TV #23 of 2017: Sense8, season 2 I have the most mixed feelings about Sense8. On the one hand, it’s like no other television show out there, and I feel like it gets at some really profound truths about living in a networked society where your friends around the globe can be there for you …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
TV Review: iZombie, season 3
TV #22 of 2017: iZombie, season 3 I really love the way iZombie’s seasons are self-contained storylines – creator Rob Thomas has likened them to books in a series – that inevitably blow up their premise in the finale to set up a brand-new status quo for the next season to dig into. The fallout …
Book Review: Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
Book #136 of 2017: Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis (The Space Trilogy #1) While not as instantly endearing as his Narnia books, there’s still a lot to enjoy in this first volume of C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, which could have easily been titled A Linguist of Mars. For although Lewis …
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Book Review: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
Book #135 of 2017: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence This book was way more graphic than I expected or wanted, so I’m not surprised it produced such outrage when it was first published in 1928. There’s a bit of a plot regarding female empowerment happening in and around the sex, but the novel …
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Book Review: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
Book #134 of 2017: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow I liked Cory Doctorow’s earlier novel Little Brother, about teens using technology to nonviolently resist an overreaching surveillance state, but I couldn’t stand this one about illegal downloading and copyright violation. The characters are like those in an Ayn Rand novel, existing merely as cardboard mouthpieces …
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Book Review: The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Book #133 of 2017: The Sellout by Paul Beatty I’m ultimately left scratching my head over this one. It’s a satire on contemporary American race relations, featuring a black man reintroducing segregation into his all-minority hometown (because just the idea of a neighboring whites-only school makes the local schoolchildren work harder, and so on). It’s …
Book Review: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Book #132 of 2017: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb (Farseer #1) This fantasy novel was a staple of my high school shelves, the start of a favorite series that I would read over and over again. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memories when I revisited it now, but …
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Book Review: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
Book #131 of 2017: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson I’ve never read H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, the story that so directly inspired this one, but I’ve read enough of his other works to have a sense of the racism and violent misogyny that pervade the man’s writing. Those facets …
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Movie Review: Moana (2016)
Movie #9 of 2017: Moana (2016) This movie was so flipping cute I am beside myself. Honestly, there are no faults here. Moana’s a great hero, the songs are fantastic, Maui in particular is hilarious, every human character is a POC, there’s no awkwardly shoehorned-in love story, it repeatedly passes the Bechdel test… This was …
Book Review: Mister Monday by Garth Nix
Book #130 of 2017: Mister Monday by Garth Nix (The Keys to the Kingdom #1) This somewhat generic tween fantasy adventure is sort of like a cross between Neverwhere and So You Want to Be a Wizard, featuring a young boy who learns he’s heir to a magical power and must travel through a twisted …
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