Book #148 of 2022: The Beginning by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #54) Well… Here we are. Sixteen months later, I have finally finished my full reread of the complete Animorphs saga, and am ready to review its final volume. Spoilers ahead, obviously. Thematically as a series, Animorphs has always been focused on the deep trauma …
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Book #147 of 2022: Babel: an Arcane History by R. F. Kuang An exquisitely slow-burning fuse of a novel, presenting the 1830s education of a young Chinese-born translator and eventual radical at the fictional Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University. In the alternate fantasy universe of this setting, cognate pairs across languages have magical …
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TV #46 of 2022: Star Trek: Voyager, season 5 Another solid serving of 90s science-fiction, still satisfyingly tighter all around than this show’s early years. I’d call it a minor step down from the season before, however, which felt more ambitious with its introduction of Seven of Nine and her personal arc of reintegrating into …
Book #146 of 2022: Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson (Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians #6) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.] Middle-grade book series are odd, in that their release schedule often outpaces the age of their target audience. That’s particularly the case for the Alcatraz …
Book #145 of 2022: A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith This 1984 bestseller about a fictional family’s frontier history is required reading in many Florida schools, which is where I first encountered and absolutely loathed the title. But it has plenty of accolades and its fair share of adherents, and so I’ve always wanted …
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TV #45 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 8 I seem to have liked this season better when I watched it upon airing in 2018, given my review back then: “I don’t have much to say about this season of Bob’s Burgers that doesn’t apply to the show at large, but it remains impressively strong this …
TV #44 of 2022: Happy Endings, season 1 This sitcom launch from 2011 is fine, but somewhat unremarkable. Although it improves over the course of these first 13 episodes — not that original audiences would’ve fully realized, with the season airing all out of its intended production order — I still feel as though I …
Book #144 of 2022: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot #2) This Monk and Robot sequel retains much of what I enjoyed about the setting in the original novella: its “warm hug of hopepunk goodness… rooted in empathetic respect and curiosity toward different cultures,” to quote from my review last …
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Book #143 of 2022: A Daughter’s a Daughter by Mary Westmacott This 1952 title is a decent character study, but a thoroughly unpleasant and exasperating read about a toxically codependent parental relationship. The fifth of six novels that author Agatha Christie published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott — at this point merely an affectation, after …
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Movie #15 of 2022: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) When I first saw this picture in theaters six years ago, I raved that it was “My favorite sort of prequel, that slots neatly into the existing continuity without the need for retconning AND enhances the viewer’s appreciation of certain elements in the original …
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