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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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 #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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Book #100 of 2020: A Gathering of Shadows by V. E. Schwab (Shades of Magic #2) An unfortunate continuation of the thin plot and character motivation issues that are keeping me at a distance from this fantasy series. The biggest event in this second volume is a magical tournament that isn’t even mentioned until a …
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Book #99 of 2020: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey This novella sort of feels like it’s over before it’s even begun, but within those sparse pages is a fun snapshot of a post-apocalyptic world and a young lesbian running away to find her place in it. The story reads like a typical western, and …
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Book #98 of 2020: Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney I’ve been reading a lot lately about disease outbreaks as a way of understanding the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and this book from 2017 is a solid overview of the influenza pandemic that ravaged the global …
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