TV #54 of 2021: Broadchurch, season 2 There are two major plots in the second run of this British crime drama, each building reasonably off the first year, which ended with a surprise arrest for the murder of little Danny Latimer. These intersect to a certain degree simply because some of the same people are …
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Book Review: Fable of the Swan by Jenna Katerin Moran
Book #192 of 2021: Fable of the Swan by Jenna Katerin Moran This is without a doubt one of the strangest books I’ve ever encountered. It’s weird fiction in every sense of the term, the sort of story that has to teach you how to interpret its slipstream oddities as you go along, and even …
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Book Review: The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes
Book #191 of 2021: The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone #3) Another strong fantasy adventure, following the returning heroes — by this point fairly scattered across the realm — as they navigate civil war, political intrigue, and unjust imprisonment amid the prophesied apocalypse still unfolding all around them. It’s …
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Book Review: Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Book #190 of 2021: Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #36) I still don’t feel as though reformed con man Moist von Lipwig is a particularly engaging protagonist, and a lot of the plot beats to this attempt to turn around the archaic Ankh-Morpork banking industry seem too similar to his previous efforts at the …
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Book Review: Jews Versus Aliens edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene
Book #189 of 2021: Jews Versus Aliens edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene I’m sadly underwhelmed by this #ownvoices short story collection, most of which falls far shy of its potential to tell exciting science-fiction from a specifically Jewish perspective. Of the ten entries herein, I’d give a few of them passing grades — …
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Book Review: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
Book #188 of 2021: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith The hook to this mid-twentieth-century novel, the loose basis for the classic Hitchcock film, is straightforward yet fiendishly clever: two men who have never met before happen to be sharing a train car, where they start discussing the loved ones they can’t stand — …
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Book Review: The Andalite’s Gift by K. A. Applegate
Book #187 of 2021: The Andalite’s Gift by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #1) The first Animorphs release outside of the main series is this ‘Megamorphs’ title, which is supersized both in literal page count and in including all six potential narrators, rather than just one. (Even Ax the resident alien gets a voice, right …
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Book Review: The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Book #186 of 2021: The Mothers by Brit Bennett This novel strikes me as a great example of how talented writing and character work can elevate old tropes beyond their familiar patterns. When I try to summarize the plot — a 17-year-old hides her romance with a college guy and subsequent abortion from her best …
Book Review: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin
Book #185 of 2021: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin The most surprising thing about this 2007 memoir by comedian Steve Martin is that it’s not particularly funny. I don’t mean that the author is attempting jokes which fall flat, merely that it’s a fairly serious reflection on his early career, featuring …
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Book Review: Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien
Book #184 of 2021: Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien The final book by children’s author Robert C. O’Brien was this 1974 post-apocalyptic thriller, published posthumously after being completed from his notes by his (uncredited) wife Sally M. Conly and daughter Jane Leslie Conly. Whether due to their contribution or not, it has a …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 