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. …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
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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Book Review: An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
Book #155 of 2020: An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson I like the early worldbuilding of this YA fantasy novel with all its rules for how to deal with the fair folk, but I lose substantial interest once the seemingly practical heroine — who should really know better — falls in love at first …
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TV Review: Shameless, season 6
TV #25 of 2020: Shameless, season 6 I generally wind up feeling more generous towards a year of Shameless as it approaches its endgame, and that’s definitely true again here. The beat-by-beat legwork of the plotting can be a tad shaky — it feels like we’re told Ian has his mental illness under control, for …
Book Review: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
Book #154 of 2020: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings #3) This conclusion to the classic fantasy trilogy probably has too much falling action after the main stakes are resolved, and its treatment of the anonymous hordes of dark-skinned humans who rally to the banner of …
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Movie Review: 13th (2016)
Movie #9 of 2020: 13th (2016) A decent overview of how America has continued to marginalize its black population after the abolition of slavery, first through discriminatory Jim Crow laws and now via mass incarceration that disproportionately targets African-American men. I particularly appreciate the insights into the corporate interests keeping the growing prison system full, …
Book Review: Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega
Book #153 of 2020: Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega I simply adore the Dominican-American family at the heart of this fantasy novel, most of whom are spirits of the dead that only twelve-year-old Lucely can see. To everyone else they appear as fireflies, as per the #ownvoices folklore that author Claribel A. Ortega is …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 