Book #106 of 2021: The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex I have to confess, I don’t really get this novel. It’s a fictionalized version of a real-life mystery, and it seems to have been written to propose a possible answer for why the three tenders of a remote lighthouse in the British Isles once vanished without …
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TV #37 of 2021: The Americans, season 2 A second fantastic run of this spy-drama period piece, this one built largely for considering its central couple as parents — struggling to keep their kids safe and raised with like-minded ideals as any of us would, but with the extra tensions that necessarily stem from their …
Book #105 of 2021: A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology edited by Dhonielle Clayton I love how works like this aim to spotlight authors and characters of under-represented backgrounds in literature, but for me as a reader, the YA sci-fi and fantasy stories in this collection are generally more good than …
Book #104 of 2021: The Slaughterman’s Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits If the Coen Brothers were to produce an updated version of Fiddler on the Roof, it might look a lot like this 2015 novel by Israeli author Yaniv Iczkovits, his first work to be translated into English. Set in the Pale of Settlement, the region …
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TV #36 of 2021: Dawson’s Creek, season 2 Sophomore year on this soapy 90s teen drama offers a fantastic character arc for sidekick Pacey Witter (and an acting tour-de-force for Joshua Jackson, growing into the mix of heartfelt emotion and snarky charm that he’d later use to good effect on Fringe). Seriously, I love nearly …
Book #103 of 2021: The Truth by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #25) Overall this is a fine comic romp through the fantasy city-state of Ankh-Morpork as it’s introduced to the concept of print journalism, and the novel comes late enough in author Terry Pratchett’s career that it largely avoids the needless sexism and classism that sometimes …
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TV #35 of 2021: Lovecraft Country, season 1 This series requires a major content warning for everything from domestic abuse to jump scares to homophobia to gore, but first and foremost for racism in practically all of its vile and violent forms. As I noted in my 2017 review of the title it’s loosely adapting, …
Book #102 of 2021: Angels Flight by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #6) This 1999 novel is interestingly (and depressingly) timely two decades on, as it plays out against a backdrop of police brutality and an ensuing race riot. Author Michael Connelly may have been drawing on the recent high-profile Rodney King and OJ Simpson cases, …
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Book #101 of 2021: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood In the parlance of this novel: “I’m in this photo and I don’t like it.” Which is to say, a lot of the story is an attempt to portray what it’s like to be Extremely Online, tapped into that stream of global …
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[Review originally written 4/1/16, updated 4/10/21] Book #100 of 2021: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson This novella is honestly not one of Brandon Sanderson’s strongest examples of self-contained storytelling. But that’s fine, because it’s not aiming to be. It’s instead a behind-the-scenes sort of deal, showing one particular character’s actions during the second and …
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