Book #134 of 2025: At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #2) The Hands of the Emperor is my very favorite novel, which perhaps paradoxically is why I took my time in getting to this direct sequel. While Hands remains a great entry point for the wider Nine Worlds …
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TV #43 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 20 Doctor Who’s 1983 season may not have any all-time classic stories, but overall it’s a fun watch that I would say is stronger than the sum of its parts. The big idea for the twentieth anniversary run was to feature returning villains in every serial, and …
Book #133 of 2025: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco I haven’t loved this 1980 Italian classic as much as I expected to from the premise, which seems like it should be right up my alley: two fourteenth-century monks investigating a string of suspicious deaths at a secluded monastery. They aren’t called detectives, …
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TV #42 of 2025: Bob’s Burgers, season 15 I’m rounding up a bit on the basis of the delightful (if sadly relatable) finale “InsomniBob,” which finds our hero growing increasingly unhinged as he sacrifices sleep for extra creativity time in his ‘night kitchen,’ but overall, this is another winning season from the Bob’s Burgers crew. …
Book #132 of 2025: Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley Reading almost like a cross between Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, this 2025 novel traces a tumultuous creative partnership throughout the first decade of the 21st century. (The title has a double meaning — not …
Book #131 of 2025: Murdle: Volume 2 by G. T. Karber Roughly comparable to Volume 1, in that it’s a collection of bite-size murder mysteries in the form of 100 logic-grid puzzles of increasing difficulty, linked together into a loose ongoing storyline. Once again, half of the entries incorporate not only straightforward clues, but also …
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Book #130 of 2025: Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt (Virgin New Adventures #7) A continuation (and end) of the Cat’s Cradle arc solely in that the TARDIS remains largely out of commission while it finishes its repairs, thereby stranding Ace and the Seventh Doctor in modern rural Wales. There they proceed …
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Book #129 of 2025: Oathbound by Tracy Deonn (The Legendborn Cycle #3) It’s rarely a good sign when an author revises the projected length of a series midway through to tack on some additional volume(s). This particular YA fantasy story, for instance, winds up taking quite a lot of pages and yet accomplishing very little …
Book #128 of 2025: Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight by David A. Kessler, MD This is not a weight-loss book. Rather, it’s an overview from former FDA Commissioner David Kessler (no relation) on the current medical understanding of nutrition and dieting, the widespread problem that he calls food …
Book #127 of 2025: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt On paper, there’s perhaps not much of a plot to this 700-page winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: a thirteen-year-old boy acquires a famous piece of artwork under extraordinary circumstances, and then spends the next decade-and-a-half fretting about it while falling steadily into a …
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