TV #11 of 2020: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, season 7 Another solid run of this police workplace comedy (sitcop?), reliably delivering jokes but not really knocking it out of the park anymore. Brooklyn Nine-Nine has an unfortunate tendency to shy away from follow-through on any big narrative moves, and sure enough, this batch of episodes swiftly reverts …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Book #89 of 2020: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson I admire the ambition of this novel to build up an alternate world history across six centuries — in which the Black Death kills off almost all of Europe, and China and a Muslim empire become the dominant geopolitical powers instead …
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Book Review: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
Book #88 of 2020: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers (Zamonia #1) I absolutely adore this wild and whimsical adventure novel, detailing the tall-tale nautical escapades of a talking blue bear. (Life inside a stable tornado! The famous dueling liars of Atlantis! Impressment on the biggest ship in the world! Microscopic mini-pirates!) …
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Book Review: Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Bart D. Ehrman
Book #87 of 2020: Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Bart D. Ehrman An interesting topic, delivered in a somewhat dry and academic tone. The general thesis of the work is that modern Christianity’s conceptions of the hereafter are not exactly what would have been believed throughout history, and we can trace …
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Book Review: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Book #86 of 2020: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (The Machineries of Empire #1) The technology in this setting is interesting — powered by dogmatic acceptance of mathematical principles throughout an area of space, and weakened by anyone there entertaining alternate heretical theories — but readers face a pretty steep learning curve before that …
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Book Review: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Book #85 of 2020: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix The tone of this novel in which a group of 90s housewives take on an undead interloper in their suburb community could so easily trip over into camp, but author Grady Hendrix avoids that by rooting the narrative in a …
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Book Review: Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah
Book #84 of 2020: Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah This popular science title from 2016 offers an engaging and informative explanation of disease outbreaks, focused primarily on the biology of the pathogens that carry them. Author Sonia Shah has literally given TED Talks on the subject, and it …
Book Review: Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb
Book #83 of 2020: Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and the Fool #3) The closing chapters of this 2017 fantasy novel form a meaningful sendoff to the hero and world first introduced in 1995’s Assassin’s Apprentice. Overall, however, the book is far too slow and exposition-heavy — and because the larger Realm of …
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Book Review: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden
Book #82 of 2020: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden A light but sweet look back at the production of the 1980s cult classic The Princess Bride through the eyes of its leading man. This is definitely one of those books that’s helped …
Book Review: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
Book #81 of 2020: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin (Great Cities #1) I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but author N. K. Jemisin’s foray into urban fantasy reads rather like a 1990s throwback, with its tale of five New Yorkers who become powerful avatars of their respective boroughs harkening …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 