TV #26 of 2020: Altered Carbon, season 2 I still have some issues with the logic of this sci-fi series, from the frequent foolishness of its elite super-soldiers to the persistence of sexism centuries after humans have started casually swapping their minds from body to body. (If anything, that decoupling of mental and physical should …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
Book #163 of 2020: The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #2) I love the first volume in this series, a poignant character study of a queer woman sacrificing her morals and steeping herself in the politics of her people’s conquerors in a long game to bring down their bigoted empire from within. …
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Book Review: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Book #162 of 2020: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster An old favorite. It’s just so delightfully heartfelt and punny, and it definitely helped shape my love of language at an early age. Milo, a bored and boring young child, gets whisked away to a magical land where he must rescue the princesses Rhyme and …
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Book Review: Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang
Book #161 of 2020: Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang Originally published as a series of daily blog posts from late January to late March of 2020, this book recounts Chinese author Fang Fang’s experiences in the initial epicenter of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the city went into …
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Movie Review: Mary Poppins (1964)
Movie #10 of 2020: Mary Poppins (1964) I’m sure I must have seen this film when I was younger, but it wasn’t a large part of my childhood, and I have no particular nostalgic attachment to the title. I can easily see why it’s a classic, however, as it sweeps audiences along on a jaunty …
Book Review: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Book #160 of 2020: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown This 2018 racial injustice memoir is a little bit lacking in a clear throughline, and I personally haven’t gotten much out of the later sections that are specifically about problems internal to the Evangelical church community. …
Book Review: Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks
Book #159 of 2020: Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks This latest novel from author Max Brooks is structured somewhat like his fictitious oral history World War Z, but it’s much narrower in scope, consisting mainly of one protagonist’s diary entries and a few supporting interviews. The basic premise …
Book Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Book #158 of 2020: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia An eerie suspense novel that more than lives up to its title, Mexican Gothic follows a 1950s socialite as she is summoned from Mexico City to the countryside home of a cousin beset by disturbing visions amid her new husband’s uncaring family. The protagonist finds her …
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Book Review: The Dragon Egg Princess by Ellen Oh
Book #157 of 2020: The Dragon Egg Princess by Ellen Oh I appreciate the #ownvoices Korean mythology that informs this fantasy setting, but even for a middle-grade novel, it all feels disappointingly underdeveloped. The humor is broad, the characters are flat, and the plot never really settles down into any specific stakes threatening the heroes. …
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Book Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Book #156 of 2020: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #1) This debut novel from author Tamysn Muir is a real trip, an atmospheric and hilarious adventure of galactic sword and sorcery that dances nimbly over the line between fantasy and sci-fi. It more than lives up to its pithy blurb of …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 