TV #14 of 2020: The Good Wife, season 1 The first year of this CBS legal procedural starts out a little clumsier than I remember, with a bit too much focus on the title character’s children and some of the main cast feeling just lightly sketched-in. But the cases (and judge personalities, a rarity for …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Movie Review: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend (2020)
Movie #6 of 2020: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend (2020) This new interactive Kimmy Schmidt sequel is a whole lot of fun! It’s not remotely necessary for providing further closure or anything after last year’s series finale, but it also doesn’t seem like it walks back that conclusion at all either. It’s mostly …
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Book Review: The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent
Book #107 of 2020: The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent A clear and powerful account of the American eugenics and anti-immigration movements of the early twentieth century, and how the two were inextricably linked. Author Daniel …
Book Review: The Traitor’s Game by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Book #106 of 2020: The Traitor’s Game by Jennifer A. Nielsen (The Traitor’s Game #1) There’s not enough worldbuilding in this YA novel to distinguish the setting from any generic fantasy realm, which makes it harder to track or care about all the opposing factions. Character loyalties also seem pretty easily swayed, which further impedes …
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Book Review: If It Bleeds by Stephen King
Book #105 of 2020: If It Bleeds by Stephen King The latest Stephen King release is a collection of four unrelated novellas, probably not the best introduction to his style but definitely worthwhile for existing fans. My individual mini-reviews below: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. This story about a boy’s elderly neighbor getting his first smartphone is …
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Book Review: This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada
Book #104 of 2020: This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada (This Mortal Coil #1) I think I could have loved a different story set in this world of biohacking and — so timely in 2020 — a global pandemic shutdown. Unfortunately, this one puts too much attention on the bland YA love triangle over other …
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Book Review: I Want You to Know We’re Still Here by Esther Safran Foer
Book #103 of 2020: I Want You to Know We’re Still Here by Esther Safran Foer There are many personal accounts of the Holocaust out there, but I think this new memoir may be the first I’ve read from the child of survivors, exploring what it’s like to grow up with that sort of household …
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Book Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Book #102 of 2020: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune I appreciate how this fantasy novel’s protagonist is a heavyset, middle-aged, gay social worker, any single element of which would be rare enough for the genre (and liable to be used as a punchline, rather than treated with empathy and respect as …
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TV Review: Saturday Night Live, season 45
TV #13 of 2020: Saturday Night Live, season 45 Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang are fun new additions to this long-running sketch show, and I have to credit the whole team both on and off-screen for bouncing back so strongly after the COVID-19 coronavirus curtailed the original plans for the season. (The three pre-recorded “SNL …
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Book Review: Peril at End House by Agatha Christie
Book #101 of 2020: Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #8) Although this book contains one of those Agatha Christie solutions that I deduced well before her stalwart investigator, I don’t consider that a weakness of the text or a detriment to my enjoyment of its puzzle. (Indeed, my top complaint about …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 