Movie #22 of 2016:
Bad Santa (2003)
A family favorite that my wife had never seen before (and that I hadn’t watched in probably ten years). I don’t really have any interest in seeing the new sequel – which looked pretty awful from the trailers – but the original is a non-stop laugh riot. Very profane and definitely not a Christmas movie for the kiddies, but if you don’t recoil from the premise in the title, I promise you’ll laugh all the way through.
★★★★☆
Book #148 of 2016:
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.” So laments Tommy Wilhelm in this tightly-focused character study of a New York City Jew longing for a fresh start but unable to find his way there. Tommy’s ‘mistakes’ are the result of bad luck and poor circumstances as much as his own shortcomings, and his anguished struggle for a life of dignity is as sharply relevant in the Great Recession as it was 60 years ago. Anyone who has felt the panic of a career evaporating under them or the sting of having to ask a loved one for a loan will recognize this day in the life of the unfortunate Mr. Wilhelm, and author Saul Bellow pulls no punches in painting his character’s despair. But it’s the hint of grace he provides that truly makes this novel shine.
★★★★☆
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Book #147 of 2016:
Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou
A short but powerful essay collection, pivoting back and forth between Angelou’s personal memoirs and her observations / advice for how to live a decent life to the fullest. Although framed as though addressed to her child, it is of course a great read for all of us. Her words are guaranteed to be echoing in my head for a long time to come.
★★★☆☆
Book #146 of 2016:
Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling
More heartwarming and less offensive than her previous book. I couldn’t always relate to the situations Mindy describes from her life – like how hard it is to balance dating a White House staffer with being a world-famous television star – but this was a fun, light essay collection that definitely made me laugh.
★★★☆☆
Book #145 of 2016:
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry (The Giver #2)
Not nearly as good as The Giver, and also entirely unconnected despite being marketed as a companion novel / sequel. (I’ve been told they tie together in a later book in the series, but on their own this one and The Giver are entirely independent.) There are some hints of intriguing worldbuilding here – I quite liked the detail that people in Kira’s community get extra syllables added to their name as a sign of age / respect – but the twists are obvious, the main character doesn’t take much initiative, and the threadbare story ends without much resolution. I’m going to keep reading the series on the strength of The Giver, and maybe I’ll appreciate this entry better once I see what follows. But for now, Gathering Blue is a bit of a disappointment.
★★☆☆☆
Book #144 of 2016:
Doctor Who: Twelve Doctors of Christmas by Jacqueline Rayner, Colin Brake, Richard Dungworth, Mike Tucker, Gary Russell, and Scott Handcock
An absolutely delightful collection of Doctor Who short stories – one for each incarnation so far except the War Doctor – all set around Christmas, somewhere in time and space. All are fun and packed full of continuity references for New and Classic fans alike. The Third Doctor and his companions hanging out with Jackie Tyler in “The Christmas Inversion” is a particular delight, but really, every story in this collection offers something to love, and as a whole it’s guaranteed to bring a holiday smile to any Whovian’s face.
★★★★☆
Book #143 of 2016:
I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas by Lewis Black
Either I’ve cooled on Lewis Black’s angry style of comedy over the years or he was just particularly off his game here. Listening to this audiobook as a fellow Jew just before Christmas, I feel like I should have been particularly situated to enjoy his outsider observations on the holiday. But this book is mostly just Black describing his personal winter traditions, and I didn’t really find it all that interesting, funny, or insightful.
★★☆☆☆
Book #142 of 2016:
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick
A fascinating history of the evolving concepts of time and time travel, traced through the separate but related traditions of physics, philosophy, and popular fiction. (I was most surprised to read that the idea of going to another time period would have been inconceivable even as a story idea just a few centuries ago; time travel really is a more modern concept than we realize.) Gleick’s prose can be clunky at times, but his topic is interesting and well-researched, with a wide range of sources and examples to draw on.
★★★☆☆
Book #141 of 2016:
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
NOS4A2 is a great story, but it’s also something of a love letter from author Joe Hill to his father. The plot and the characters all feel like they could be pulled straight from a Stephen King novel, and even if Hill were not King’s son, it would be hard to avoid acknowledging the debt NOS4A2 owes to classic King horror stories like Black House, IT, or Christine. (And as though to emphasize these connections, Hill sprinkles plenty of King references throughout this book, from Shawshank and Derry to Mid-World and the True Knot.)
Yet in many ways, Hill has taken his father’s tropes and stripped them down to their essentials, adding what works to his toolkit and leaving the rest behind. A plot description of this novel, which involves a supernatural child-kidnapper being fought first by a young girl and then later by the woman grown in defense of her son, reads like quintessential King. But Hill dives deeper into the psychology of these characters than his father generally does, offering up a villain who could almost be plausibly defended as a sort of Peter Pan and a heroine whose mental illness may be slanting her perspective and her grasp on reality. NOS4A2 represents a triumph of the son outpacing the father all the way through to its explosive end.
★★★★☆
Book #140 of 2016:
The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #10)
It’s nice to finally get some forward plot movement as this series approaches its end, as well as some answers to riddles that have persisted since the earliest volumes. The Baudelaire children continue to develop into more and more capable heroes, and here we’re given clear evidence that they are following directly in their parents’ footsteps by opposing Count Olaf and his branch of their secret organization. I also appreciate how – in an appropriate play on this novel’s title – the Baudelaires are directly tempted to adopt wicked means for just ends, only to ultimately reject the idea after realizing that fighting fire with fire would make them no better than Olaf. This will never be the deepest book series, but the increasing complexity in these later volumes is much appreciated.
★★★★☆
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