TV #11 of 2026: Classic Doctor Who, season 24 One of the last real times of change for the old British series before its long hiatus, introducing us to the final classic TV Doctor and (eventually) companion. The transition is bumpy and short, spanning only four stories and fourteen episodes in total, which is down …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Book #42 of 2026: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle Horror screenwriter Misha Byrne is having a hard time lately, even besides his upcoming twentieth reunion in the hometown where he hasn’t come out of the closet yet. Either someone is playing an elaborately cruel trick on him, or he’s experiencing a psychotic break, or …
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Book Review: Shining in the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja’s Library edited by Hans-Åke Lilja
Book #41 of 2026: Shining in the Dark: Celebrating Twenty Years of Lilja’s Library edited by Hans-Åke Lilja Although I’ve generally enjoyed the short stories in this collection, I have to admit that I don’t quite get the point of it as a project. Lilja’s Library is a website dedicated to the writing of Stephen …
Book Review: The Ordinary and Extraordinary Auden Greene by Corey Ann Haydu
Book #40 of 2026: The Ordinary and Extraordinary Auden Greene by Corey Ann Haydu Pretty much everything I could want from a middle-grade contemporary/fantasy novel. Our story follows two identical girls on the cusp of their twelfth birthdays, who magically switch places and must navigate one another’s worlds. Princess Auden is the heir to a …
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Movie Review: The Many Saints of Newark (2021)
Movie #11 of 2026: The Many Saints of Newark (2021) I came into this movie pretty skeptical — did The Sopranos really need a spinoff prequel, over a decade after the show went off the air? — but it grew on me a little by the end. Although I didn’t think there were any mysteries …
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Book Review: The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout
Book #39 of 2026: The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe #2) I’m enjoying this old mystery series enough to keep reading, but I have yet to be blown away by the execution. The most enjoyable aspect remains the narrator’s banter and overall relationship with his boss the reclusive detective, which means …
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Book Review: Mars by Ben Bova
Book #38 of 2026: Mars by Ben Bova This is probably the Grand Tour novel that stood out the clearest in my memory before my current reread, telling a thrilling yet grounded tale of outer space exploration that paved the way for so many subsequent releases (and not just from author Ben Bova, though it …
Movie Review: Rocky Balboa (2006)
Movie #10 of 2026: Rocky Balboa (2006) Any story that restarts a dormant franchise carries an additional burden of justification that immediate sequels lack. The first five Rocky movies had their ups and downs, but together they formed a cohesive unit about the life and career of a Philadelphia boxer from roughly 1976 to 1990. …
Book Review: Doctor Who: The Pit by Neil Penswick
Book #37 of 2026: Doctor Who: The Pit by Neil Penswick (Virgin New Adventures #12) This Doctor Who novel is so bad that it had me looking back over previous stories I’ve rated as three-out-of-five stars, wondering if I’d been too harsh on them. It’s both overstuffed and incredibly disjointed, offering not so much a …
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TV Review: Homicide: Life on the Street, season 1
TV #10 of 2026: Homicide: Life on the Street, season 1 This show debuted in 1993, and knowing that it was based on a book by the journalist/producer David Simon who later went on to create The Wire, I was expecting a similar sort of crime drama here. And the parallels are there, seeing as …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 