Book #301 of 2020: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro A fascinating deep dive into the decades-long career of the official who designed and built many of the parks and highways around New York City and state. Robert Moses was a visionary architect who revolutionized urban …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Movie Review: Wonder Woman 1984
Movie #15 of 2020: Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) I like a few isolated parts of this superhero sequel (mostly involving Pedro Pascal and Kristen Wiig’s respective acting choices) but overall it’s a huge mess whose thematic incoherence at least keeps pace with all the plot holes. What exactly is the macro-goal of our villainous thinly-veiled …
TV Review: The Office, season 9
TV #57 of 2020: The Office, season 9 This final season recovers substantially from the weaker entries that it follows, and improves further as it approaches the catharsis of the series ending. At the end of the day I still don’t know if I can say that it’s great — this is, after all, the …
TV Review: Fleabag, season 1
TV #56 of 2020: Fleabag, season 1 This short British show about a woman with sex addiction, a dysfunctional family, and a dead best friend successfully mines some uncomfortable humor from those subjects, but… I’m frankly just not sure I really get it. Like, as funny and distinctive as the nameless protagonist’s audience asides can …
TV Review: The Mandalorian, season 2
TV #55 of 2020: The Mandalorian, season 2 Beyond even its debut season, this second year of the live-action Star Wars show is an outstanding achievement on every level. The spinoff program really does feel like it’s happening in the exact same continuity as the movies — something that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its …
Book Review: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
Book #300 of 2020: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue A heartbreakingly graphic depiction of an Irish plague ward during the 1918 influenza pandemic, told over a few days and mostly in one narrow chamber — a familiar constraint for Room author Emma Donoghue — for patients who are both infected and pregnant. …
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Book Review: The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis
Book #299 of 2020: The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #6) I’m not a big fan of the first half of this novel, in which the three protagonists — a returning Eustace, his classmate Jill, and a rather miserable creature named Puddleglum — are very nasty toward one another as …
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Book Review: The Way Back by Gavriel Savit
Book #298 of 2020: The Way Back by Gavriel Savit It’s probably not a good sign when a book that feels so tailor-made for me as a reader struggles to keep my attention throughout. I do love the first quarter or so of this story, which sees a pair of Jewish kids fleeing their nineteenth-century …
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Book Review: The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White
Book #297 of 2020: The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White (Camelot Rising #2) I don’t have much to say about this sequel, other than that it’s the sort of middle volume that largely treads water for its trilogy en route to a hopefully stronger conclusion. The plot and character arcs don’t really progress any further …
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Book Review: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
Book #296 of 2020: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo Although I agree with nearly everything that author Ijeoma Oluo opines in these pages, I’ve found it somewhat lacking as a single cohesive argument. Her stated thesis, that white men are so privileged by American society that many of us …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 