Book #166 of 2020: Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust I like how this new fantasy novel of a princess whose touch is poison — so inadvertently appropriate for our pandemic era of masks and social distancing! — blends #ownvoices Persian folklore with elements of the Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel fairy tales, by way of …
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TV #27 of 2020: Shameless, season 7 Although still recognizable, this is a quieter and more thoughtful year of Shameless, with arcs that build gradually to a boil rather than the show’s typical frenetic style. It doesn’t always work with what we know of these characters — Fiona’s new focus on business and disinterest in …
Book #165 of 2020: Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson I remember liking this historical fiction title when I first encountered it as assigned reading back in middle school, so when my library acquired the digital audiobook in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I figured it might be worth revisiting. And overall, I’d …
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Book #164 of 2020: Middlegame by Seanan McGuire I have mixed feelings about this story of psychic twins, separated at birth, who nevertheless find each other via telepathy and end up forging an unshakable bond. I like the protagonists themselves, and the plot reads like classic Stephen King as they use their special talents to …
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Movie #11 of 2020: Palm Springs (2020) This is a fun spin on the old time-loop story, situating it as a romantic comedy with both leads stuck in the same repeating day (which happens to include a wedding, a classic romcom setting to begin with). It’s as funny as you’d expect from Andy Samberg and …
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 …
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 #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 #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 #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 …
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