The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Better Call Saul, season 2

TV #18 of 2016:

Better Call Saul, season 2

The unexpected Breaking Bad spinoff continues to be a fascinating character study, and this season really embraces the aspect of a Shakespearean tragedy that comes from its audience knowing, at least in broad strokes, how the story ends. I’m not sure why so few prequels manage to pull that off, but Better Call Saul is the rare exception. My only minor complaint about this season is a structural one, which is that Mike and Jimmy’s stories so very rarely intersect, even while both of them are well-told and compelling on their own. Mike in particular is caught up in more of a prologue to Breaking Bad as a whole – which is fantastic – whereas Jimmy is dealing with interesting figures like Kim and Chuck who for some reason or another will be out of the picture by the time Walter White enters the scene. And it looks like that Breaking Bad connection to Mike’s story will get even stronger next season, so hopefully Jimmy will tie into that more directly than he did this time around.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Supergirl, season 1

TV #17 of 2016:

Supergirl, season 1

Supergirl had a very uneven first season, and I can’t shake the suspicion that I am nowhere near young enough to be the intended audience for this show – but Melissa Benoist is just so great in the lead role that I’m willing to overlook a lot of that. (Plus that crossover episode with The Flash was pretty much the most joyous superhero story I have ever seen in my life.) Most shows improve over time as the writers get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t, and there’s already been signs of that on Supergirl with the character growth of Hank Henshaw and Cat Grant, who were both pretty flat stock characters at the beginning of this show. I just hope the writers are given a second season to continue honing this story.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Book #30 of 2016:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #1)

I thought this book was incredibly slow at the beginning, to the point where I almost put it down several times. I’m very glad I didn’t, however, as the story gets great about a third of the way through, and from then on it’s a real page-turner. The main character’s story comes out slowly, but essentially she (?) is the last remnant of a computer AI that at one point ran an entire spaceship along with hundreds of “ancillary” units that are basically dead human bodies with the computer software piloting them. After an incident that I won’t spoil, only one of those ancillary bodies remains, and she is engaged in some sort of mysterious quest when we start the novel.

The author’s choice to keep readers in the dark for so long about what the main character is doing and why definitely weakens this story, but once the flashbacks catch up to the present action, everything snaps into place nicely. This is a hard sci-fi space opera, but the culture is nicely fleshed out and the book raises some really interesting issues about personal identity and how people can – quite literally – be at war with themselves, despite ultimately being the same person with the same goals. There’s also an interesting gender dynamic, since the language in this civilization doesn’t mark that at all, leading the main character to refer to everyone as “she.” Sometimes this includes characters established in the text to be male, and sometimes (as with the main character) there are no clues whatsoever about a character’s gender. The result makes for a fascinating sort of egalitarian society, filtered through the viewpoint of an artificial mind.

I’m hopeful that these issues get taken up with even greater consideration in the sequels, which to my surprise I am actually quite looking forward to.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales

Book #29 of 2016:

American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales

This book was somewhat eye-opening – but only somewhat. I really left the experience being wholly unconvinced that Sales has the right read on everything she discusses. I mean, I love the fact that she interviewed so many teen girls for this project, but it was overwhelmingly clear throughout the book that a millennial should have been either a co-author or editor here, because Sales draws a lot of conclusions that don’t really seem supported by the evidence that she quotes about how these teens interact with one another. And by “millennial” I primarily mean digital native, because there were multiple instances where this 50-year-old author raises some tired boogeyman about social media or search engines that just doesn’t ring true to my late-20s ears at all.

It’s also strange for a book that is primarily worrying about the effects of modern technology on teenage sociality to largely omit any discussion of what teenagers used to be like before the current age. The teens Sales quotes often express a desire to have lived in some earlier time where things like Instagram or Tinder didn’t exist, but I’m pretty sure teenagers have always romanticized a past they didn’t live through. As the researcher here, Sales should have done more homework to actually identify what about today’s teens is truly a break from the past and what is simply the same business young adults have always gotten up to, just in a new instrumentality.

If the topic of teens and social media (and porn, which really should have been mentioned somewhere in the title given how large a role it plays in the text) interests you, I do think this book is a good resource. But maybe just for the interviews that are quoted from, rather than the author’s conclusions.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: Bosch, season 2

TV #16 of 2016:

Bosch, season 2

I’m pretty sure my dad and I are the only people watching this show, but I really like it. I’m a sucker for a good police procedural so long as the acting and writing are up to the task, and they definitely are in Bosch. This season was a major step up from the first, too. Not only do the side characters have more to do, but the big case at the heart of this season is all about police corruption and the mob (rather than the bland serial killer straight out of late-series Dexter that we got last time). I still haven’t read the books that this show is based on, but I’m way more inclined to do so now.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Fargo, season 1

TV #15 of 2016:

Fargo, season 1

This was a very strong season of television. Of course, I’m a sucker for a shared universe, so I love the fact that this season tells a self-contained story that is nevertheless a sequel to the original Coen Brothers movie. (And that the next season is a prequel to both and the upcoming season 3 is reportedly going to be a sequel to all of them. At least in terms of the timeline for this shared continuity.)

I also really enjoy that although Lester was an antihero in the Walter White mold, these writers put a lot more effort into demonstrating his inhumanity all throughout the story. I mean, I can’t watch Breaking Bad and accept Heisenberg as someone to root for, but the fact that not all of that show’s audience felt that way suggests that the writers didn’t do a good enough job there. Walter is like Lester in being an amoral scumbag just waiting for an outside force to rip away his facade of normalcy, but Fargo never once lets you forget that.

I do have some qualms about this season, like the fact that Molly wasn’t the one to take down Malvo in the end – heck, the two never even shared a scene together despite being built up all season as the most competent characters on the show and clearly being locked in dueling moral trajectories. I’m also not really sure I understand all of Malvo’s motivations, especially with regard to the Stavros plot, which unexpectedly got dropped halfway through the season. But on the whole, this was a great season and a worthy followup to the classic movie.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Marvel’s Daredevil, season 2

TV #14 of 2016:

Marvel’s Daredevil, season 2

I don’t know with this one. I still really like this show’s take on Daredevil (and Kingpin!), and this new season introduces us to the MCU versions of Elektra and the Punisher, who are possibly even more perfect. On the other hand, this season was kind of a mess with its plotting, and it leaned way too much on ninja mysticism in a way that was both confusing and quasi-racist. It also left a whole lot of open questions – that big hole the ninjas were digging, for one – without really being clear as to when/whether those issues would be addressed. So on the whole, I feel like this season was kind of a wash. But hey – Luke Cage is coming this September! Sweet Christmas, I can’t wait for that.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson

Book #28 of 2016:

Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson

This novella is honestly not one of Brandon Sanderson’s best pieces of storytelling. But that’s fine, because it’s not aiming to be. It’s instead more of a behind-the-scenes sort of deal, showing what one particular character was up to during the second and third Mistborn novels when we thought that person had left the plot for good. I’m sure some readers will see this as a retcon, but in fact the author’s note says Sanderson knew all along that this story was happening simultaneously to the others — and there are clues to it throughout those books that I look forward to spotting on my next reread of the series.

It’s hard to discuss such a secret tale without spoilers, but other than its initial premise, the plot itself isn’t particularly exciting. I am excited for what it sets up, however. This book was released alongside Mistborn #6, the ending of which made it clear that there was more to the story of the original trilogy than had first met the eye. (The writer in fact suggests that the best place to read it is there after #6, but I personally disagree. Both thematically and plotwise it fits best after #3. This moves up a certain reveal, but it doesn’t really “spoil” it any more than Revenge of the Sith spoils The Empire Strikes Back for viewers watching Star Wars in chronological order.) It seems pretty clear that Secret History, aka Mistborn #3.5, will have huge implications as the series moves on, although I won’t say anything more about that here.

The story is also exciting for what it reveals about the cosmere, which is the larger universe where most of Brandon Sanderson’s stories take place. There’s a more epic narrative going on along the fringes of his books, and it’s always been fun to try to piece together various implications about that. But Secret History has its cosmere business front and center, and that’s a refreshing change of pace.

Despite being published solely as an ebook with little publicity, Mistborn: Secret History is absolutely essential for Sanderson fans. [EDIT: And it now has a more fitting prominent position as part of his cosmere fiction collection Arcanum Unbounded.] Read it now if you’ve already finished the first Mistborn trilogy, or else read it between #3 and #4 once you get there.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Lifeboats by Diane Duane

Book #27 of 2016:

Lifeboats by Diane Duane (Young Wizards #9.5)

Lifeboats is an “interim” novella in the Young Wizards series, taking place in the narrative gap between main novels A Wizard of Mars (#9) and Games Wizards Play (#10). There are two other stories by Duane that also fall in that gap, “Not on My Patch” and “How Lovely Are Thy Branches,” and I thought those were fun enough little drabbles. Lifeboats is a much longer and more significant outing, however — I would recommend it wholeheartedly to any fan of this series, whereas I wouldn’t say that those other interim pieces were at all essential.

This book showcases the growing maturity of its characters, both in their personal relationships and in their understanding of the complexities of life, where sometimes all you can do is search for the best response to a bad situation. It features a compassionate look at refugees, as well as a thoughtful consideration of what it means to grant others the agency to make decisions that you see as bad for them. (Also: an alien with nonbinary pronouns and another one that looks like Chewbacca.) I really enjoyed this tale, to the extent where I wish it had been published as the official tenth part of the series.

★★★★☆

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Movie Review: Thor (2011)

Movie #7 of 2016:

Thor (2011)

I was only rewatching this film to look up the scene where Coulson mentions linguistics, but by the time I found it there were only about 20 minutes left, so I went ahead and finished. I feel like this is one of the less memorable MCU titles, and it had been a while since I last saw it, so it was fun to go back and see how all those characters first got introduced to us. But I feel like this is not a movie I would ever rewatch unless I was looking for a particular part like just now, or else doing some sort of ill-advised MCU marathon. It’s fine, but it’s not on the level of Iron Man, The Avengers, or Winter Soldier. Not a bad way to spend an evening, though.

★★★☆☆

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