Book #200 of 2017: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin (The Tales of Dunk and Egg #1-3) This book is a collection of three novellas from George R.R. Martin, set in the century before his major series A Song of Ice and Fire. Presenting these stories in a single volume is …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin”
Book #199 of 2017: Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell This is such a warm, cozy story of a baby found floating in a cello case after a shipwreck and the absentminded scholar who adopts her. Other characters may not understand Charles and Sophie’s unique little family, but they’re happy with one another and I just wanted …
Continue reading “Book Review: Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell”
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Ten Thousand Skies Above You by Claudia Gray”
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 #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 #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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Moby Dick by Herman Melville”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more