TV #43 of 2021: Star Wars Rebels, season 2 A definite step down from its first season, this sophomore run of the Disney Star Wars cartoon is a frustratingly meandering piece of storytelling. There are some slight attempts at character arcs, but mostly we’re given a lot of episodic filler that doesn’t really capitalize on …
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Book Review: And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
Book #135 of 2021: And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman This novella is a sorrowful look at an elderly man gradually losing his memories to dementia, but it’s a bit too short and disjointed to be entirely effective. The whole idea is that he’s slipping between past and …
Book Review: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
Book #134 of 2021: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers (Wayfarers #4) Another lovely and warmhearted picture of alien diversity, reportedly the last in the loose Wayfarers series from author Becky Chambers. (These stories are discrete enough that there’s no internal continuity reason for this to be a conclusion, but that’s what …
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Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
Book #133 of 2021: Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher (William Shakespeare’s Star Wars #4) This book is built around a cute idea, but once you get past that basic gimmick of retelling the first Star Wars movie in iambic pentameter — “In time so long ago begins our play / In …
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Book Review: Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler
Book #132 of 2021: Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler This posthumous collection by renowned African American science-fiction icon Octavia E. Butler is regrettably slim, but it lives up to its title, presenting two of her early works that had been previously unpublished. The novella A Necessary Being does not appear to have ever been …
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Book Review: Infinity Blade: Redemption by Brandon Sanderson
Book #131 of 2021: Infinity Blade: Redemption by Brandon Sanderson This is the second novella that author Brandon Sanderson wrote as a media tie-in for the titular videogame series, but it’s not really a sequel to his earlier Infinity Blade: Awakening. Instead, much as that story serves to bridge the plot between the first two …
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Book Review: How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don’t) Say About Human Difference by Adam Rutherford
Book #130 of 2021: How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don’t) Say About Human Difference by Adam Rutherford This 2020 title is somewhat misleading, since author Adam Rutherford is not an expert on antiracist engagement, and even he admits that most people who espouse open bigotry do not appear receptive …
Book Review: Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie
Book #129 of 2021: Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #12) This 1935 story, also published as Death in the Air, is an entertaining, quasi-locked-room whodunnit: a murder that takes place on a passenger plane, although most of Poirot’s follow-up investigations and discoveries are conducted back on the ground. I especially like …
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TV Review: Shadow and Bone, season 1
TV #42 of 2021: Shadow and Bone, season 1 It took me a couple episodes to get fully on-board with this YA literary adaptation, but I believe that’s largely down to the incorrect assumptions that I brought to the experience. All of the promotional materials that I had seen for the show seemed to be …
Book Review: Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant
Book #128 of 2021: Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant (Rolling in the Deep #1) A short but effective creature feature, following a deep-sea expedition looking to capture or manufacture footage of mermaids for a schlocky TV production. The last thing they expect is to find the real animals who inspired the myths, nor …
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