Movie #15 of 2017: The Room (2003) Honestly, what is there left to even say about this awful movie at this point? No matter what you’ve heard, I guarantee you, the reality is even worse than that. It’s such an entertaining trainwreck to watch, though. Fun personal fact: I watched this movie for the first …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
Book #181 of 2017: The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey The setup to this book resembles Never Let Me Go, which similarly puts children in a bizarre setting with evasive caretakers who encourage them to accept everything as normal. But whereas that novel frustrated me by dragging out its reveal for almost …
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Book Review: Perelandra by C. S. Lewis
Book #180 of 2017: Perelandra by C. S. Lewis (The Space Trilogy #2) This was a much more overtly religious book than Out of the Silent Planet, but I liked how the core of the story was essentially just a human arguing with a demon in the Venusian Garden of Eden. Lewis is skilled at …
Book Review: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler
Book #179 of 2017: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #1) Anyanwu is an African shapeshifter who has survived for centuries by healing all physical damage and keeping her body young. She thinks there’s no other person remotely like herself until she meets Doro, a man millennia past his own natural lifespan but whose …
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Book Review: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce
Book #178 of 2017: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #3) This third novel in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals quartet is the first one that I’ve felt approached the quality of the other books I’ve read in her wider Tortall series. The main character is still absurdly overpowered – she’s already able to magically communicate …
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TV Review: The Grinder, season 1
TV #36 of 2017: The Grinder, season 1 I have such a soft spot for this silly little show about an actor convinced he can practice law at his brother’s firm just because he used to play a lawyer on TV. It’s just so rich in character-driven humor and meta-commentary on TV show plots, and …
TV Review: Game of Thrones, season 7
TV #35 of 2017: Game of Thrones, season 7 All in all, this is probably one of the weakest seasons of Game of Thrones. As cool as it is to see long-anticipated developments finally happening – and it really is cool, don’t get me wrong – it’s a little disappointing how many characters have developed …
Book Review: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Book #177 of 2017: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon In the late 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt rejected a government proposal to establish a settlement for Jewish refugees within America’s Alaskan Territory. The U.S. instead largely blocked Jewish immigration, and ultimately over six million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Author Michael Chabon …
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TV Review: Marvel’s The Defenders, season 1
TV #34 of 2017: Marvel’s The Defenders, season 1 Plotwise, this show is basically just another season of Daredevil. Yes, he’s teaming up with some superfriends, but the main character arc is Matt’s, and the most important returning characters / concepts come primarily from his show (with Iron Fist as a distant second). There are …
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TV Review: Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 1
TV #33 of 2017: Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 1 My wife and I watched/rewatched this season respectively before binge-watching the new Defenders season with friends. It remains a really great examination of male privilege and rape culture, using the heightened storytelling language of superpowers to explore those issues. Like the best of the fantasy genre, …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 