Book #17 of 2021: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (The Singing Hills Cycle #1) A quiet but captivating #ownvoices fantasy novella, rich in feminist character work and immersive East Asian-inspired worldbuilding. I’m always so interested in stories like this that can compel the reader’s attention despite a complete lack of traditional …
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TV #5 of 2021: Kim’s Convenience, season 3 This sitcom has always had a fairly stable status quo, so I was excited by the genuine potential for change in last season’s finale, when Jung quits his job and finally kisses his long-term love interest, who at first reciprocates but then pulls away when she remembers …
Book #16 of 2021: The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo A short collection of dark fables from author Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse, some of which have been referenced before in the main novels and others that merely add further texture to the local cultures of the setting. It’s an interesting addition to series canon, especially …
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Book #15 of 2021: The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis (Tales from the Chocolate Heart #1) A cute little book about a young dragon who gets cursed into the body of a human and discovers her true passion for hot cocoa. Unfortunately, it has a few issues typical of the middle-grade fantasy …
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Book #14 of 2021: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman (The Rabbi Small Mysteries #1) This series has been on my radar for a while, and although I’m not sure I’m going to read all dozen volumes, the first one is pretty neat. It’s one of those stories in which a police investigation …
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Book #13 of 2021: The Hound of Death by Agatha Christie A charmingly creepy departure for author Agatha Christie, who trades in her usual detective fiction for a dozen tales of the supernatural (or supernatural-adjacent). Normally when she’s written of things like possessions and premonitions, their reality is ultimately undermined Scooby-Doo-style by some more mundane …
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TV #4 of 2021: Justified, season 1 I’m not thrilled with the first hour of this show about a trigger-happy US Marshal, which has a whole lot of white supremacist violence and rhetoric used as an apparent shorthand for villainy, I assume so that audiences can know which group of white gentiles are the good …
Book #12 of 2021: The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty An interesting but digressive text, blending personal memoir and genealogical research with an effort to trace the roots of southern cuisine through enslaved and free black traditions. Author Michael W. Twitty’s passion for …
Book #11 of 2021: Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford [CW: sexual assault. I’m not sharing the cover of this book, out of concern that it may be triggering.] Author Lacy Crawford’s first nonfiction title offers powerful testimony on the way she was treated as an underage girl at a prestigious boarding school in …
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Book #10 of 2021: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans An interesting survey read, albeit with less of a narrative throughline than I would have expected. Author Claire L. Evans presents a history of the internet’s development that focuses on its female pioneers and participants, …
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