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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon”
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 …
Continue reading “TV Review: Marvel’s The Defenders, 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, …
Continue reading “TV Review: Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 1”
TV #32 of 2017: Master of None, season 2 On balance, I think this season was about on par with the first one, which I really liked. Some things were even stronger here, such as that standout Thanksgiving episode about Denise, but the love story in this season never really hooked me. I think Francesca …
TV #31 of 2017: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 2 Well, this is a step up from the rough edges of season 1, but it’s still a little uneven. As with the original series (and just, serialized fiction in general), TNG seems to be strongest when it focuses on character work and recurring worldbuilding, …
Continue reading “TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 2”
TV #30 of 2017: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, season 3 It’s weird to say that this season felt less ambitious in its storytelling, since we got fairly major new developments like Kimmy going to college, but somehow it does seem like everyone’s character development has sort of stalled at this point. The show is still reliably …
Continue reading “TV Review: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, season 3”
Book #176 of 2017: Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man by William Shatner with David Fisher A touching tribute from William Shatner to his fellow Star Trek alumnus Leonard Nimoy after the Spock actor’s passing in 2015. It’s an inside look at how the two men’s friendship changed over time, and at how …
Book #175 of 2017: A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray (Firebird #1) The beginning of this book is pretty weak, with a revenge quest that’s hard for readers to care about when we don’t have any emotional connection to the characters yet and a whole lot of infodumping about the technology that enables …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray”
Book #174 of 2017: Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix (The Keys to the Kingdom #2) This sequel felt like a formulaic retread of the first novel in the Keys to the Kingdom series, which was already a pretty generic fantasy adventure story. I’m still waiting for that Garth Nix magic that I love from his …
Book #173 of 2017: Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody This book is the incredibly gripping memoir of a poor black woman who became an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement, published in 1968 when the author was not yet 30 years old. Those first decades of her life were packed with …
Continue reading “Book Review: Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more