Book #47 of 2020: White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America by Margaret A. Hagerman There’s an unfortunate disconnect between this 2018 book’s title / framing and its actual content, which discusses author Margaret A. Hagerman’s ethnographic study of thirty affluent white families in one midwestern community from 2011 to 2012. …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison
Book #46 of 2020: Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison I don’t read (or watch) a lot of westerns, but I’ve mostly enjoyed this tale of an orphaned rancher who restyles herself as a man to strike off across the frontier in search of her last surviving kin and ultimately falls in love with …
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Book Review: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Book #45 of 2020: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse A delightful middle-grade fantasy novel that incorporates elements of traditional Navajo folklore while avoiding the paint-by-numbers plot that such modernizations often entail. (I hesitate to call the work #ownvoices, since author Rebecca Roanhorse is not Navajo herself and she makes clear in an afterword …
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TV Review: Doctor Who, season 12
TV #3 of 2020: Doctor Who, season 12 I’m honestly still not sure how I feel about this season on balance. The Thirteenth Doctor’s debut year was designed to be maximally approachable for new viewers, and although that could sometimes feel a bit tame, I don’t think any of us expected its successor to bolt …
Book Review: The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata
Book #44 of 2020: The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata Ostensibly, this is a novel about a man whose late grandfather has a package come back as undeliverable after the funeral, and his efforts to track down its intended recipient, the son of the woman who wrote the unpublished manuscript inside. But …
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Book Review: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Book #43 of 2020: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern This seems like one of those books that is guaranteed to frustrate a lot of readers, in that it obliquely hints at larger designs instead of ever giving us the full picture. The opening premise, after all, is less a novel than a collection of …
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Book Review: The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand
Book #42 of 2020: The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand This YA novel is built on a neat idea for a modernization of A Christmas Carol starring a corporate version of the Ghost of Christmas Past, but I have way too many unanswered questions about both the worldbuilding logistics and that protagonist’s exact …
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Book Review: Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman
Book #41 of 2020: Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman This is a fascinating topic — or at least one aimed squarely at the center of my particular interests — and I really commend author Craig Fehrman for compiling the material behind it. As …
Book Review: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Book #40 of 2020: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado I picked up this collection of short fiction on the strength of author Carmen Maria Machado’s heartbreaking memoir In the Dream House, and initially I thought I would love it just as much. The opening story, “The Husband Stitch,” is an insightful …
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Movie Review: John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019)
Movie #3 of 2020: John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019) I always appreciate artists who are willing to experiment with genre and form, but I have to say, I didn’t like this retro children’s special nearly as much as I do John Mulaney’s stand-up routines or work writing for SNL. I definitely laughed …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 