Book #156 of 2017: Runemarks by Joanne M. Harris (Loki #3) This is a fun fantasy adventure story, drawing on Norse mythology but set several centuries after Ragnarok when the gods have largely passed into legend. Still, young Maddy Smith dreams of them, and she seems to have inherited some measure of their magic. Of …
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Book #155 of 2017: Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is as well-written as you would expect from a world-famous singer-songwriter, but his choice of topic doesn’t always live up to his considerable talents. The book alternates between a straightforward presentation of facts and a more soul-searching memoir style, and for a …
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Book #154 of 2017: S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst S., as written by Doug Dorst from an original idea by J.J. Abrams, is an incredibly immersive reading experience. It’s produced to resemble an old library book, complete with handwritten notes in the novel’s margins, and the physicality of that product makes it easy …
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Book #153 of 2017: Deadline by Mira Grant (Newsflesh #2) Mira Grant’s bloggers-fighting-zombies novel Feed was a surprising amount of fun, but this sequel surpasses it in just about every dimension. Partly that’s because the team has matured, so they seem less like teens on Xanga and more like real investigative journalists, and partly it’s …
Book #152 of 2017: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie (Superintendent Battle #2) I’ve learned to be a bit wary of lesser-known Agatha Christie titles, but this one was pretty fun. The ending admittedly comes out of nowhere and isn’t a particularly satisfying resolution to the central plot, but that’s a few pages at …
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Book #151 of 2017: A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh Partly an ethnography of burglary practices and overlooked vulnerabilities, partly a thoughtful exploration of how burglars interact with architecture in ways counter to expectation or design intent, A Burglar’s Guide to the City is a deeply engrossing and thought-provoking work. I loved …
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Book #149 of 2017: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray This novel is all over the place tonally, and the satire doesn’t always land the way I think author Libba Bray intends it to. But there’s still a lot to enjoy in this girl-power comedy of teenage beauty pageant contestants crashing on a deserted island and …
Movie #12 of 2017: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) So… as you may have noticed over the past few days, I kind of love the Planet of the Apes franchise. (It’s one of those sleeper cell fandoms for me, where I don’t post about it for years at a time and then …
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Book #148 of 2017: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt This is some very dense writing, and author Hannah Arendt can be a tad speculative and reductive, especially in her opening sections on antisemitism and imperialism. However, the closing section that gives the book its title is an improvement, and Arendt draws out key …
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Movie #11 of 2017: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) This movie is overshadowed in two directions: it doesn’t quite reach the storytelling heights of its predecessor Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) that revived the series, nor does it ever get as bonkers as Battle for the Planet of the …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more