Book #66 of 2021: Chance: Escape from the Holocaust by Uri Shulevitz This 2020 title is a little unusual among Holocaust memoirs, both for its aim at a middle-grade audience and for its depicting a life more distantly touched by Nazi violence. Jewish author Uri Shulevitz and his family fled German-occupied Poland into the Soviet …
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Book #65 of 2021: Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han There’s a deep sense of sorrow pervading the four members of this novel’s Chinese-American immigrant family, all of whom seem utterly alienated — from their new country, from their homeland, and especially from one another. That estrangement is achingly rendered, and I’m sure it …
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TV #23 of 2021: WandaVision Brilliant in concept and nearly flawless in execution, I have very few critical notes for this miniseries, the debut television project under the immediate creative control of producer Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios and the premiere event in his Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Four. It’s a decade-by-decade journey across American …
Book #64 of 2021: Stormsong by C. L. Polk (The Kingston Cycle #2) This sequel is a decent follow-up to Witchmark, and I continue to enjoy the fantasy setting for its quasi-Edwardian trappings as well as its utter lack of homophobia and slut-shaming. Everyone maturely accepts adult relationships; the drama in this case stems from …
Book #63 of 2021: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn #1) This first Mistborn novel is every bit the modern classic that I remember, although it does have a few gender issues that author Brandon Sanderson improves upon in his later works. (Nothing too egregious, but except for our teenage heroine, this is a …
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Book #62 of 2021: American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser This book is centered on one (white, Jewish) family’s experience with adoption in the 1960s, but it’s also a fascinating sociological and historical account of a topic that I had previously known little about. As author …
TV #22 of 2021: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 7 If only this last run of the animated Star Wars prequel could be limited to its final four episodes, I think I would give it my first five-star rating of the series. That sequence represents a powerful prelude to the tragedy of Revenge of …
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Book #61 of 2021: Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston This story has it all: a generic fantasy setting, under-explained and inconsistent magic, a random and meandering plot, weirdly colloquial dialogue, and juvenile characters — both protagonists and antagonists alike — with no credible motivation driving their actions. Also quasi-bestiality, after the heroine’s …
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Book #60 of 2021: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey This novel raises a few interesting dilemmas of futuristic technology, although it waits so long to establish its sci-fi premise that I think I should probably be circumspect in this review. (I will say that the marketing description of ‘Westworld meets Killing Eve‘ is almost …
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Book #59 of 2021: Doctor Who: The Novel of the Film by Gary Russell For the most part, this is a pretty straightforward novelization of the 1996 Doctor Who movie, which isn’t great, but certainly has its share of goofy charm. (It was produced after the original program was cancelled in 1989, and was intended …
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