to give too much away for prospective readers. But it begins with its fifteen-year-old heroine, the black albino intersex bride of the local reverend, fleeing from their fundamentalist cult compound to deliver her …
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Book #200 of 2021: The Only Pirate at the Party by Lindsey Stirling and Brooke S. Passey Dubstep violinist and YouTube sensation Lindsey Stirling has understandably not had the most conventional career path, and this co-written autobiography is an interesting look at the mind behind the music. Her perspective can be myopic and frustratingly twee …
Book #199 of 2021: The Secret by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #9) This is perhaps the classic example of a disposable Animorphs volume, one which doesn’t really move the plot forward or tell us anything new about the characters or their universe. The crisis du jour is so quintessentially 90s too: the Yeerks are illegally …
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Book #198 of 2021: Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West This essay collection is a series of hilarious movie reviews, spanning titles mainly from the 90s or early 2000s, with Top Gun (1986) and Twilight (2008) at the extreme bounds. The actual criticism is pretty surface-level with a …
TV #58 of 2021: The Americans, season 5 I feel torn about this penultimate stretch of The Americans, which in general is serving its deep-cover protagonists quite well. Their share of the story is richer than it was in the previous year, and sees the operatives drawing closer together and experiencing ever more remorse and …
Book #197 of 2021: Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater (The Dreamer Trilogy #2) Author Maggie Stiefvater has always prioritized ambiance and personal relationships over concrete plot, so I wouldn’t say that the slowness of this latest Raven Cycle spinoff is a total surprise. And yet — perhaps befitting a series about characters bringing their dreams …
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