Book #39 of 2024: Book of Nightmares by John Peel (Diadem #6) This was the last of the original six Diadem books published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998, after which the middle-grade fantasy series would lie dormant for almost a decade until getting revived under another publisher. Presumably that’s also why it’s the first …
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Book #38 of 2024: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall One part ethnographic history of the modern American college fraternity scene; one part true-crime reporting of a million-dollar benzodiazepine ring that operated within that ecosystem at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. To lay out my biases, I was active …
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Book #37 of 2024: West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman I always feel a little bad about giving a book my lowest rating, but this pretentious postmodern whodunnit irked me for most of the way through and then ended even worse than it began. The basic premise is pretty standard for the genre: a detective …
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TV #9 of 2024: Star Trek: Discovery, season 4 While this latest season of Star Trek: Discovery may not be quite as bad as its dire second year, which burned through an astonishing degree of terrible impulses, it’s decidedly more creatively bereft. We’re still in the future timeline (where it appears the show will be …
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Book #36 of 2024: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni A regrettably disjointed memoir. At its best, author Frank Bruni manages to convey a little of what it’s been like for him to go effectively blind in one eye overnight and learn he has a rare disorder that could …
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Book #35 of 2024: The Bride of the Blue Wind by Victoria Goddard (The Sisters Avramapul #1) Much as I’ve been enjoying author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, I’ve found this title to be a refreshingly distinctive change of pace for it. In lieu of her typical writing style, the novella is told …
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Book #34 of 2024: Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder by Mark Morris This is a stronger novel than Gary Russell’s adaptation of The Star Beast, but only because Wild Blue Yonder is the superior episode of Doctor Who. Author Mark Morris’s novelization of the Russell T. Davies script faithfully captures the familiar plot beats, yet …
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Book #33 of 2024: Book of Earth by John Peel (Diadem #5) This is by far the best of the original six Diadem novels published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998 (and perhaps of the entire series, which resumed many years later under Llewellyn). It picks up on the cliffhanger ending of the volume before, …
Book #32 of 2024: Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham After two decades, Carlotta Mercedes has been released on parole from the men’s prison where, under her original name and gender presentation, she was sentenced as an accomplice to her cousin’s armed robbery. (She claims she was just in …
Book #31 of 2024: Sphere by Michael Crichton I went through a big Michael Crichton phase when I was younger, and I had vague memories of this 1987 title being one of my favorites from back then. Revisiting it now, I’m not quite so impressed, although that may have something to do with how the …
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