Movie #8 of 2020: Hamilton (2020) A Broadway recording like this — taped back in 2016, but only released now for Disney’s streaming service — could be a tricky property to rate / review. After all, are we judging the dialogue and songs for the show itself? The performers in this particular staging of it? …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
Book #152 of 2020: Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad This short antiracism tract provides some handy definitions and examples, splitting the broad problem of white supremacy into more specific interconnected issues of privilege, fragility, complicit silence, and so forth that (white) readers …
TV Review: The Good Wife, season 3
TV #24 of 2020: The Good Wife, season 3 The third year of this law drama is its best one yet, and not only because it finally acts upon the romantic will-they-won’t-they dimension that’s mostly lingered in the background subtext for the first two seasons. There’s also the smart writing decision to bring Eli’s crisis …
Book Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Book #151 of 2020: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë This 1848 novel is a neat early tale of women’s liberation, and one I was not expecting to have such sparklingly funny dialogue throughout. The comedy of manners doesn’t occlude the impact of the heroine leaving her abusive husband — although it makes …
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Book Review: Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life by Paula C. Austin
Book #150 of 2020: Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life by Paula C. Austin Interesting but far too brief, with the whole first third of the text a dry academic overview of author Paula C. Austin’s archival source material. In the rest of the book, she brings the …
Book Review: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
Book #149 of 2020: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow This 2020 YA novel has so much to say about contemporary racism and sexism (and their intersection, sometimes called misogynoir), and I could see it both validating the experiences of some readers and providing others a valuable window into their lives. From school …
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Book Review: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan
Book #148 of 2020: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan (Powder Mage #1) The plot to this 2013 fantasy debut reminds me of the second Mistborn novel, from the challenges facing a force of rebels after they successfully overthrow their tyrant ruler and must figure out how to govern amid the dying warning of a …
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Book Review: How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang
Book #147 of 2020: How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang Although it’s not necessarily my typical sort of read, I’ve found this novel about a pair of Chinese-American siblings amid the California Gold Rush to be utterly captivating. It’s a deeply personal and well-realized tale that somehow avoids the performative …
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Book Review: A Conjuring of Light by V. E. Schwab
Book #146 of 2020: A Conjuring of Light by V. E. Schwab (Shades of Magic #3) This last volume has the most coherent plot stakes of the Shades of Magic trilogy, but it’s still a pretty rambling adventure that never seems to take full advantage of the cool multiverse setting. There’s also a lot of …
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Book Review: Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi
Book #145 of 2020: Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi (Beasts Made of Night #1) This debut novel from Nigerian-American author Tochi Onyebuchi has an interesting concept of an underclass of magical sin-eaters who assuage the consciences of their society’s wicked nobility, but the plot is pretty slow and I struggle to ever understand …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 