Book #155 of 2019: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon This novella offers a sparse but effective character study of an aging detective, unnamed yet clearly intended to be read as Sherlock Holmes. Feeling adrift in the new century, he comes out of retirement to help a young Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany — hence …
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Book #154 of 2019: Recursion by Blake Crouch At the start of this inventive sci-fi thriller, a New York City cop investigates a case of people suddenly remembering alternate lives they’ve never lived, while a tech genius a decade earlier researches a way to digitally record and retrieve the failing memories of Alzheimer’s patients. Author …
Book #153 of 2019: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens I really like the beginning-to-middle of this novel about a young ‘marsh girl’ growing up on the edges of a small Carolina town. It’s a slow-paced coming-of-age character study, filled with some beautiful nature descriptions and scenes of independent living. Unfortunately, the flash-forwards to …
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Book #152 of 2019: Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro Dani Shapiro writes movingly of her sense of identity being upended by an unexpected DNA test result, but I struggle to truly comprehend her viewpoint. Even setting aside the author’s odd trust in mediums, meditation gurus, and personality tests, it …
Book #151 of 2019: Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb (The Rain Wild Chronicles #2) In my review of the first book in this Realm of the Elderlings quartet, I complained, “Not much happens, and then it just continues not happening right through the end.” Yet compared to this sequel, that original novel was action-packed. At …
Book #150 of 2019: The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold This short novel starts out feeling like it will be a fun sci-fi romp, but it soon turns mind-bending and profoundly reflective in equal measure. Bequeathed a device that can travel back and forth along the timestream, our hero encounters many alternate versions …
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Book #149 of 2019: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown A somewhat dense history book, detailing the (mis)treatment of various Native American groups by the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Writing in 1970, white historian Dee Brown gathers from many …
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 …
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 #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 …
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