Book #139 of 2021: Passing by Nella Larsen An interesting 1929 novella about a black woman’s friend crossing the color line to present as white instead. The racial insights (and potential queer subtext) from almost a century ago are worth checking out, but the ending plays into the regrettable trope of the ‘tragic mulatto’ — …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Initial Insult by Mindy McGinnis
Book #138 of 2021: The Initial Insult by Mindy McGinnis (The Initial Insult #1) This first volume of a planned YA duology is a fun but kind of goofy modern spin on The Cask of Amontillado, playing out against a broad pastiche of several other Poe stories as well. So you’ve got the teenage girl …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Initial Insult by Mindy McGinnis”
Book Review: Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
Book #137 of 2021: Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo (King of Scars #2) This is a much busier volume than its predecessor in the King of Scars duology, but author Leigh Bardugo impressively manages to bring it all together in the end (which is a welcome change from how disconnected Nina’s storyline felt before). …
Continue reading “Book Review: Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo”
TV Review: Dawson’s Creek, season 3
TV #44 of 2021: Dawson’s Creek, season 3 Pacey Witter is the beating heart of this show, and the third season gets better as it goes along by leaning into the prickly attraction between him and Joey. That’s still not perfect storytelling — it’s a major disconnect from their dynamic the year before, and the …
Book Review: The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
Book #136 of 2021: The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright Among the more unexpected surprises of 2021 has been this publication of a new novel by Richard Wright, eighty years after it was rejected by publishers and made available only as a heavily-truncated short story. In this full version, it’s a text as …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright”
TV Review: Star Wars Rebels, season 2
TV #43 of 2021: Star Wars Rebels, season 2 A definite step down from its first season, this sophomore run of the Disney Star Wars cartoon is a frustratingly meandering piece of storytelling. There are some slight attempts at character arcs, but mostly we’re given a lot of episodic filler that doesn’t really capitalize on …
Book Review: And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
Book #135 of 2021: And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman This novella is a sorrowful look at an elderly man gradually losing his memories to dementia, but it’s a bit too short and disjointed to be entirely effective. The whole idea is that he’s slipping between past and …
Book Review: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
Book #134 of 2021: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers #4) Another lovely and warmhearted picture of alien diversity, reportedly the last in the loose Wayfarers series from author Becky Chambers. (These stories are discrete enough that there’s no internal continuity reason for this to be a conclusion, but that’s what …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers”
Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
Book #133 of 2021: Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher (William Shakespeare’s Star Wars #4) This book is built around a cute idea, but once you get past that basic gimmick of retelling the first Star Wars movie in iambic pentameter — “In time so long ago begins our play / In …
Continue reading “Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher”
Book Review: Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
Book #132 of 2021: Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler This posthumous collection by renowned African American science-fiction icon Octavia E. Butler is regrettably slim, but it lives up to its title, presenting two of her early works that had been previously unpublished. The novella A Necessary Being does not appear to have ever been …
Continue reading “Book Review: Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 