TV #41 of 2017: Party Down, season 2 One of the things I love about Party Down – and there’s a lot! – is just how committed it is to its structure. This is the only workplace comedy I can think of where practically every single moment takes place entirely within the workplace. These people …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Book #198 of 2017: The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen I like that the main characters in this novel are from an oppressed underclass in their society, because it teaches an important lesson about tolerance to any young readers clever enough to spot the parallels to people’s treatment in our own world. Unfortunately the book …
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Book Review: Ten Thousand Skies Above You by Claudia Gray
Book #197 of 2017: Ten Thousand Skies Above You by Claudia Gray (Firebird #2) This middle book in Claudia Gray’s Firebird trilogy suffers from the same problem as a lot of sequels: a somewhat clunky effort to kickstart the plot and present new stakes now that the main conflict from the previous story has been …
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TV Review: The Mindy Project, season 2
TV #40 of 2017: The Mindy Project, season 2 Honestly I don’t think this show knows what it wants to be. Even ignoring all the cast changes, the writing too feels like it careens wildly from one sort of story to the next without always bringing in solid character logic to back those plays. On …
Book Review: The Iliad by Homer
Book #196 of 2017: The Iliad by Homer I had only ever read isolated portions of Homer before, so this was my first time through the Iliad as a whole. This epic poem is a bit odd to modern ears, more a series of brief vignettes than a single cohesive narrative (which is why reading …
Book Review: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
Book #195 of 2017: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (Farseer #2) This middle book in the Farseer trilogy was formative in my teenage years, speaking to the idealism and anger that most young people probably feel to some degree. There’s something universal in youths chafing against authority figures who will not see reason, and author …
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Book Review: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip
Book #194 of 2017: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip (Riddle-Master #2) This middle volume in the Riddle-Master trilogy is probably the strongest, but it still moves to the strange internal logic of a dream, often leaving its readers grasping after oblique shades of meaning in under-explained references to this world’s history …
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Book Review: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Book #193 of 2017: Moby Dick by Herman Melville There’s a decent story submerged in this book, but it’s utterly swamped by the narrator’s endless didactic asides on whales and whaling. For every page about Ahab’s obsessive quest or Ishmael and Queequeg’s sweet friendship or even the fate of minor characters like poor Pip, readers …
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Book Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Book #192 of 2017: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #1) This is the first novel in Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy, a series I’m reading after (and on the strength of) the author’s Six of Crows and its sequel Crooked Kingdom. Those books share a world with this series and take place after it, …
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Book Review: The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
Book #191 of 2017: The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel Lane Roanoke has never known any family except her mother Camilla, who left home when she was pregnant with Lane and cut off all ties to her past. But when Camilla kills herself, the orphaned teen is sent to live at the Roanoke family estate …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 