TV #5 of 2019: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 3 I may look back and decide that I’ve judged this season too generously in the moment, but wow: not only does it improve upon the first two outings for this Netflix series — which were already quite strong! — but it also …
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TV #4 of 2019: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, season 3 Episode by episode this series is as strong and hilarious as ever, but the season-long plots and character arcs seem like they’re getting sloppier as it goes along. Promising ideas fizzle out, people make some fairly major life decisions with little build-up, and the season is just …
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 …
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 …
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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 …
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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 #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 …
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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 …
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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 #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 …
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