Book #190 of 2021: Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #36) I still don’t feel as though reformed con man Moist von Lipwig is a particularly engaging protagonist, and a lot of the plot beats to this attempt to turn around the archaic Ankh-Morpork banking industry seem too similar to his previous efforts at the …
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Book #189 of 2021: Jews Versus Aliens edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene I’m sadly underwhelmed by this #ownvoices short story collection, most of which falls far shy of its potential to tell exciting science-fiction from a specifically Jewish perspective. Of the ten entries herein, I’d give a few of them passing grades — …
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Book #188 of 2021: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith The hook to this mid-twentieth-century novel, the loose basis for the classic Hitchcock film, is straightforward yet fiendishly clever: two men who have never met before happen to be sharing a train car, where they start discussing the loved ones they can’t stand — …
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Book #187 of 2021: The Andalite’s Gift by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #1) The first Animorphs release outside of the main series is this ‘Megamorphs’ title, which is supersized both in literal page count and in including all six potential narrators, rather than just one. (Even Ax the resident alien gets a voice, right …
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Book #186 of 2021: The Mothers by Brit Bennett This novel strikes me as a great example of how talented writing and character work can elevate old tropes beyond their familiar patterns. When I try to summarize the plot — a 17-year-old hides her romance with a college guy and subsequent abortion from her best …
Book #185 of 2021: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin The most surprising thing about this 2007 memoir by comedian Steve Martin is that it’s not particularly funny. I don’t mean that the author is attempting jokes which fall flat, merely that it’s a fairly serious reflection on his early career, featuring …
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Book #184 of 2021: Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien The final book by children’s author Robert C. O’Brien was this 1974 post-apocalyptic thriller, published posthumously after being completed from his notes by his (uncredited) wife Sally M. Conly and daughter Jane Leslie Conly. Whether due to their contribution or not, it has a …
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Book #183 of 2021: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher This 2008 memoir from actress Carrie Fisher — actually an adaptation of her autobiographical one-woman stage show, if we’re splitting hairs — is short but punchy, packing a lot of sensitive subjects in and around the wry comedy. She opens with her recent electroshock therapy to …
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Book #182 of 2021: This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism by Don Lemon Consciously modeled on James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, this 2021 title from CNN anchor Don Lemon is a similar attempt to grapple with the history and ongoing problem of American racism and suggest a way …
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Book #181 of 2021: The Stranger by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #7) My favorite book of this adult reread yet. The action is exciting and the dilemmas are clearly defined, and that’s even before the surprise pivot into a genuinely unexpected development around a third of the way through the text (much earlier than the …
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