Book #99 of 2021: Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad A searing first-hand account of author Suleika Jaouad’s experience contracting a rare form of leukemia in college, the years of medical anguish that followed, and her faltering attempts to rejoin regular life after being one of the lucky few …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
TV Review: Amend: The Fight for America
TV #34 of 2021: Amend: The Fight for America This Netflix show is an informative six-part series on how the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution established a standard for equal treatment under the law that everything from civil rights to abortion access to interracial and gay marriage would later build upon — as well …
Book Review: Game Changer by Neal Shusterman
Book #98 of 2021: Game Changer by Neal Shusterman Overall, this YA novel strikes me as a well-meaning but clumsy effort to awaken its audience to societal problems like racism and homophobia that may not affect them directly. It specifically feels aimed at young, straight, white, male jocks like its hero, who suffers a brain …
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TV Review: Julie and the Phantoms, season 1
TV #33 of 2021: Julie and the Phantoms, season 1 Okay, the concept here is a little convoluted and ludicrous — three members of a boy band die in the 90s, then get brought back as ghosts by a girl in the present who can see them at all times, whereas they only appear to …
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Book Review: A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland
Book #97 of 2021: A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland (A Conspiracy of Truths #2) In the final analysis I think I don’t love this spinoff sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths quite as much as the original novel, but it’s a welcome return to a land where diversity in race, gender, sexuality, disability, …
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Book Review: The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
Book #96 of 2021: The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams This story starts off on the wrong foot — taking the first 4% to wax rhapsodic about the soul of dictionaries before we even meet a single character — and somehow grows worse from there. It’s a split timeline, with one lexicographer protagonist in Victorian …
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Book Review: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Book #95 of 2021: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett This novel offers a beautiful assortment of character studies, although it feels less like a single coherent plot and instead an intricate mosaic of interrelated lives. Central to the web of connections are two light-skinned black girls, identical twins who seem inseparable until the day …
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Book Review: The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan
Book #94 of 2021: The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan I love a nice postmodern portal fantasy, and this middle-grade novel spins a premise I don’t think I’ve seen before, where the focus is not on a child who vanishes into another world, but on a sibling …
TV Review: Star Wars Rebels, season 1
TV #32 of 2021: Star Wars Rebels, season 1 This cartoon is definitely kid-friendly, but it offers a lot to older Star Wars fans as well, and largely avoids the sort of slapstick humor and wacky episode premises that could be so grating in The Clone Wars. As the first TV show in the franchise …
Book Review: Things My Son Needs to Know about the World by Fredrik Backman
Book #93 of 2021: Things My Son Needs to Know about the World by Fredrik Backman Author Fredrik Backman’s collection of parental / life wisdom, ostensibly addressed to his one-year-old, is certainly funny, but it lacks the heart and insight that I’m used to from his novels. It also relies on a few tired gender …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 