Book #104 of 2016: The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #9) These books are gradually becoming less episodic, but they still move at a glacier’s speed when it comes to moving the series plot along. The Baudelaire children learn no new information in this book, and they end up in …
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Book #103 of 2016: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (How to Train Your Dragon #1) Very different and substantially worse than its movie adaptation. (And also far less diverse – no female characters have lines, and neither Hiccup nor Toothless have disabilities as they do in the film.) The audiobook was elevated …
Book #102 of 2016: The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen (The Ascendance Trilogy #1) The False Prince has a crackerjack plot, focusing around a group of orphans collected in secret and competing to be the one chosen by their new master to impersonate the missing heir to their kingdom’s throne. It feels a little …
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Movie #19 of 2016: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) Much like The Search for Spock, it seems like not a whole lot happens in this film. It’s basically just Spock’s brother trying to recruit the Enterprise crew into joining his weird cult thing, with no real stakes or clear reason for bringing back …
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Movie #18 of 2016: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) I really used to think people were joking about the Star Trek movies, when they said that the even ones were good and the odd ones were bad. But that’s honestly exactly how it’s been shaping up so far. I was expecting Star Trek …
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Book #17 of 2016: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) I feel as though this movie just kind of… happened, without much happening. It’s frustrating that it basically undoes the ending of the previous film too, which retroactively weakens that one somewhat. And it spends practically the whole runtime getting to that point …
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Book #101 of 2016: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami I think there are probably three groups of people that will get something out of this book: 1) long-distance runners, 2) aspiring novelists, and 3) fans of Haruki Murakami’s own novels. Only being in the first category myself, I …
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Book #100 of 2016: Mastiff by Tamora Pierce (Beka Cooper #3) Beka Cooper’s final case is also her biggest, with the Tortall guardswoman chasing after a kidnapped prince all over the country. But although it’s been fun to watch Beka grow in both competence and confidence as this series progressed, Mastiff is somewhat lacking as …
Book #99 of 2016: Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22 by Erica Heller Erica Heller has definitely inherited her father’s droll sense of humor, and she uses it to good effect in this memoir of their family life. I’ve read several of Joseph Heller’s …
Book #98 of 2016: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2) This book was sadder than the first one in the Wolves of Mercy Falls series, but it also had less in the way of ridiculous teenage hormones, so that was a nice change. Plus I really appreciated how it dealt with …
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