TV Review: House of Cards, season 4

TV season #9 of 2017:

House of Cards, season 4

Well, the Underwoods’ continual victories get harder to believe with every passing season, and I’m getting mighty tired of this revolving door of characters opposing them. (Opposition and setbacks are great, but it’s always somebody new picking up the mantle, because the writers don’t know what to do with most of their characters.) This season had kind of a wonky structure too, but the opening episodes with Frank and Claire at war with one another were pretty great. On the other hand, nearly everything about presidential politics and campaigning on this show looks downright quaint given how the election of 2016 ended up going down in real life.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Dark Talent by Brandon Sanderson

Book #52 of 2017:

The Dark Talent by Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz #5)

This whimsical series for young readers has been getting steadily darker, but the ending of this “final” book still feels jarringly out of place in its levels of death and suffering. It’s also deeply unsatisfying as a conclusion, so the revelation that one more novel will be coming out (from the perspective of a different character, making this simply the last Alcatraz book and not the true end of the series) is most welcome. Hopefully that next novel finds a way to balance the fun of the setting with the gravity of its stakes, because this one just couldn’t manage it.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: Black Mirror, season 3

TV #8 of 2017:

Black Mirror, season 3

It’s now a Netflix original production, but Black Mirror is still every bit as great as its previous seasons, with the same focus on exploring the often-ghoulish potential ramifications of emerging technologies. As an anthology show there are obviously some episodes that are better than others, but none of the six in this season are worth skipping, and San Junipero is easily the best story the show has ever done.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Book #51 of 2017:

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

A neat retelling of old myths about Odin, Thor, and the other Norse gods, synthesized by Neil Gaiman from a variety of original sources. It doesn’t read like a novel (because it isn’t one), nor does it bear much resemblance to Gaiman’s other work. But it’s a masterful update of these stories for a new audience, staying largely faithful to their origins while presenting them in a more modern and readable fashion. Norse mythology is of course far wider than this short collection, but you couldn’t ask for a better introduction or refresher on the subject.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket

Book #50 of 2017:

The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #12)

Probably the best book of the series so far, with plenty of characters from earlier novels making surprise returns and the lines between good and evil continuing to blur. The Baudelaires and Count Olaf are all shaded into more nuanced human characters here, and well-meaning but ineffective adults like Justice Strauss are respectively celebrated and called out for their actions. It’s a very good look for the series as it heads into its final installment.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Book #49 of 2017:

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Very reminiscent of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, in part because the narrator isn’t really at the center of her own story. Here, our unnamed protagonist alternates between childhood memories and more recent life history, each of which sees her drastically eclipsed by another figure: first by the childhood friend who shares her dark skin color and love of dancing, then later by the popstar employer she follows on a humanitarian mission to a similarly unnamed country in Africa. There was some very pretty writing in this novel, but the character vacuum at its center ultimately left me a little cold, and the ending seemed very much tacked on rather than arising naturally. But it was great for showcasing diverse perspectives, and I appreciated how it never felt like author Zadie Smith was reducing her characters or cultures to stereotypes.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce

Book #48 of 2017:

Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #1)

More confident and less problematic than author Tamora Pierce’s earlier work Song of the Lioness, but with its same fun sense of magic and adventure. The Lioness Alanna and her friends return as supporting characters this time, with the main focus given over to new character Daine and her own distinct magical powers. This first book in the Immortals quartet tells a satisfying story in its own right, but it also sets up a larger plot and character arc for Daine that should follow through to the other books nicely.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

Book #47 of 2017:

The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #1)

This post-apocalyptic fantasy was a little bit underbaked, but I still enjoyed it for the most part. (It helps to have a protagonist whose first act as queen is to storm in Daenerys-like, freeing a bunch of slaves and setting fire to their empty cages.) The book has its share of flaws – especially in its pacing and worldbuilding – but there’s a certain charm to it that makes me want to read on and see if those flaws are addressed in the sequels.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t by Nate Silver

Book #46 of 2017:

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t by Nate Silver

The prose is sometimes lacking (and the baseball sections could not have been more boring), but FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver writes an easy-to-follow introduction to the science of analysis and prediction. It’s less of a quantitative how-to and more of a theoretical grounding, but Silver is good at teaching his readers how to approach any consideration of potential events, from poker hands to extreme weather to the housing market and more. As the title indicates, Silver’s main message concerns how to separate meaningful information from the overload of data that faces our networked world, and how it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that you’ve found a clear signal when you have so much data at your fingertips. It’s a tough lesson, but definitely an important one.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

Book #45 of 2017:

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

An outstanding memoir of life in rural Appalachia at the turn of the 21st century. A lot has been said about this book inadvertently offering insight into the angry voters who swept Donald Trump into office, but even setting aside our current political moment, it’s a tremendous and clear-eyed look at a downtrodden people who are falling behind on the American Dream and at how hard it is for them to escape from that trap. Author J.D. Vance and I don’t see eye to eye politically – I think he’s too quick to call certain government programs irreparably broken rather than in need of reform – but his perspective was one that I really valued and would like to hear more from. And his hard-learned lessons of the “social capital” that the working poor miss out on formed a powerful reminder of how devastating class privilege can be. It’s heartening to hear success stories of people like Vance who overcame great odds to get ahead in life, but his real triumph is in crafting this ethnography of his home culture that so eloquently frames it for an outsider.

★★★★☆

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