Book #2 of 2019: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell This domestic thriller about a ‘mommy blogger’ whose best friend goes missing aims to be the next Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, but that effort is hampered by a dull execution. There’s a little bit of tension in the first half of …
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Book #1 of 2019: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky I can understand why this book is a classic of Russian literature, but it’s a long and digressive tome, and as with author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s earlier novel The Idiot, it regularly prioritizes philosophical debate over its plot and characters. I would have preferred far less …
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Movie #1 of 2019: Doctor Who: Resolution (2019) As with last year’s – okay, last week’s – Black Mirror experiment Bandersnatch, I’m choosing to treat this New Year’s special as a movie, given that it’s built to stand on its own, outside of a proper season of Doctor Who. Like the Christmas specials of Who …
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Movie #22 of 2018: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) This metafictional choose-your-own-adventure streaming special about a programmer’s breakdown while creating a choose-your-own-adventure game is an odd property to review. Is it a movie? A TV episode? A video game itself? I’ve chosen to treat it as the first option, since that’s what the crowd-sourced wisdom of …
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Movie #21 of 2018: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) Believe the hype. I’ll freely admit I was reluctant to watch this movie, both because I shy away from animated superhero content in general and because what I knew of its premise — a crossover team-up of different versions of Spider-Man — seemed aimed at comic …
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Book #252 of 2018: The Library Book by Susan Orlean This is a weird, messy book, but it has definitely lodged itself into my head and my heart. One part true crime investigation into the devastating 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library, one part oral history of that library and the broader library …
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TV #54 of 2018: Veep, season 3 This season’s election plot injects something more like stakes into the show’s proceedings, but overall it’s the same steady comedy of detestable people in politics. That’s never been entirely my jam, and it feels even more dissonant to watch in the era of Trump (even though this batch …
TV #53 of 2018: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 2 There’s definitely a nuanced conversation to be had about what this show gets right and wrong about its portrayal of American Jewish life, but overall I consider it to be a positive representation that I can regularly see myself and my family in. And it’s …
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Book #251 of 2018: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (Princess Academy #1) Situated right on the boundary between middle-grade and young adult fiction, this little book is pretty delightful. It’s more grounded — and more feminist — than the fairy tale it at first resembles, and is filled with strong female friendships and the struggles …
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Book #250 of 2018: Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers #3) I adore every book in this warmhearted series about humanity’s future amid a coalition of other intelligent space-travelers, but this latest volume feels like a minor step down on a technical level. The five new viewpoint characters, all human residents of …
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