Book #188 of 2019: Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack I’m really enjoying the recent trend of explicit Jewish representation in speculative fiction, and this new middle-grade fantasy novel is another fun example. The story is populated with all sorts of creatures from Slavic folklore, but the main conflict facing twelve-year-old Anya isn’t a …
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Book #187 of 2019: There Will Come a Darkness by Katy Rose Pool (The Age of Darkness #1) A competent but somewhat derivative fantasy adventure, heavy on portentous omens yet light on significant plot or character growth. I normally defend the Young Adult genre as telling stories about people coming of age, rather than necessarily …
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Book #186 of 2019: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates There’s a slow burn to the fantastical elements of this novel about teleportation on the Underground Railroad, but even when it seems like pure historical fiction, it’s still a devastating portrait of slavery in antebellum Virginia. Debut novelist Ta-Nehisi Coates channels the same powerful prose …
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TV #35 of 2019: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 6 With its future still uncertain at the time, the previous season of Marvel’s sci-fi spy show ended in such a way that it could have functioned as a series finale if necessary. Instead, the program got renewed for two final outings, leaving this first one …
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Book #185 of 2019: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials #3) Author Philip Pullman takes some odd plotting shortcuts in this trilogy’s conclusion — like offering practically no motivation for a pivotal trip to the world of the dead — and it’s easy to see how his populating a traditional Christian theology …
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Book #184 of 2019: The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (Hawthorne #2) I’m still not sold on the metafictional conceit of this mystery series, which places its author as a Watson-type narrator to the investigations of a supposed Holmes-like acquaintance. This second novel continues that detective’s odious streak as well: it’s true that Anthony …
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Book #183 of 2019: What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte A short but interesting pushback against J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and the outsized footprint it has gained in popular culture as an explanation for how Donald Trump won the presidency. Historian Elizabeth Catte, a fellow native of Appalachia, details how the …
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Book #182 of 2019: She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey Overall, this is a riveting firsthand account of Pulitzer-winning investigative journalism in the style of All the President’s Men, told by the New York Times reporters who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein’s …
Over on Patreon, I’ve posted a recap of everything I read and watched in September, including links to individual reviews and an update on my progress in migrating the older reviews over to this new blog site. Thanks to everyone who has already subscribed!
Book #181 of 2019: Turbulence by David Szalay I think I like the idea of this book more than the execution. It’s a quick read told over a dozen chapters, each focusing on a minor figure from the one before, who either has recently taken a flight or will be taking one soon. These character …
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