Book #139 of 2020: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi Published in early 2016, this is a meticulously thorough presentation of American anti-black racism and notions of race more generally, from pre-revolutionary slavery through the extrajudicial killings that sparked the modern #BlackLivesMatter movement. The material …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry
Book #138 of 2020: Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry (Great Mythology #1) I’m giving this book the same three-star rating that I gave to Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, since they strike me as very similar achievements: modern updates to ancient legends, synthesized and presented with a master storyteller’s flare. Like that project, …
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Book Review: Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
Book #137 of 2020: Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand This YA paranormal thriller has too many issues for me as a reader, from the three viewpoint protagonists being too similar in character voice to the one-dimensional villains who bluntly state their chauvinism to some bizarre facets of the underlying mythology that eventually come to light. …
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Book Review: We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix
Book #136 of 2020: We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix Another great horror vehicle from author Grady Hendrix, who is quickly becoming one of my favorites in that genre. He excels at finding the dark supernatural underbelly of the mundane, this time in a musical group trading in their artistic integrity for the payout …
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Book Review: Star Wars: Queen’s Peril by E. K. Johnston
Book #135 of 2020: Star Wars: Queen’s Peril by E. K. Johnston This Star Wars novel has a few neat moments — like handmaiden Sabé’s brief female love interest — but is overall far too disjointed to be effective. It’s a prelude to the first prequel movie followed by a retelling of that film’s events …
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Book Review: Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
Book #134 of 2020: Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller I’m not a big fan of this style of popular nonfiction that blends a history lesson with the writer’s personal journey to learn it, but even considered against others from that genre, this …
Movie Review: Coco (2017)
Movie #7 of 2020: Coco (2017) This Pixar feature has pretty much everything I’m looking for in an animated film: a lushly-rendered imaginative world, a heartfelt story with endearing characters and unexpected plot developments, plus even some laughs and a memorable song or two. I love how strongly the movie draws on traditional Mexican culture …
Book Review: Bounce by Megan Shull
Book #133 of 2020: Bounce by Megan Shull This middle-grade body-swap / time loop novel really doesn’t work for me, unfortunately. I don’t necessarily need to know the mechanism behind why our tween heroine keeps waking back up on Christmas morning as a different girl — it can be a Yuletide miracle, or even just …
TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 5
TV #22 of 2020: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 5 Another reasonably solid season of late-twentieth-century science-fiction, delivering a handful of great episodes like “Conundrum,” “Cause and Effect,” “The Next Phase, and “The Inner Light” along with the all-time classic “Darmok” (which I’d first heard about in college linguistics classes over a decade ago). …
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Book Review: A Ceiling Made of Eggshells by Gail Carson Levine
Book #132 of 2020: A Ceiling Made of Eggshells by Gail Carson Levine I expected to enjoy this historical fiction novel more than I did, both for its focus on a family of 15th-century Spanish Jews and on the strength of other titles I’ve loved from author Gail Carson Levine over the years. Unfortunately, the …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 