Book #76 of 2023: How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis, LPC Probably the best self-help book I’ve ever read, and all the more so for its short length, with author KC Davis evincing none of that genre’s usual need to belabor her points ad nauseum …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire
Book #75 of 2023: Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #8) Four-and-a-half stars, rounded up. My previous ratings for this fantasy novella series have ranged from two stars (#6) to four stars (#1, #2, and #3), and this is easily the finest of the lot to date. If you aren’t …
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Book Review: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby
Book #74 of 2023: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby I went back to read this 2019 debut novel on the strength of author S. A. Cosby’s later works Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, and I can confirm that his talent for immersive storytelling is already apparent here. It’s another crime thriller / southern …
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Book Review: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders
Book #73 of 2023: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders This new release is the third book I’ve read from Senator Bernie Sanders, following 2016’s Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In and 2018’s Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance. If that first title laid out the …
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TV Review: Seinfeld, season 1
TV #28 of 2023: Seinfeld, season 1 This classic 90s sitcom gets off to a bit of a rough start — the first season is made up of only five episodes, the pilot of which feels particularly unfinished, with no Elaine, a misnamed Kramer, and a somewhat backwards George-and-Jerry dynamic. Even after that, these early …
Book Review: Swamp Story by Dave Barry
Book #72 of 2023: Swamp Story by Dave Barry This comic novel fits squarely in the ‘zany Florida’ genre popularized by writers like Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, or indeed, author Dave Barry himself. If you like such stories of madcap plots colliding against a backdrop of alligators, rednecks, treasure hunters, corrupt politicians, and other Sunshine …
TV Review: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 5
TV #27 of 2023: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 5 I’m not a big fan of the decision to pepper this final season with flash-forward scenes to decades in the future, where we learn that the titular comedienne — and her manager! — will eventually achieve their dream of striking it big in showbusiness. For …
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TV Review: The Shield, season 6
TV #26 of 2023: The Shield, season 6 This season of The Shield is a bit scattered compared to the ones before it. It’s initially exciting to see that Forest Whitaker is sticking around past his initial one-year-arc, given how thrilling the Kavanaugh investigation of Mackey has been, but then after a couple episodes, he’s …
Book Review: Marley by Jon Clinch
Book #71 of 2023: Marley by Jon Clinch Jacob Marley is a bit of a blank slate in the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol — which is not a fault; he serves his purpose in the narrative there most admirably — and so he represents a logical candidate for this sort of treatment by …
TV Review: Saturday Night Live, season 48
TV #25 of 2023: Saturday Night Live, season 48 I’m a little behind on this review, since I only belatedly found out that the venerable sketch-comedy series had officially canceled its remaining episodes of this production batch due to the ongoing writers’ strike, rather than postponing them indefinitely. Strictly speaking, then, this was the 16th …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 