TV #41 of 2025: The Sopranos, season 1 I’ve never seen The Sopranos before, but my understanding is that the show is widely considered both great on its own terms and very influential on the television industry at large. (Personally The Americans kept coming to mind as a relevant successor program as I watched this …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
Book #126 of 2025: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer At the beginning of the fourth Thomas Covenant volume The Wounded Land, the returning protagonist tells the new one, “I’m on the inside of this thing, and you aren’t. I know it. You don’t. It can’t be explained[…] It’s a question of experience. You’re just …
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Book Review: Paths Not Taken by Simon R. Green
Book #125 of 2025: Paths Not Taken by Simon R. Green (Nightside #5) This is one of the better entries of its urban fantasy series, I think, propulsively moving the major plot arc along while also delivering immediate thrills and significant character work. After several volumes of throat-clearing on that first front, the previous novel …
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Book Review: Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic
Book #124 of 2025: Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic I’ve been out of academia for almost a decade now, but back when I was working as a sociolinguist, I studied how people use language on the internet and how traditional emblems of group identity in speech can …
TV Review: Derry Girls, season 2
TV #40 of 2025: Derry Girls, season 2 Another funny year of a show that nevertheless seems like it could be doing more with its distinctive setting and its character work. There are a few recurring bits, but nothing that resembles any sort of ongoing storyline or concern that’s maintained over multiple episodes (though that’s …
Book Review: The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul by Victoria Goddard
Book #123 of 2025: The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul by Victoria Goddard (The Red Company Reformed #2) This is my favorite Victoria Goddard book since The Hands of the Emperor, which was the first one that I ever picked up. That earlier novel is often heralded as a great entry point to the author’s extended Nine …
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Book Review: Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
Book #122 of 2025: Stag Dance by Torrey Peters Author Torrey Peters had a smash hit with the bestselling 2021 novel Detransition, Baby, and I assume her publisher wanted to release something else with her name on it before that recognition had completely faded. Hence this new title collecting four unrelated novellas, two of which …
Book Review: Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy
Book #121 of 2025: Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy The premise of a broke ex-con getting hired by an anonymous benefactor to become a hitman has distinct potential, but the story that follows is unfortunately pretty dreadful throughout. Part of the problem is the obnoxious protagonist, who has no clear redeeming features that I can identify. …
Book Review: The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Book #120 of 2025: The Guest List by Lucy Foley A good plot twist should feel surprising in the moment but almost inevitable in hindsight, and there are several such developments woven throughout this wicked thriller about a disastrous wedding off the coast of Ireland. Other readers have compared this 2020 novel to an Agatha …
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Book Review: Doctor Who: Fear Death by Water by Emily Cook
Book #119 of 2025: Doctor Who: Fear Death by Water by Emily Cook This adventure finds the Fifteenth Doctor traveling by himself, sometime after the events of Joy to the World (and presumably before The Robot Revolution, when Belinda Chandra joins the crew). It’s in that sub-genre of Doctor Who stories where the time-traveller meets …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 