TV #3 of 2019: The Good Place, season 3 Three seasons in, this sitcom about the afterlife is still one of the funniest, smartest, and most warm-hearted shows on television. It regularly redefines its own premise and is hard to describe without spoilers (and probably impossible to watch out-of-order), but I love that its exploration …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Book #17 of 2019: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh An excellent yet uncomfortable character study of a woman’s struggle with depression and prescription drug abuse. I’m lucky to have never gone down the route of overmedication myself, but I recognize a lot of the narrator’s thought processes from my own lowest …
Continue reading “Book Review: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh”
Book Review: The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris
Book #15 of 2019: The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris A campaign book is probably never going to be great literature, but this one presents a solid introduction to its author, California Senator Kamala Harris, as she launches her run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Presumably an extended version of …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris”
Book Review: Slayer by Kiersten White
Book #16 of 2019: Slayer by Kiersten White (Slayer #1) The last act of this Buffy/Angel spinoff novel is strong enough (and similar enough to the original TV shows) that I’ll probably check out its forthcoming sequel as well, but everything is unfortunately just a little tedious until then. The new gang of sixteen-year-old heroes …
Book Review: Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Book #14 of 2019: Skyward by Brandon Sanderson (Skyward #1) I mostly enjoy this Young Adult novel about a girl following in her father’s footsteps to join their planet’s defense armada, although I do feel there are some issues with people’s motivations at the very beginning. That’s not a problem I normally experience with either …
Continue reading “Book Review: Skyward by Brandon Sanderson”
Book Review: Us Against You by Fredrik Backman
Book #13 of 2019: Us Against You by Fredrik Backman (Beartown #2) This sequel feels somewhat aimless compared to the first Beartown novel and its vivid picture of a rural community’s complicated relationship with the local hockey team. Although I generally enjoy author Fredrik Backman’s writing style and his regular insights into his characters, there …
Continue reading “Book Review: Us Against You by Fredrik Backman”
Movie Review: On the Basis of Sex (2018)
Movie #3 of 2019: On the Basis of Sex (2018) The first act of this Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic is somewhat choppy, jumping from year to year in the 1950s without giving the audience enough room to really invest in its heroine and her struggles. Luckily once the film skips ahead to 1970, the narrative …
Movie Review: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
Movie #2 of 2019: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) I hadn’t watched this movie in many, many years, but it holds up better than a lot of comedies from that era. (The two lead characters are con men who prey on wealthy women, so there’s a slight degree of sexism, but the narrative undercuts them more …
Continue reading “Movie Review: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)”
Book Review: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Book #12 of 2019: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Legacy of Orïsha #1) Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A small band of commoners discover a secret that could bring down their evil empire and restore the old order, but when their home is attacked, they are forced to flee, …
Continue reading “Book Review: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi”
TV Review: Orange Is the New Black, season 6
TV #2 of 2019: Orange Is the New Black, season 6 Moving the action over to the long-mentioned Maximum Security branch is a reasonable way for this prison show to keep itself fresh (and cut loose some of the huge cast it’s assembled over the years), but the writers have made some odd choices about …
Continue reading “TV Review: Orange Is the New Black, season 6”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 