Book #26 of 2021: Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova (Brooklyn Brujas #1) A fun #ownvoices fantasy built on indigenous Latinx mythology, rather like Percy Jackson in aiming for the younger side of the YA market. The plot is a classic careful-what-you-wish-for scenario, in which a teenager frightened by her family’s magic tries to lose her …
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TV #8 of 2021: Teenage Bounty Hunters, season 1 I like the characters in this Netflix series, but I feel far more interested in their family drama and high school social lives than in the wacky side gig that makes up the other part of the title. Each of the twin protagonists exhibits meaningful growth …
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Book #25 of 2021: Eternal Life by Dara Horn I love a good story about angsty immortals, but it’s possible I read this one too soon after last year’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which explores a similar thematic territory far more movingly. In this 2018 novel, the protagonist is a woman who doesn’t …
Book #24 of 2021: Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle #1) First published in 1966, Ursula K. Le Guin’s debut novel already shows her promise, spinning a genre-bending tale that sets off her loose Hainish Cycle of related books and gifting future writers with the name and concept of the ansible, a …
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TV #7 of 2021: Kim’s Convenience, season 4 There’s a little plot momentum this year when Jung finally gets together with his long-term love interest, but for the most part, this is the same steady program it’s been all along: reliably funny yet rarely all that exciting, and structurally still far too separated into its …
Book #23 of 2021: Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland by Dave Barry Humorist Dave Barry seems more hit-or-miss for me the older we each get, and this 2016 title has some definite issues with Baby Boomer sexism, transphobic implications, lazy jokes about Native American place names, and so on. But the …
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Book #22 of 2021: Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff (The Red Abbey Chronicles #1) Interesting fantasy worldbuilding, but the characters can seem a bit simplistic at times and the plot doesn’t really kick in until midway through, when a raiding ship attacks the island refuge where the heroine lives as an abbey novice. It gets pretty …
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Book #21 of 2021: The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #1) I always think that I like this prequel more than I actually do, because in my memory, only the strong parts stand out. The devious uncle, the rings that take you to the Wood Between the Worlds from which …
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Book #20 of 2021: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman This tale of a lonely old man in author Fredrik Backman’s native Sweden is first heartbreaking and then heartwarming, as he slowly begins to form unwanted connections with the neighborhood community around him. It’s a novel that dares us to love Ove despite all …
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Book #19 of 2021: A Promised Land by Barack Obama This memoir is a solid but not spectacular inside look at Barack Obama’s political career, from his earliest run for Illinois State Senate through his ordering of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound midway into his first presidential term. (That’s a fairly arbitrary cutoff …
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