Book 165 of 2018: An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn I think this would be a great book for a certain type of reader, but I unfortunately can’t count myself in that class. Part family memoir and part literary analysis, the story broadly tracks the relationship of a classics …
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Book #164 of 2018: 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill Joe Hill’s novels have been hit-or-miss for me, and it turns out that his short stories are much the same. There are some great pieces in this collection: the opening “Best New Horror” manages to be heartfelt, creepy, and darkly comic all at once, and …
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Book #163 of 2018: The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (Hawthorne #1) A solid whodunnit mystery, but not quite as imaginative as author Anthony Horowitz’s earlier novel Magpie Murders (to which this story is unrelated, despite the similar title). The hook this time around is that Horowitz is writing as a fictionalized version of …
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Book #162 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #1) It’s a little hard for me to be objectively critical about the Harry Potter books, which, although not my first introduction to children’s fantasy literature, were nevertheless a formative and beloved part of my childhood. Still, I’ve always …
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Book 161 of 2018: My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt Probably the worst thing about this memoir of a Baby Boomer childhood in rural Kentucky is its sensationalized title. Andrew J. Offutt didn’t work in the porn industry; he was a prolific author who happened to write erotic fiction (among many other genres). His …
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Book 160 of 2018: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle #2) This Hugo-winning novella may feel somewhat familiar by today’s standards, but that’s simply because so many later works have copied from its playbook. From Avatar‘s plot of industrialist humans seeking to bulldoze an extraterrestrial forest, to the …
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Book #159 of 2018: The Black Stars by Dan Krokos (The Planet Thieves #2) This is kind of an odd sequel. In place of the action-packed military sci-fi of the first book, the child cadets are now back at their academy, resulting in more of a classic boarding school adventure (with an eventual return to …
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Book #158 of 2018: Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor (Binti #3) I’ve enjoyed the characters and Afrofuturism concepts of the Binti novellas, but this last book in Nnedi Okorafor’s sci-fi trilogy is the only one that’s really soared for me. Although just as short as the previous volumes, it lacks their abruptness, and …
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Movie #17 of 2018: Young Frankenstein (1974) This movie holds up pretty well, but it’s not quite as funny as I remember it being (and there are two scenes that skirt way closer to dubious sexual consent than I would like in my fiction, especially when played for a laugh). It’s also clearer on an …
Book #157 of 2018: The Dark Tower by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #7) In 1999, Stephen King was struck by a van and nearly killed, directly inspiring the author to resume and finish the Dark Tower series he had been working on intermittently since 1970. King would ultimately write these last three novels in …
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