Book #52 of 2023: League of Liars by Astrid Scholte (The League of Liars #1) I was intrigued by the notion of a YA fantasy legal thriller, but the result here is severely underwhelming at every turn. Take the minimal worldbuilding, for starters. This is nominally set on a different plane than ours, with magic …
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Book #51 of 2023: The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi Based on the lush prose, the flowery title, and the other pieces I’ve read by author Roshani Chokshi, I was expecting this novel to fit squarely in the fantasy genre, but to my surprise, it’s relatively rooted in reality instead. Although …
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TV #14 of 2023: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 2 The first year of this Clone Wars spinoff was a surprisingly propulsive affair, but this sophomore season struggles to recapture and maintain that sense of momentum. It’s still a solid delivery of weekly Star Wars thrills — although I question the decision to have …
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Book #50 of 2023: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl Everyone in this 2006 debut novel is either deeply pretentious and misanthropic or else a fringe figure patronizingly pitied by those who are. They’re regularly sexist and racist, too! I actually tried reading this once before, five years ago, and put it down …
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TV #13 of 2023: Gilmore Girls, season 3 This year is probably peak Gilmore Girls for me, although it’s overall a show that’s remained consistently strong across its tenure. (I’m already looking forward to defending the less popular final original season and subsequent Netflix revival miniseries when I get to my reviews of those.) Rory’s …
Book #49 of 2023: Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander by Victoria Goddard I like this midquel novella to author Victoria Goddard’s excellent fantasy tome The Hands of the Emperor, but I think I’m not totally impressed by it, especially after the previous short spinoff work for this series Petty Treasons seemed to up the …
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Book #48 of 2023: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets On the one hand, this translated novella offers a blisteringly grim look into the work of content moderators for social media platforms like Facebook: the employees paid to review posts that other users have flagged, to remove any material they confirm as …
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Book #47 of 2023: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany This 1966 Nebula Award co-winner is a product of its time and the New Wave movement that grew into the cyberpunk aesthetic, the sort of hard sci-fi that tends to be more interested in big ideas than compelling characters. It’s practically overflowing with tossed-off worldbuilding details …
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TV #12 of 2023: Shadow and Bone, season 2 I continue to enjoy this YA fantasy adaptation, but I think this second season fumbles its ending enough that downgrading my rating to three-out-of-five stars feels appropriate overall. After rushing through a condensed version of the novels Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising that close …
Book #46 of 2023: The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum Overall an excellent #ownvoices slice-of-life YA contemporary, about a frum — ultra-observant Orthodox — Jewish teen who finds himself shunned by his insular community for striking up a friendship and potential romance with an outside girl. Hoodie (short for Yehudah) is …
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