Book #132 of 2018: Iron Gold by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #4) A thrilling return to the Red Rising series, set ten years after the conclusion of the original trilogy. This time author Pierce Brown is juggling three new character perspectives in addition to his returning hero Darrow, the slave who rose up to topple …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Movie Review: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Movie #14 of 2018: Avengers: Infinity War (2018) This is a weird movie to review. On the one hand: I really enjoyed watching it! The 2:40 runtime absolutely flies by, and it’s such a joy to see all (okay, most) of the characters Marvel has built up over the years finally bouncing off one another. …
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Book Review: Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
Book #131 of 2018: Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan Saga #6) The first few Vorkosigan books haven’t really gripped me, so I decided to jump forward to this one (which was the third to be published, anyway — these books are all out of chronological order). It’s more of a spinoff, sharing …
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Book Review: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Book #130 of 2018: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Grief memoirs are tricky; they’re obviously cathartic to write, but can easily turn into a wallowing in loss that shuts out their readers. Author Joan Didion largely avoids that trap by focusing on the more mundane aspects of her husband’s death, centering this …
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Book Review: The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper
Book #129 of 2018: The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper Much like his on-air news persona, there’s a certain boyish earnestness to journalist Jake Tapper’s debut novel. It’s fun to see the author venturing into the world of historical fiction, and to speculate on possible connections between his tale of government intrigue during the heyday …
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Book Review: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Book #128 of 2018: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather A fierce and elegiac tale of early female empowerment, first published in the decade before (white) American women won the right to vote. The heroine, introduced shutting down a catcaller with an “Amazonian” glance, is the eldest sibling in her family and the one tasked with …
Book Review: One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
Book #127 of 2018: One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul A hilarious and heartfelt collection of essays from Canadian author Scaachi Koul, focusing on her life as the millennial daughter of Indian immigrants. It’s a short book that finds humor in heavy subjects, from online harassment …
Movie Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Movie #13 of 2018: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) I went into this movie with fairly low expectations, but ended up really enjoying it. Jurassic Park films have a tendency to copy the major plot points of the original movie’s storyline, but this one takes serious risks that pay off tremendously for me as a …
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Book Review: Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
Book #126 of 2018: Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly I think I would like this historical fiction novel better if it had focused solely on the Polish girl sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp to be the subject of Nazi medical experimentation. Her story is understandably poignant, but it’s weakened by splitting its time with …
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Book Review: Star Wars: Rebel Rising by Beth Revis
Book #125 of 2018: Star Wars: Rebel Rising by Beth Revis A solid if somewhat unremarkable Star Wars adventure, fleshing out Jyn Erso’s early life after she gets adopted by the terrorist Saw Gerrera at the beginning of Rogue One. The whole book reads mostly like a series of deleted scenes from that film, and …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 