Book #58 of 2016: The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe (Tufa #1) The Hum and the Shiver was a really interesting premiere – although it definitely reads more like the pilot to an ongoing (but probably episodic) series than a standalone tale in its own right. This novel introduces us to the Tufa, …
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Book #57 of 2016: Omnitopia Dawn by Diane Duane It wouldn’t really be fair to compare Omnitopia Dawn to Ready Player One, since that other book about a future dominated by an immersive MMO game actually came out after this novel by Diane Duane. And that’s a good thing for Omnitopia, since the game at …
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TV #36 of 2016: Star Trek, season 3 Star Trek: TOS ended up faltering in its final season, which is a huge shame. There’s still stuff to enjoy in most of the episodes, but lazy clunkers are the norm and I’d be hard-pressed to name a single real classic. (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, …
TV #35 of 2016: Jane the Virgin, season 1 Jane the Virgin is such a sweet, hilarious, and amazingly character-driven TV show. It comes roaring out of the gate with such an over-the-top premise that you’re worried the whole thing will just be silly, but its devotion to its characters and to the heightened reality …
Book #56 of 2016: The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics by John Pollack The Pun Also Rises is a fun little book that argues from research for the prominence of puns in the history of our species. Writer John Pollack presents a …
Book #55 of 2016: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Americanah is a fascinating look at America (and Nigeria) both from the outside and the in. It’s also a frank examination of the subtler effects of race and racism, which writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie manages without ever becoming didactic about it. Her characters are sharp and …
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Book #54 of 2016: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne begins with an irresistible premise: a crotchety old Maine woman walking into a police station to confess to a murder. It largely lives up to that premise, helped along by the unique (for King) narrative structure, which presents Dolores’s story as one …
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Movie #13 of 2016: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) I wanted so badly to like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and I think it does have elements that work for it. I like that, coming ten years after the end of TOS, the film’s characters have actually aged ten years and some of them …
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Book #53 of 2016: Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction, but Salvation City is such a bland example of the genre. It’s no Station Eleven or The Stand – it’s not even an Earth Abides. Instead, it’s just a fairly boring story of one fairly boring child after a plague …
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Book #52 of 2016: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones This book is very well-written, and it excels at bringing these characters and 1970s Atlanta to life. I don’t go for literary fiction all that often, but I couldn’t resist this premise, of two black girls growing up in the same town with the same father, …
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