Book #212 of 2020: Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson (Goddess in the Machine #1) High marks for this new science-fiction novel, which has a few reliable YA tropes but mostly takes its plot in interesting directions that I wouldn’t expect. The biggest twist is right in the premise, with our teenaged heroine …
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Book #211 of 2020: The Bright Lands by John Fram There’s a thriving sub-genre of suspense novels about a protagonist returning to their childhood home in the wake of tragedy and uncovering old secrets, and in theory, I like the idea of mashing that together with something like Friday Night Lights. A small town in …
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Book #210 of 2020: Crossings by Alex Landragin This genre-bending novel is a deeply immersive tale of people who can swap souls from body to body, prolonging their existence but not necessarily retaining their waking memories in the process. Spanning multiple centuries, it’s a work of historical fiction as well, incorporating real figures like Charles …
Book #209 of 2020: The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #3) This 1994 novel opens with detective Harry Bosch on trial for his shooting of an unarmed man four years ago, a civil complaint brought by the widow against the city. (The deceased was a suspected rapist and serial killer, and Bosch mistakenly …
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TV #36 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 2 This cartoon is incrementally improving, but I still don’t love it just yet. I’m most invested when the writing manages to tell me something new about a character or concept from the wider franchise, which is why I perked up around this season’s mini-arc …
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Book #208 of 2020: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz I admire the goal for a Howard Zinn-like retelling of the American story, focused on the original inhabitants of this landmass and their descendants. That’s a worthy project to restore a voice to people who have traditionally been misrepresented and …
TV #35 of 2020: The Office, season 1 This 2005 debut was a little rough at the time, and another decade and a half of evolving cultural norms haven’t made it any better. Michael Scott is of course a walking HR complaint of offensive and inappropriate behavior, but even our ostensible hero Jim would be …
Book #207 of 2020: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (Space Opera #1) I love the concept for this novel, which is basically Eurovision meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In fact, that Douglas Adams series seems to be the exact model for author Catherynne M. Valente, from the zany screwball comedy to the …
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Book #206 of 2020: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson This title didn’t grip me right away, I think because I was expecting the sort of powerful testimony in author Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, with its deep ethnographic dive into the lived experiences of a rarely discussed segment of …
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Book #205 of 2020: A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost An entertaining if rambling celebrity memoir, which I’ve found most interesting for its backstage look at the production of Saturday Night Live. But there’s also a surprising amount of gore in the descriptions of author Colin Jost’s more memorable injuries and infections, and some …
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