Book #113 of 2025: My Friends by Fredrik Backman Bestselling Swedish author Fredrik Backman is hit-or-miss for me, and this latest story squeaks in straight down the middle. I’m going to give it three-and-a-half stars, rounded up, because while I don’t think it’s nearly as strong as Beartown or A Man Called Ove, it is …
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Book #112 of 2025: The Return of Fitzroy Angursell by Victoria Goddard (The Red Company Reformed #1) There’s not really a wrong order in which to read author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, but I would say that this particular volume is probably best picked up sometime after The Hands of the Emperor, …
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Book #111 of 2025: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami This new science-fiction novel offers a modern spin on Minority Report, in which people can be arrested and indefinitely detained on the basis of an algorithm determining they’re statistically more likely to commit an upcoming violent crime. It’s a kafkaesque nightmare for the Moroccan-American protagonist, …
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TV #37 of 2025: Galavant, season 1 This medieval-pastiche musical comedy marginally improves over the course of its first year, but it’s still pretty far from the ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend meets The Princess Bride‘ showcase that I want it to be. The songs by Alan Menken are fine — I’ve even added a few to my …
TV #36 of 2025: The Bear, season 4 A welcome improvement over the previous year, but still not quite as thrilling or affecting as the first couple seasons of this show. As usual, the standout moments tend to be found in the episodes that forgo the more typical rhythms of the restaurant kitchen to spark …
Book #110 of 2025: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh A fun take on the magical school archetype. The setting reminds me a lot of Naomi Novik’s Scholomance, where the spellwork attracts hungry monsters from a terrifying hell dimension, although at least this time the teenaged students aren’t locked-in and left fending for themselves. In fact, …
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Book #109 of 2025: Meltdown by John Peel (2099 #5) After a promising start, this middle-grade sci-fi series has stalled out in a major way, and I can only hope that the sixth and final volume manages to tap into that original sense of imaginative fun that propelled the earlier books. Just like in the …
TV #35 of 2025: Poker Face, season 2 I wasn’t a huge fan of this modern Columbo riff in its debut year, but it had enough charms that I gave it a grudging three-star rating overall. This followup, unfortunately, is considerably worse. I do like a few elements here and there — Giancarlo Esposito as …
Book #108 of 2025: Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Warhead by Andrew Cartmel (Virgin New Adventures #6) Andrew Cartmel served as the script editor for the last three seasons of Classic Doctor Who (1987-1989), which were also the years that produced the final protagonist team of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace. The author thus …
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Book #107 of 2025: Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho An unfortunate dud for me. I appreciate the satirical anticapitalist edge here — sure, I’ve seen Buffy; I’ll accept that if portals were spitting out monsters worldwide, including in the middle of a crowded grocery store, business would continue unaffected and shoppers would go on …
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