Book #279 of 2021: El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson A staggeringly comprehensive history of Spanish speakers in North America — primarily Mexico and the mainland United States, but also Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other islands nearby — from the first conquistadors all the way up to …
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Book Review: To Jerusalem and Back by Saul Bellow
Book #278 of 2021: To Jerusalem and Back by Saul Bellow This is an odd and somewhat disjointed little title, as much a travelogue of Jewish-American author Saul Bellow’s 1975 visit to Israel as a literature review of what other thinkers have had to say about that nation and the global status of contemporary Judaism. …
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Book Review: The Discovery by K. A. Applegate
Book #277 of 2021: The Discovery by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #20) Well, I’ve been wanting the Animorphs series to grow more serialized, and it’s hard to beat the introduction of a new member, for the first time since Ax’s arrival in #4 The Message. (That would ordinarily be a bit of a spoiler, as …
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Book Review: The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #276 of 2021: The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #5) I still don’t altogether love this 90s space opera, which has a lot of scenes of people just standing around talking, even in this climactic finale. Don’t get me wrong: the dialogue here is …
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Book Review: Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
Book #275 of 2021: Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin “Delightful” may not be the best word for this story of a depressed hypochondriac suffering from panic attacks, but it’s nevertheless a wicked sharp character study that swiftly draws a reader in. There’s so much wrong with the protagonist that …
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Book Review: A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
Book #274 of 2021: A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski This 2011 title should really have been called “A Gay and Lesbian History of the United States,” due to how little it addresses the remainder of the LGBT+ acronym. The treatment of transgender people is particularly egregious, presenting just a few …
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Book Review: Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler
Book #273 of 2021: Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #5) Author Octavia E. Butler’s debut novel was later followed by a number of loose prequels, detailing how the world arrived at the future civilization depicted here, with humanity divided into three warring tribes: ‘Clayark’ mutants infected with an alien pathogen, regular people, and psychics …
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TV Review: Scandal, season 2
TV #74 of 2021: Scandal, season 2 This second year of the presidential-fixer-and-mistress show is an undeniable improvement over the first, both steadier in its storytelling and with better definition to its characters. (I still don’t really understand what Harrison and Abby’s exact skillsets are within the firm, but at least they have clearer personalities …
Book Review: Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Book #272 of 2021: Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia The best part of this historical noir adventure is its setting of 1970s Mexico City, as rendered in rich #ownvoices detail from author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I don’t love the overall story as much as her previous titles Certain Dark Things and Mexican Gothic — …
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Book Review: The Departure by K. A. Applegate
Book #271 of 2021: The Departure by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #19) Cassie is in crisis. The latest Animorphs battle wasn’t even that bad by the scale of what they’ve faced before, but as sometimes happens, it was enough to push her to a breaking point. A pacifist teen forced yet again to kill, she …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 