Book #332 of 2021: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (Fractured Fables #1) This delightful novella is one of the more original fairy tale retellings that I’ve seen, pitching its version of Sleeping Beauty as a young woman from our world, suffering from a debilitating illness predicted to kill her within a year, who …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow”
TV #84 of 2021: Star Wars Resistance, season 2 This batch of episodes is a marked improvement over the first, with main character Kazuda far less irritating now that he’s no longer juggling his poorly-disguised espionage missions with equally inept racing and mechanic work. I think that’s due partly to personal growth and partly just …
Continue reading “TV Review: Star Wars Resistance, season 2”
Book #331 of 2021: The Experiment by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #28) “In the annals of stupid, screwed-up, pointless missions that was the stupidest, most pointless of them all,” says Marco at the end of this title, and it’s hard to really argue with him. 32 books into my decades-later reread of this series (including …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Experiment by K. A. Applegate”
Book #330 of 2021: The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #3) A weaker offering from author Agatha Christie. The premise here is that some anonymous person is sending nasty ‘poison pen’ letters to everyone in a small English village, accusing them of adultery and similar sins. (Our narrator, an outsider temporarily renting a …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie”
Book #329 of 2021: Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw This horror novella came highly recommended, and I was further intrigued by the striking cover design and promise of Japanese folklore-inspired frights within. (The title is the literal translation of ohaguro bettari, the main variety of monster encountered here.) Unfortunately, I’ve found the book …
Continue reading “Book Review: Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw”
Book #328 of 2021: The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly (Jack McEvoy #2) Reporter Jack McEvoy has been bouncing around on the periphery of the wider ‘Boschiverse‘ for a while, although he hasn’t taken center stage as a viewpoint protagonist since 14 books / 13 years back in The Poet. But he’s here again, once more …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly”
Book #327 of 2021: A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee I like the spooky atmosphere of a Catskills boarding school where the students are dabbling in the occult with a potential side of murder, but the plot is a bit too derivative of other “dark academia” stories out there with an extracurricular club falling …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee”
Book #326 of 2021: People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn Although relatively short, this new essay collection by Jewish author Dara Horn literally took my breath away. I gasped, and I sobbed, and I felt incredibly, reassuringly seen. She cuts straight to the heart of life in the modern …
Continue reading “Book Review: People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn”
Book #325 of 2021: The Exposed by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #27) The second ghostwritten Animorphs novel offers a decent if anticlimactic adventure, most notable for the deep underwater scenes of Rachel and Tobias as sperm whales hunting and battling a giant squid to bring up to the surface for the whole team to acquire. …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Exposed by K. A. Applegate”
TV #83 of 2021: Shameless, season 11 This title has always been all over the map tonally, so perhaps it’s fitting that its closing run would be produced and set during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although in practice, the only real impact on events seems to be that everyone is wearing masks and …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more