Book #85 of 2021: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly It’s March 2021, and I’ve read quite a few titles over the past year looking at the global history of pandemics, the science behind their causes, and the strategies that led …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer
Book #84 of 2021: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer Dexter Palmer’s 2010 authorial debut is a dense and challenging read, loosely spinning an imaginative steampunk riff on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but with the inclusion of multiple timelines, recursive stories within stories, and sometimes off-putting, stream-of-consciousness delving into character psyches. (The author’s bio …
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Book Review: The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
Book #83 of 2021: The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman This 2007 title is a genre throwback in all the worst ways. It’s more interested in the scientific mechanics of time travel than in its flat characters, the women seem only there as objects of sexual wish-fulfilment, and the accumulated plot holes are pretty …
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TV Review: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 2
TV #30 of 2021: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 2 I’m somewhat less impressed by this second outing of Deep Space Nine than I was by its debut year. The elements are all there for this show to tell a deeper, more serialized narrative than any previous Star Trek iteration — which jetsetted around …
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TV Review: Killing Eve, season 2
TV #29 of 2021: Killing Eve, season 2 Although the effect isn’t felt right away, this season ends up representing a major step down from the show’s electrifying debut. As often happens in such cases, a change in showrunners is likely to blame — and I wonder if the outgoing Phoebe Waller-Bridge had already begun …
Book Review: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
Book #82 of 2021: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston An interesting account of a 21st-century expedition to a pre-Columbian ruin, although the whole venture is pretty thoroughly drenched in colonialism and an outdated Indiana Jones style of archaeology, in which westerners brave the ‘unexplored’ ‘wilderness’ in search of ‘forgotten’ civilizations …
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Book Review: Faye, Faraway by Helen Fisher
Book #81 of 2021: Faye, Faraway by Helen Fisher For the most part, this novel (published in certain countries under the alternate title Space Hopper) is simply a lovely story about a woman time-traveling back to visit with the mother who passed away when she was a young girl. I appreciate how the narrative doesn’t …
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TV Review: Community, season 5
TV #28 of 2021: Community, season 5 This is a year for the sitcom that’s clearly in transition, with the return of showrunner/creator Dan Harmon after a season off, the departure of two original cast members, and a few necessary tweaks to the general premise. The solution to the question of how one still tells …
Book Review: The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander
Book #80 of 2021: The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander A fine but largely unremarkable collection of prequel tales to author Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain (which I just realized I finished reading two years ago today). It’s an early look at a few familiar characters like Fflewddur or Dallben, coupled …
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Book Review: Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry by Harry Kemelman
Book #79 of 2021: Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry by Harry Kemelman (The Rabbi Small Mysteries #2) A disappointing follow-up to Friday the Rabbi Slept Late. It’s still neat to see a Jewish author incorporating authentic lived details into mainstream fiction — a rarity today, let alone back in 1966 — but whereas the first …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 