TV #31 of 2019: Veronica Mars, season 1 What an incredibly satisfying and well-crafted season of television. The high school noir tone is pitch-perfect, the title figure is layered far beyond her initial feisty appeal, and subtle clues to the ultimate answer of who killed the teenage sleuth’s best friend are threaded brilliantly throughout the …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss
Book #148 of 2019: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club #1) I think I admire the ambition of this Victorian horror pastiche, which is like a feminist next generation to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, more than I care for the finished product. It’s …
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Book Review: Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Book #147 of 2019: Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch I’ve known and followed Gretchen McCulloch since 2012, when we connected as fellow grad students drawn to the messy question of how to apply the systematic approaches from our linguistics classes to the strange new frontier of informal writing that …
Book Review: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
Book #146 of 2019: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman One part memoir of an American journalist’s life abroad in Paris, one part ethnography of French attitudes and approaches towards childraising. Mostly, the latter boils down to firmer rules, not feeling pressure to meet particular milestones, …
Book Review: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum
Book #145 of 2019: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum In this 2019 collection of essays, most previously published elsewhere, culture critic Emily Nussbaum explores many facets of television as a medium and how it has grown as an avenue for artistic expression over the past few …
Book Review: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Book #144 of 2019: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy #4) This novel is packed with the usual dry witticisms and absurdist observations of author Douglas Adams, but it carries a very different tenor to the rest of this comic sci-fi series. The new …
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Book Review: Pennyroyal Academy by M. A. Larson
Book #143 of 2019: Pennyroyal Academy by M. A. Larson (Pennyroyal Academy #1) This middle-grade fantasy novel keeps its heroine a cipher for far too long, and when readers finally learn her peculiar backstory, it doesn’t really track with what we’ve seen or elucidate her driving goals. (Why does she want to be a warrior …
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Book Review: The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan
Book #142 of 2019: The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan A deep dive into a fairly short span of Roman history, from the defeat of the enemy city-states Corinth and Carthage in 146 BCE to the death of the general Sulla in 78 BCE. …
Book Review: Newt’s Emerald by Garth Nix
Book #141 of 2019: Newt’s Emerald by Garth Nix A lightweight Regency romp with a sprinkling of fantasy elements. I’d like to see more of how the magic works — especially coming from Sabriel author Garth Nix — but that fuzziness doesn’t get in the way of the quick-paced story Nix is telling. His tale …
Book Review: Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope
Book #140 of 2019: Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope I appreciate this novel’s Israeli kibbutz setting — and debut author Jessamyn Hope’s inclusion of so many non-religious aspects of Jewish life there — but I find the characters to be a uniformly miserable bunch. It’s hard to root for any of them to do anything but …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 