Book #295 of 2020: The Poet by Michael Connelly (Jack McEvoy #1) Author Michael Connelly’s fifth crime thriller, the first not to feature detective Harry Bosch, has been written to stand on its own, although it introduces concepts and characters that will later cross over with the main series. Our protagonist this time is investigative …
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Book #294 of 2020: Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack (Anya #2) Another fun middle-grade fantasy adventure, albeit somewhat messier in plot than the first novel with this Russian Jewish heroine. Still, the representation in this series remains charming and relatable, from the opening scene with Anya building a sukkah to her pride about …
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TV #54 of 2020: The Office, season 8 The first stretch of this show without original star Steve Carell is a real mess, immediately confirming that the producers had no idea who would be taking over for his character as branch manager when they ended the previous season on that cliffhanger of interviews. And that’s …
Book #293 of 2020: The Ever Cruel Kingdom by Rin Chupeco (The Never Tilting World #2) In the first volume of this YA fantasy duology, twin sisters raised on opposite sides of a stationary world each fall in love and get caught up in a propulsive plot that brings them and their partners hurtling together …
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Book #292 of 2020: American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan I like how this true-crime book tells its story mostly as the authorities learned it, building gradually from a 2012 missing persons report to presumption of foul play and the arrest of a suspect …
TV #53 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 5 Although still somewhat bifurcated in tone, this animated prequel show has been getting gradually stronger year over year, both in the quality of its better parts and the ratio of them to the worse. Here, for instance, it’s really only the 4-episode “D-Squad” arc …
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Book #291 of 2020: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back edited by Elizabeth Schaefer To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the second Star Wars movie, this collection presents 40 new stories revisiting its timeline, in the form of either familiar scenes from the perspective of minor film characters or …
Book #290 of 2020: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam There’s a decent pandemic-appropriate hook to this 2020 suburban thriller — in which the family renting a rural vacation house are surprised by the late-night arrival of a couple identifying themselves as the owners, who have driven in from the city due to a …
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Book #289 of 2020: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn This 1962 novel is a short but striking depiction of a Soviet-era labor camp, drawn from author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s own Gulag experiences. It lives up to its title, presenting more of a snapshot than any particular plot, but the details …
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Book #288 of 2020: Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #9) Also published under the title Thirteen at Dinner, this is another solid mystery from author Agatha Christie, satisfying but not especially revelatory in its ultimate solution. The early chapters drag a bit until Poirot and Hastings reach the fairly obvious conclusion that …
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