Book #105 of 2016: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair A powerful memoir, but one that I had to put down several times for something lighter. You might think the title would make the subject matter clear, but it actually doesn’t …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket
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 Review: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (How to Train Your Dragon #1)
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 Review: The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
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 Review: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
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 Review: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
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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Movie Review: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
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 Review: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
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 Review: Mastiff by Tamora Pierce
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 Review: Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22 by Erica Heller
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 …
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