Book #110 of 2017: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury’s vision of the Martian frontier is a haunting dream, populated by a telepathic indigenous species that humanity can never hope to truly understand. In this collection of loosely-related vignettes, he walks us through a history of the human presence on Mars from first …
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Book #109 of 2017: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch This science-fiction novel is like It’s a Wonderful Life, if George Bailey had ended up in that alternate reality without a wife and children because the version of himself there kidnapped him at gunpoint and forced him to switch places. The other version of our hero …
TV #17 of 2017: Supergirl, season 2 Kind of an uneven season, but then, I think at this point we just have to accept that Supergirl is kind of an uneven show. It continues to be unabashedly 100% girl-power in a way that I think is probably amazing for the smaller girls and boys who …
Book #108 of 2017: Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (Themis Files #1) I expected a lot more from this novel about humanity discovering parts to a giant alien robot buried beneath the earth, especially once I found out the author has a PhD in linguistics. (There’s even a linguist character in the book, and the …
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Book #107 of 2017: Red Rising by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #1) Just as great as when I first read it last year, so I’ll just quote from my earlier review: Red Rising at its heart is telling a story like The Count of Monte Cristo or Gattaca, where someone from a lower class has …
Book #106 of 2017: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows #2) As much as I liked the fantasy heist novel Six of Crows, I was a little put off when the ending seemed to wrap up its main plot and then throw a curveball cliffhanger out of nowhere, because I didn’t relish the …
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Book #105 of 2017: My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams A collection of writings and speeches by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, interspersed with brief biographical details and other context. Ginsburg’s collected remarks provide an engaging (and fairly apolitical) view into one of America’s finest legal …
Book #104 of 2017: Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith (Portuguese Irregular Verbs #1) A lightweight little comedy about a trio of hapless linguistics professors. The plot is thin, but the humor is droll, particularly in its barbs at academia. A short, fun read. ★★★☆☆
Book #103 of 2017: All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward A gripping firsthand account of the Watergate investigation, told by the two Washington Post reporters who first broke the story and kept following up on its leads until the scandal ultimately brought down a president. It’s easy for people like me, …
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Book #102 of 2017: John Dies at the End by David Wong (John Dies at the End #1) This novel is weird, both in the sense of uncanny Lovecraftian horrors and in the sense of a bizarre plot related by a rambling unreliable narrator. I think the author was aiming for an Army of Darkness …
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