Book #21 of 2023: The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean This is certainly a distinctive fantasy novel, but it’s not one that entirely works for me in execution. Part of the problem is the split timeline, alternating between the heroine’s experiences leading up to her separation from her family and her subsequent life on the …
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Book #20 of 2023: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. This is far from my favorite Grady Hendrix novel, but I do think it’s closer in quality to his typical output than to Horrorstör, the only title I’ve previously rated lower than four stars. A lot of this …
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Book #19 of 2023: Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke An interesting little popular science book, but not nearly as funny as I was expecting it to be from the title. This is a cultural history of the human backside, focusing specifically on our conceptions of the female form and how they’ve generally been racialized …
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Book #18 of 2023: Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo (Alex Stern #2) Overall a three-star read for me, and a marked step down from its predecessor. I actually do like the middle of this book — the slowest part of many novels — when, as promised by the title, the protagonist and her companions invoke …
Book #17 of 2023: A Jewish Bestiary: Fabulous Creatures from Hebraic Legend & Lore by Mark Podwal An interesting read, but not quite what I was expecting and definitely not as in-depth or exhaustive as it seems like it could have been. This modern title presents encyclopedic entries for 35 different animals described in the …
Book #16 of 2023: Petty Treasons by Victoria Goddard This novella revisits and expands upon a slice of backstory previously mentioned in author Victoria Goddard’s excellent fantasy doorstopper The Hands of the Emperor, when Cliopher Mdang first began service as His Radiancy’s personal secretary. Except while that book was generally presented from Kip’s third-person limited …
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Book #15 of 2023: Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater This seems like it should have been an easy layup: beloved YA fantasist (and Celticist) Maggie Stiefvater writing an officially licensed sequel to Pixar’s Brave, the one about ancient Scottish magic, the mom who turns into a bear, and the headstrong daughter who breaks the curse by …
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Book #14 of 2023: Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff This 2022 publication is a clear and exceedingly thorough account of the various misdeeds, investigations, and cover-ups that dogged the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Historian and journalist Garrett M. Graff has conducted no fresh interviews — which would not necessarily be possible …
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TV #5 of 2023: Leverage: Redemption, season 2 Another pleasantly satisfying year of the Leverage revival, although I think I’ve finally keyed into why it’s not quite soaring for me as its predecessor often did. It’s hard to spot at first, because the cast is nearly all the same, and they are still adults facing …
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Book #13 of 2023: The Stars Undying by Emery Robin (Empire Without End #1) [Thank you to the publisher Orbit for providing me with a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review!] I appreciate this debut novel as an intellectual exercise, but somewhat less as an engaging story in the moment. …
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