TV #17 of 2025: Abbott Elementary, season 4 As most sitcoms tend to do over time, this series has by now settled into a comfortable rhythm as a hangout watch. Viewers can tune in for a dose of the familiar characters and their banter, but not have to worry too much about any larger plot …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
Book #67 of 2025: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee I loved Pachinko, but for some reason it took me a long time to circle back around to check out this earlier volume, author Min Jin Lee’s debut. As it turns out, I like this one even better; there’s the same great grasp …
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TV Review: The Bear, season 3
TV #16 of 2025: The Bear, season 3 In an odd way, The Bear the TV series seems to be following the same arc as The Bear the titular gentrified restaurant, growing increasingly artsy and experimental as it goes along. How else to account for the first episode of this latest season, which is basically …
TV Review: Daredevil: Born Again, season 1
TV #15 of 2025: Daredevil: Born Again, season 1 Even for Marvel, this is a wildly uneven show, although the tonal clashes make sense when you know a little about the production process behind it. As a sequel to the Daredevil series that originally ran on Netflix from 2015 to 2018, this revival brings back …
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Book Review: Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
Book #66 of 2025: Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister Two-out-of-five stars might seem a bit harsh for this novel, which is mostly more like a three-star read up until the end. Unfortunately, that closing section is saddled with a sequence of twists that are so inane, they wind up tanking the whole enterprise for …
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Book Review: Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler
Book #65 of 2025: Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler All I really knew about this memoir before picking it up was that its author Anna Marie Tendler was the comedian John Mulaney‘s ex-wife. That caught my attention less in hopes of learning salacious details about their separation and more for the …
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Book Review: Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell
Book #64 of 2025: Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell (Virgin New Adventures #4) The year is 1991, and the newly-canceled Doctor Who — what we now call “Classic” Who, to distinguish it from the post-2005 version — has been limping on in the form of these licensed novels continuing the story of the …
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Book Review: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
Book #63 of 2025: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood Romance is not my typical genre, and this particular example has too many issues for me to wholly enjoy, but it’s captured my attention enough that I’ll probably read more from author Ali Hazelwood someday. The good, to start with: her characterization of the people-pleasing heroine …
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Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Book #62 of 2025: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games #1) [Previous review here, from 2011.] Fun to revisit this first Hunger Games novel, well after the blockbuster movie franchise that turned it into a household name. Even setting all that aside to consider the 2008 title fresh, it’s clear that it’s …
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Book Review: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three: The Sailor by Robin Furth, Peter David, Juanan Ramírez, and Jesus Aburtov
Book #61 of 2025: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three: The Sailor by Robin Furth, Peter David, Juanan Ramírez, and Jesus Aburtov The five issues in this bound volume unfortunately represent the end of the Marvel comic book adaptations of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series — or at least, there haven’t …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 