The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: The Bear, season 3

TV #16 of 2025:

The Bear, season 3

In an odd way, The Bear the TV series seems to be following the same arc as The Bear the titular gentrified restaurant, growing increasingly artsy and experimental as it goes along. How else to account for the first episode of this latest season, which is basically one long stream-of-consciousness montage with barely any dialogue? Much like the pretentious fine dining that it depicts, it’s a product that is simultaneously impressively constructed and, for me at least, somewhat unappetizing to actually consume. I don’t think I’d like to eat at an establishment like The Bear in person. I certainly don’t want to watch shows that are so avant-garde on my television.

Sometimes, the more exploratory approach pays off. Two of the ten installments this year are excellent — “Napkins” about Tina’s professional backstory and “Ice Chips” about Natalie’s experience in the hospital with her mother — and although neither is quite on the level of last season‘s epic family showdown “Fishes,” they gain a similar power by digging into the central characters so deeply. Too often, however, we have protagonists who are stuck in the holding pattern of a toxic work environment, amid an episodic structure that regularly denies us any sense of conventional plot rhythm or satisfying resolution. The finale even turns the program over to almost a dozen real-life celebrity chefs for extended cameos, while giving its nominal hero Carmy no significant scenes with either Richie or Sydney, whose interpersonal conflicts are instead left simmering.

Also, it must be said: way too many Faks. Their affable quirks can be hilarious in small doses, but the balance is off here and John Cena is staggeringly miscast as yet another member of that clan. Less of them all going forward, please.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Daredevil: Born Again, season 1

TV #15 of 2025:

Daredevil: Born Again, season 1

Even for Marvel, this is a wildly uneven show, although the tonal clashes make sense when you know a little about the production process behind it. As a sequel to the Daredevil series that originally ran on Netflix from 2015 to 2018, this revival brings back stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, who had already reprised their respective characters of the blind vigilante and his enemy Wilson Fisk in a handful of other MCU properties in the meantime. However, the studio was apparently dissatisfied with the early look of this new program, and took the rare step during the pause brought on by the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes to overhaul its creative direction. The showrunners were fired and replaced, but — crucially — the decision was made to retain most of the material that had already been filmed. The result is that the first two episodes and the finale of this season were conceived and shot later, while the six entries in between were merely tweaked with a few additional scenes or edits to ensure surface continuity.

It’s a Frankensteined product with a lot of the seams showing, though oddly in line with the ‘Born Again’ title (which as I understand it was the name of a completely unrelated storyline from the DD comics). The middle segments are somewhat lighter in tone and structured more like a legal procedural — which to be fair is a genre that I enjoy! But the effort is stuck in this unfortunate position where it’s too close to what viewers remember of the older show to be taken wholly as its own thing, yet too different to satisfy on that front either. The change to the supporting cast is part of the problem, but it isn’t the new faces alone; it’s that the new characters and their relationships with Matt Murdock aren’t explored to any significant depth, while the people who share a known history with him are largely reduced to cameo appearances.

It does still work, more or less. This isn’t a bad show! It’s just missing that quintessential element for consistent greatness. The bookends from the newer team are a definite pivot in the right direction, and since a second season entirely under their control has already been greenlit, I expect it to improve on what they’ve started here. Kingpin as the mayor of New York City is also a solid plot, with unexpected resonance to Donald Trump’s own return to power, as is the real-life phenomenon of police officers co-opting the Punisher image for their own brand of corrupt ‘thin blue line’ machismo. Those items, the overall darker turn, and the deeper character dynamics are exactly what I’m hoping to see more of going forward.

[Content warning for gun violence, police violence, torture, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

Book #66 of 2025:

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

Two-out-of-five stars might seem a bit harsh for this novel, which is mostly more like a three-star read up until the end. Unfortunately, that closing section is saddled with a sequence of twists that are so inane, they wind up tanking the whole enterprise for me. I won’t spoil them here, except to say that no, that isn’t a reasonable thing a person would do to send a message to someone, nor is it a secret that could remotely be deciphered and understood in the manner described. It’s very Dan Brown, and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible.

The earlier book is already shaky, to be clear. The initial premise is interesting enough: a woman learns that her husband, a seemingly happy family man, has taken hostages in a police standoff at a warehouse across town. While she scrambles for answers and wonders if she ever truly knew him, he shoots two of the captives and vanishes. We then skip forward seven years, with the mystery continuing to hang over both her and the now-disgraced negotiator who failed to prevent the violence.

That could be a strong hook for a story about the secrets we keep from even our intimate partners, or how a lack of closure surrounding the trauma of betrayal can haunt someone, but it’s pretty obvious right away that there will be some explanation behind Luke’s actions to justify and exonerate him. Because of the time jump, however, he’s still the guy who abandoned his wife and nine-month-old daughter with no contact for the better part of a decade, and the narrative has no interest in exploring or holding him accountable for that. Even if he’s entirely blameless for the original crimes, his running itself is a terrible flaw that demands a reckoning but gets basically shrugged off instead.

I kept reading to see how it all would resolve, and if the conclusion had delivered more satisfyingly, I probably would have gone up another star in my rating. But this is ultimately a forgettable thriller with a hokey and contrived ending, and that earns the Goodreads two-star “it was ok” in my opinion.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler

Book #65 of 2025:

Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler

All I really knew about this memoir before picking it up was that its author Anna Marie Tendler was the comedian John Mulaney‘s ex-wife. That caught my attention less in hopes of learning salacious details about their separation and more for the broad feeling that having heard him discuss their relationship in his stand-up routines, it would only be fair to seek out her side of the story. As it happens, that’s very much not the point of this book, but even taking it on its own terms, I’m pretty ambivalent about it as a finished product.

The immediate hook is the writer voluntarily checking herself into a psychiatric hospital in early 2021 for a 30-day program to help with her self-harm, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation. Structurally, the text then bounces back and forth between her experiences there and her life leading up to it, and the passages in both sections are well-observed and clearly written. Yet as a reader, I felt as though the sequences in the past would be building to some terrible trauma that precipitated the current crisis — and one presumably involving men, given both the title of the work and her insistence upon check-in that she needed to be in a female-only ward. That never manifests, however, perhaps to give her former husband a degree of privacy: in addition to omitting his name and career (beyond the vague acknowledgment that its earnings supported her art), she cuts off the earlier narrative in 2013, which the internet tells me is one year before they got married.

The result is oddly unbalanced. If the personal history is supposed to contextualize her subsequent struggles, why are we missing nearly everything she got up to across those last eight years? I also don’t think Tendler succesfully makes the case that she’s been uniquely abused by the male figures in her life; although there were older men who acted inappropriately towards her as a teen (including sexual encounters she viewed as consensual at the time but later recognized as coercive), the worst actors she highlights here all seem to be women, from her emotionally abusive mother to a gaslighting therapist to a photoshoot director who screamed at her over nothing. I’m open to the argument that these dynamics were negatively influenced by the patriarchy or that I’m not the most objective reviewer as a man myself, but I don’t believe the volume truly lives up to its apparent thesis. (Or its name! On a literal level, she openly acknowledges being mentally unwell and seeking treatment for it. That’s not a label unfairly placed upon her by anyone of any gender.)

But the writing is good — the author’s description of having to euthanize her beloved dog Petunia is particularly moving — and the inside look at her neuroses and in-patient routine is interesting enough, I suppose. I wouldn’t say the whole thing is a wash, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, either.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell

Book #64 of 2025:

Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell (Virgin New Adventures #4)

The year is 1991, and the newly-canceled Doctor Who — what we now call “Classic” Who, to distinguish it from the post-2005 version — has been limping on in the form of these licensed novels continuing the story of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace. The first four installments of the series constitute a loose plot arc, although in practice they’ve been as discrete as the program’s own attempts at such larger narratives like The Key to Time in season 16 or The Trial of a Time Lord in season 23. They’ve also been of variable quality, but at their best moments have lived up to the presumed mission statement here to produce recognizable Whovian adventures almost like missing scripts that just happened to never get filmed.

All of that changes with Timewyrm: Revelation, which not only resolves that titular universal threat but pushes the franchise forward into strange and unsettling new territory. This is a deeply interior novel, taking place partly on the moon but primarily in the weird landscape of the Doctor’s own mind, riddled with manifestations of his prior selves and his guilt over fallen friends. The previous books have all had their cheeky fanservice easter eggs, but this one asks us to really reckon with what it means for the Time Lord to have gone on after losing someone like Adric or Sara Kingdom. It’s also a kind of afterlife: the characters have to pretty much die for their consciousnesses to reach it, and while the villain is in control, the setting is bluntly described as a hell where Ace is threatened with torture and tormented by an old childhood bully after being regressed to a young girl herself. In fact, it’s even more sinister than that, as he’s been brought over from an alternate timeline where he murdered her on the playground with a brick to her head.

Not all of this works, to be clear. Although the imagery is striking, in execution the action can sometimes feel bafflingly unexplained, and author Paul Cornell throws out bizarre concepts like a sentient church back on Earth without much justification or build-up. But it all comes together in the end, and would prove influential with both the following releases in this line and ultimately the modern TV revival too. The protagonists are challenged as never before, and the trust between them stretches nearly to a fraying point, with the Doctor stepping more firmly into the manipulative chessmaster characterization that had been established in the final years of the show. It brings an energy that the New Adventures had been sorely lacking, and leaves me genuinely excited to read on and see where the concept goes next.

[Content warning for gun violence, Nazis, racism, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Book #63 of 2025:

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Romance is not my typical genre, and this particular example has too many issues for me to wholly enjoy, but it’s captured my attention enough that I’ll probably read more from author Ali Hazelwood someday. The good, to start with: her characterization of the people-pleasing heroine is top-notch, as is that woman’s arc of gradually learning to speak up for herself and the things that she truly wants. I also really like the academic setting, and could wince in sympathy at her travails as a precarious adjunct instructor, which I well remember from my own grad school days. I never made it onto the tenure-track job hunt myself, but those experiences likewise ring true to what I saw of others, and overall feel like a rare sort of literary representation.

As for the elements that don’t quite work for me: the initial premise here is already pretty contrived — the protagonist has a side career as a fake girlfriend, only for her two worlds to collide when the brother of a client turns out to be on the search committee that’s interviewing her — and the coincidences continue to pile up from there. (A second person who knows her as an escort has a surprise connection to the faculty, her new love/hate interest has a fraught history with her PhD advisor, etc.) There’s furthermore a lot of romcom-style miscommunication, specifically in the form of characters making assumptions and getting mad when they prove erroneous. And then once the enemies-to-lovers plot has sprung, the guy starts talking about deep love and marriage after just a few dates, which is a personal red flag for me.

The structure of the novel is strange, too. The two main drivers early on are the lead’s double life and her desired professorship position, both of which fall away by the midpoint of the story. I don’t find what follows to be as interesting or as cohesive of a narrative — although I suppose romance fans might think otherwise, as it’s only at that point that the action gets steamy.

This is one of those books where I spent a long time vacillating between a three- and a four-star rating, but writing out the review has helped me decide. While I can see what other readers have appreciated in this title, it never comes together into more than the sum of its flaws for me.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Book #62 of 2025:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games #1)

[Previous review here, from 2011.]

Fun to revisit this first Hunger Games novel, well after the blockbuster movie franchise that turned it into a household name. Even setting all that aside to consider the 2008 title fresh, it’s clear that it’s something special right from the start. The premise, drawing from Greek mythology and bearing an apparently unintentional similarity to the earlier Japanese book Battle Royale, could not be simpler: a dystopian government, punishing the descendants of former rebels, requires them to send children as annual tributes to fight to the death for their oppressors’ broadcast entertainment. That unfolds with a sick Shirley Jackson-esque matter-of-factness, as we are pulled into the viewpoint of one Katniss Everdeen, a teenager who soon volunteers to take her younger sister’s place.

A lot of ink has been spilled over what generates a successful media property, and in my opinion, it’s a combination of character, story, and setting. The last of these is obviously important here: it’s why author Suzanne Collins has been able to achieve continued success with a couple prequel stories set in the tournament without her original heroine, and it’s why there are countless pieces of fanfiction out there depicting other rounds of the titular games. Much as Star Wars invites us to imagine further planets under imperial control or Harry Potter suggests magical adventures happening around Hogwarts even when the hero isn’t present, The Hunger Games establishes an expansive history for itself beyond the immediate text. Katniss’s involvement is in the 74th Hunger Games, and that suggestion of an existing context for her struggles provides a texture that helps elevate the material significantly.

Atop that foundation, it’s got an exciting enough plot, but it’s really the protagonist who makes the whole thing work (and so many of those fanfics or imitative book attempts flop). From the first page on, she’s a captivating construction — weary beyond her years, providing for her family, and risking execution by illegally hunting in the nearby woods before she’s even been tapped by circumstance and her own agentive choice for a role she’s unlikely to survive. As her journey goes on, she draws deductive inferences about the nature of the Capitol propaganda machine, and so is able to play up an expected image for the viewers at home for strategic benefits extending past the life-or-death competition in front of her.

This installment misses my highest rating by a slim margin, somewhat by personal preference. I’m not a big fan of the YA genre trope that over-explains basic concepts in a universe in lieu of naturalistically letting the reader learn as we go, and there’s a lot of that here, especially early on. There’s also a love triangle, though I suppose it’s handled better than certain egregious contemporary examples like Twilight. And finally, some of the stuff in the arena feels a bit silly and contrived for my tastes, like the genetically-modified ‘muttations’ or Peeta’s expert camouflage abilities.

Still: it’s a propulsive read and a great launch to the series, which will continue to develop the society, the growing resistance against it, and a few figures like President Snow who aren’t as represented in this debut. I look forward to rediscovering the sequels in turn.

[Content warning for cannibalism, alcohol abuse, forced underage nudity, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three: The Sailor by Robin Furth, Peter David, Juanan Ramírez, and Jesus Aburtov

Book #61 of 2025:

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three: The Sailor by Robin Furth, Peter David, Juanan Ramírez, and Jesus Aburtov

The five issues in this bound volume unfortunately represent the end of the Marvel comic book adaptations of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series — or at least, there haven’t been any subsequent releases since this last sprint came out in 2017. (As Roland would put it: there will be water if God wills it, say thankee sai.) It’s not the best place to leave the story in terms of overall resolution, but it does let us see the gunslinger finish gathering his band of ka-tet companions for the larger Tower quest, I suppose. Or everyone except Oy the billy-bumbler, that is.

Despite retaining the Drawing of the Three subheading, this installment adapts the first half of the following novel The Waste Lands, in which Roland, Eddie, and Susannah battle the giant cyborg bear Shardik and Jake re-enters the narrative to make his way out of some mind-bending experiences in New York and eventually join their party in Mid-World. That’s a fun plot in the original book, and it translates well enough to the art style here, though it doesn’t necessarily add any further dimensions to the material as these comics have sometimes done in the past (to admittedly mixed effect).

It’s disappointing that the project stops here, and I’m still not sure why this section wasn’t included as part of the Drawing of the Three omnibus, but if you’ve read this far — especially if you’re a fan of the King books who knows where things develop next — I do think it’s another solid treatment that’s generally worth checking out.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: The Gunslinger Omnibus > Beginnings Omnibus > The Drawing of the Three: The Sailor > The Drawing of the Three Omnibus

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Book Review: Society of Lies by Lauren Ling Brown

Book #60 of 2025:

Society of Lies by Lauren Ling Brown

Overall a substandard academic thriller. The timeline unfolds across three different periods, but it’s only really interesting in the last one, in which a woman investigates the recent death of her sister. In alternating chapters, the other sections detail the dead girl’s activities as a Princeton student in the months leading up to her murder and the main heroine’s own time on the same campus, a decade earlier. In theory, these plot strands should weave together and surprise us with regular revelations from one part of the story that have implications for the others. But in practice, it’s a lot of petty dramas and hedonistic blur, without enough driving focus or distinction between the two protagonists’ respective college experiences.

The setting is also a letdown. Debut author Lauren Ling Brown is an alumna of the school herself, but she brings little specificity to the narrative in the way that, for example, Leigh Bardugo does with her own alma mater in Ninth House. The fictional secret society here is rather ludicrous too, in both its absurd degree of corruption and the open flaunting of its members’ group rings, resort home, email listserv, and so on. It’s just too cartoonish to take seriously, although the predatory faculty advisor is certainly a nasty piece of work.

The writer is on better footing capturing the #ownvoices aspect of racist microaggressions directed at the characters for being Black and Asian biracial, which I assume is what caught the attention of actress-activist Reese Witherspoon for her book club. But that’s a pretty minor element and ultimately not sufficent to carry the rest of the novel.

[Content warning for gun violence, gore, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, and threatened violence against children.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Tsalmoth by Steven Brust

Book #59 of 2025:

Tsalmoth by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #16)

We’ve gone back to near the beginning of the protagonist’s timeline again, in the days when he was still a low-level Jhereg crime boss. It’s a productive visit, however — not so much for the immediate plot, which is a very typical Taltos affair, but for the fact that we find him in the midst of his lovestruck courtship with Cawti, his future ex-wife. This is an era that author Steven Brust has largely skipped over in the past, moving the couple from initial attraction to estrangement between novels. It’s nice to finally see the characters together and happy, despite knowing (unless you’re reading this series in chronological order or otherwise skipping volumes, I suppose) that it doesn’t last.

As for the story, it’s fun and convoluted as usual too. The antihero makes for an amusing detective this time, as his main motivation is simply to recoup his losses from a man who was killed by unknown parties while owing him a modest sum. Vlad repeatedly shakes down people who could easily settle up for that amount as he investigates the murder, but because none of them believe he’s really just after the money, they instead draw him further and further into their own complicated schemes and wind up toppling everything they’re trying to accomplish.

There’s an odd writing choice to have the narrator claim not to know basic words like “thwart” and “catharsis,” which is a meathead characterization that’s never been true of him at any age before. I have to assume it’s intended as a running joke rather than representing either a retcon or a mistake, but it feels strange that it goes entirely unaddressed within the text (unlike a similar apparent plot hole regarding his knowledge of certain matters that does eventually get called out and explained). That aside, though, this 2023 installment is overall a fine addition to its sequence.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★★☆

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