Book #102 of 2021: Angels Flight by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #6) This 1999 novel is interestingly (and depressingly) timely two decades on, as it plays out against a backdrop of police brutality and an ensuing race riot. Author Michael Connelly may have been drawing on the recent high-profile Rodney King and OJ Simpson cases, …
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Book #101 of 2021: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood In the parlance of this novel: “I’m in this photo and I don’t like it.” Which is to say, a lot of the story is an attempt to portray what it’s like to be Extremely Online, tapped into that stream of global …
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[Review originally written 4/1/16, updated 4/10/21] Book #100 of 2021: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson This novella is honestly not one of Brandon Sanderson’s strongest examples of self-contained storytelling. But that’s fine, because it’s not aiming to be. It’s instead a behind-the-scenes sort of deal, showing one particular character’s actions during the second and …
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Book #99 of 2021: Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad A searing first-hand account of author Suleika Jaouad’s experience contracting a rare form of leukemia in college, the years of medical anguish that followed, and her faltering attempts to rejoin regular life after being one of the lucky few …
TV #34 of 2021: Amend: The Fight for America This Netflix show is an informative six-part series on how the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution established a standard for equal treatment under the law that everything from civil rights to abortion access to interracial and gay marriage would later build upon — as well …
Book #98 of 2021: Game Changer by Neal Shusterman Overall, this YA novel strikes me as a well-meaning but clumsy effort to awaken its audience to societal problems like racism and homophobia that may not affect them directly. It specifically feels aimed at young, straight, white, male jocks like its hero, who suffers a brain …
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TV #33 of 2021: Julie and the Phantoms, season 1 Okay, the concept here is a little convoluted and ludicrous — three members of a boy band die in the 90s, then get brought back as ghosts by a girl in the present who can see them at all times, whereas they only appear to …
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Book #97 of 2021: A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland (A Conspiracy of Truths #2) In the final analysis I think I don’t love this spinoff sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths quite as much as the original novel, but it’s a welcome return to a land where diversity in race, gender, sexuality, disability, …
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Book #96 of 2021: The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams This story starts off on the wrong foot — taking the first 4% to wax rhapsodic about the soul of dictionaries before we even meet a single character — and somehow grows worse from there. It’s a split timeline, with one lexicographer protagonist in Victorian …
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Book #95 of 2021: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett This novel offers a beautiful assortment of character studies, although it feels less like a single coherent plot and instead an intricate mosaic of interrelated lives. Central to the web of connections are two light-skinned black girls, identical twins who seem inseparable until the day …
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