Book #198 of 2021: Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West This essay collection is a series of hilarious movie reviews, spanning titles mainly from the 90s or early 2000s, with Top Gun (1986) and Twilight (2008) at the extreme bounds. The actual criticism is pretty surface-level with a …
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TV Review: The Americans, season 5
TV #58 of 2021: The Americans, season 5 I feel torn about this penultimate stretch of The Americans, which in general is serving its deep-cover protagonists quite well. Their share of the story is richer than it was in the previous year, and sees the operatives drawing closer together and experiencing ever more remorse and …
Book Review: Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater
Book #197 of 2021: Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater (The Dreamer Trilogy #2) Author Maggie Stiefvater has always prioritized ambiance and personal relationships over concrete plot, so I wouldn’t say that the slowness of this latest Raven Cycle spinoff is a total surprise. And yet — perhaps befitting a series about characters bringing their dreams …
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TV Review: Loki, season 1
TV #57 of 2021: Loki, season 1 This latest Marvel series has been a blast to watch and to speculate about, even if in my opinion the ultimate answers aren’t as clever or as daring as certain fan theories out there. (I wonder how it will be received differently for audiences who come at it …
Book Review: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Book #196 of 2021: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston Utterly charmed by this YA romance between the son of America’s first female president and an English prince, although I’ll admit to being occasionally distracted trying to figure out how/when its timeline diverged from our own reality — as near as I can …
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Book Review: The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright
Book #195 of 2021: The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright I’m sure there will be many works written in the time ahead that chronicle the ins and outs of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak and analyze the responses taken by various government leaders. This one, specifically focusing on the U.S. …
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TV Review: Dawson’s Creek, season 5
TV #56 of 2021: Dawson’s Creek, season 5 It was perhaps inevitable that this teen drama would have growing pains in the transition from high school to college, which is a tricky maneuver for any show to pull off. The sets, the supporting cast, the typical episode beats: all of these are necessarily different, and …
Book Review: Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie
Book #194 of 2021: Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #16) A weaker effort, published in the U.S. as Poirot Loses a Client. The mystery is not altogether bad, featuring a friendly dog and a posthumously-delivered letter begging the detective for help, but its solution hinges on wild leaps of deduction from the little …
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TV Review: Bosch, season 7
TV #55 of 2021: Bosch, season 7 This final stretch of Bosch doesn’t immediately feel like a farewell tour, and I was initially underwhelmed by the seemingly low stakes of the central apartment building arson. But there’s an interesting subplot here of Billets struggling to pierce career protection and oust two bigot incels from among …
Book Review: The Alien by K. A. Applegate
Book #193 of 2021: The Alien by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #8) The first Animorphs book narrated by Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill is a roaring success. (Strictly speaking, his viewpoint was introduced in the previous volume, Megamorphs #1, but it feels richer here where it doesn’t have to share space with any others.) We get new terminology for …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 