TV #34 of 2023: Seinfeld, season 2 A marginal improvement over the first year of this 90s sitcom, though it retains Jerry’s dreadful stand-up material on the binary differences he sees between men and women. Outside those scenes, the storytelling engine is working a little better now at spinning minutiae into twenty-minute comedy pieces, but …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
Book #86 of 2023: She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran A creepy #ownvoices haunted house story that never quite clicks into gear, perhaps because the premise is just a bit too convoluted for my tastes. Our queer teenage protagonist, visiting her father in Vietnam while he fixes up an old manor home, is …
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TV Review: Black Mirror, season 6
TV #33 of 2023: Black Mirror, season 6 After four long years — twice the length of its previous longest gap — the infamous anthology series is back with another star-studded cast in five new twisted installments. Despite the program’s frequent focus on the dark underbelly of emerging technologies, I’ve always maintained that Black Mirror …
TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 7
TV #32 of 2023: Classic Doctor Who, season 7 Previously for this rewatch, I’ve been assigning each season of Classic Who an average rating that’s the literal mean of my ratings for the individual serials within. I’m going to cheat a little this time, though, both since there are only four stories in season 7 …
Book Review: Those Who Hold the Fire by Victoria Goddard
Book #85 of 2023: Those Who Hold the Fire by Victoria Goddard This prequel to author Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor is rather short — the Nine Worlds wiki lists it as a novelette, not even a full novella — and it’s pretty dependent on the reader bringing outside context from that longer …
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Book Review: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
Book #84 of 2023: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang A scathing dark satire of race, the internet, and the contemporary publishing landscape. Our protagonist is a great antihero in the tradition of Tom Ripley or Shakespeare’s Iago who secretly resents a more successful friend — only in this case, she never acts against her in …
Book Review: Magical Bears in the Context of Contemporary Political Theory by Jenna Katerin Moran
Book #83 of 2023: Magical Bears in the Context of Contemporary Political Theory by Jenna Katerin Moran I had complicated feelings about the intense weirdness of author Jenna Katerin Moran’s novels Fable of the Swan and The Night-Bird’s Feather, but in each case, I gradually came around to the volume’s charms and felt like it …
Book Review: Orion by Ben Bova
Book #82 of 2023: Orion by Ben Bova (Orion #1) I loved this science-fiction novel — and to a lesser extent the loose series that follows — when I was a teen, and I’m glad to find that it holds up pretty well today. It’s definitely a product of its 1984 publication date in some …
Book Review: A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates
Book #81 of 2023: A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates This story idea had potential! English professor Gil has been estranged from his millionaire sister for years, ever since her troubled son tried drowning the man’s daughter when they were kids. Now he’s 17 and orphaned, and his parents’ will has sent him …
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TV Review: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, season 3
TV #31 of 2023: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, season 3 I laughed during every episode, if not necessarily during each sketch. As usual, comedian Tim Robinson’s offbeat humor fluctuates between entertaining and simply off-putting, with a bit too much angry shouting for my tastes and plenty a skit that either goes …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 