Book #180 of 2025: The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green (Nightside #10) One of the weaker entries in this 2000s urban fantasy series, which is unfortunate, since it also directly sets up the endgame and includes the deaths of some fairly major recurring characters. But plotwise, this is a mess. …
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TV #55 of 2025: 12 Monkeys, season 1 There’s a fun Fringe vibe running through the first year of this Syfy program, and not only because Kirk Acevedo is around in a supporting role. Like that earlier show, it also offers a story that deepens as it goes along and starts digging into the personal …
Book #179 of 2025: The Strength of the Few by James Islington (Hierarchy #2) I don’t really know what to do with this title, rating-wise. I have major critiques about its structure that I’ll get into below, but taking every section on its own terms, I suppose I’ve enjoyed the unfolding story and how it …
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TV #54 of 2025: Wednesday, season 2 I gave the first season of this Addams Family modernization a rave review, praising its heroine, plot, comedy, and tone, but I’m afraid I’m rather cooler on this belated follow-up. (Seriously, I know this is not an issue limited to Netflix, but taking three years to produce eight …
Movie #23 of 2025: Babylon 5: The Road Home (2023) This is, for now, the latest screen entry in the winding Babylon 5 franchise, though there’s no indication that it’s meant to represent a conclusion or anything. In fact, this title is a prequel of sorts — taking place near the end of the TV …
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Movie #22 of 2025: The Ewok Adventure (1984) My daughters (aged 6 and 4) lost interest midway through both A New Hope and The Phantom Menace, so I decided to see if this TV movie from the 1980s — later retitled to Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, though I’ve never called it by that …
TV #53 of 2025: The Sopranos, season 4 Another season of this family/crime drama that’s only periodically at its most effective, although the finale does a lot to clarify how the gradual dissolution of the central marriage ought to have been our primary focus all along. Unfortunately, however, the year leading up to that terrific …
Movie #21 of 2025: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) After nearly two decades, the Indiana Jones trilogy of the 1980s got another big-screen outing, although the brand had survived in the meantime with a succession of video game projects, a TV show about the character’s childhood adventures, and the like. …
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Book #178 of 2025: 107 Days by Kamala Harris Plenty of books have been written about modern politics, but the most obvious comparison point for this particular one is probably Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign memoir What Happened, produced in the wake of her loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 election for president. Kamala Harris …
Book #177 of 2025: Murdle: Volume 3 by G. T. Karber Another hundred logic-grid puzzles of increasing complexity, identical in format to the previous volumes but totally standalone besides a few Easter Egg connections of returning characters and the like. (I particularly love the ones involving contradictory witness statements, where you have to figure out …
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