TV #37 of 2022: The Lincoln Lawyer, season 1 Netflix’s adaptation of this twisty legal thriller is a lot of fun, aptly capturing and balancing the protagonist’s brilliance in court and vulnerability outside it. I’m particularly impressed with how the program has turned out, given some of the unusual production constraints placed upon it. This …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie
Book #119 of 2022: Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #32) I generally enjoy a good Agatha Christie mystery, but the eventual solution to the case at the heart of this story from 1952 feels a bit too convoluted and contrived for me. As its alternate title Blood Will Tell might suggest, there’s …
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Movie Review: Live from the Space Stage: A HALYX Story (2020)
Movie #13 of 2022: Live from the Space Stage: A HALYX Story (2020) This feature-length documentary, produced by Kevin Perjurer of Defunctland and available free on that YouTube channel, is a loving deep dive into an incredibly obscure topic: the rock band HALYX, a sci-fi themed act that performed nightly on the stage in front …
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Book Review: The Diversion by K. A. Applegate
Book #118 of 2022: The Diversion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #49) I’m surprised that series author K. A. Applegate didn’t claim this volume to write herself, and particularly that it was assigned to ghostwriter Lisa Harkrader, who had previously only penned Cassie’s eminently skippable Australian visit in #44 The Unexpected. Here, the plot is …
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Book Review: The Verifiers by Jane Pek
Book #117 of 2022: The Verifiers by Jane Pek A story curiously out of time. There’s a lot of talk in this debut book about online dating, corporate collection/abuse of confidential user data, and artificial intelligence, but it’s all conveyed in a fairly breathless manner to the characters and reader alike when none of the …
TV Review: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 7
TV #36 of 2022: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 7 A curiously bifurcated run. The first half of this last year almost seems to sputter, with some episodes that are absolutely up to the usual high dramatic standards of the series and others that represent some of the laziest, most self-indulgent writing ever. (I’m …
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TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 6
TV #35 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 6 I’ve now reached the point of this Bob’s Burgers rewatch where I’m caught up with the seasons that I reviewed the first time I saw it, starting in 2016. So here’s what I wrote then, at somewhat less than my now-typical length: “I feel like Bob’s Burgers …
TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 1
TV #34 of 2022: What We Do in the Shadows, season 1 A confident launch to a mockumentary sitcom with the simple yet irresistible premise of several vampires sharing a house in Staten Island. (I haven’t seen the movie that preceded this, but I understand it follows a different set of characters and isn’t directly …
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Book Review: The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska
Book #116 of 2022: The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska A fun little queer enemies-to-lovers YA fantasy, but with some tonal and worldbuilding issues that are keeping me at a slight distance. The two antiheroines are teenaged assistants to rival witches, tasked with hunting down victims and ripping their hearts out to fuel their mistresses’ …
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Book Review: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Book #115 of 2022: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles #2) 1976’s Interview with the Vampire is a modern classic of the gothic horror genre, popularizing a new variety of sympathetic bloodsucker with its brooding and homoerotic immortals. Following in 1985, this first sequel isn’t nearly so good, but it still has …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 