TV #53 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 5 Although still somewhat bifurcated in tone, this animated prequel show has been getting gradually stronger year over year, both in the quality of its better parts and the ratio of them to the worse. Here, for instance, it’s really only the 4-episode “D-Squad” arc …
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Book #291 of 2020: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back edited by Elizabeth Schaefer To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the second Star Wars movie, this collection presents 40 new stories revisiting its timeline, in the form of either familiar scenes from the perspective of minor film characters or …
Book #290 of 2020: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam There’s a decent pandemic-appropriate hook to this 2020 suburban thriller — in which the family renting a rural vacation house are surprised by the late-night arrival of a couple identifying themselves as the owners, who have driven in from the city due to a …
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Book #289 of 2020: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn This 1962 novel is a short but striking depiction of a Soviet-era labor camp, drawn from author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s own Gulag experiences. It lives up to its title, presenting more of a snapshot than any particular plot, but the details …
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Book #288 of 2020: Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #9) Also published under the title Thirteen at Dinner, this is another solid mystery from author Agatha Christie, satisfying but not especially revelatory in its ultimate solution. The early chapters drag a bit until Poirot and Hastings reach the fairly obvious conclusion that …
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Book #287 of 2020: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #5) This was always my favorite Narnia volume growing up, and it turns out I actually like it even better as an adult. The nautical adventure is episodic but fun, and the way the children travel from …
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Book #286 of 2020: I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom A short but funny memoir / comedy essay collection from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creator and star Rachel Bloom. It’s not as entertaining as that show, and contains fewer behind-the-scenes stories than I would have hoped, but the author is refreshingly …
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Book #285 of 2020: Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro Although the narrative loses a little focus and momentum in its back half, for the most part this is a strikingly original post-apocalyptic fantasy, rich in #ownvoices Latinx cultural details and queer representation and distinctive in structure as one long chapterless text addressed …
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Book #284 of 2020: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix This urban fantasy reads like a quirkier Neverwhere, and its worldbuilding isn’t really distinctive enough to merit all the heavy infodumps in the first half of the novel. I know from works like Sabriel that author Garth Nix can introduce a setting more …
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TV #52 of 2020: Fargo, season 4 The latest year of this midwestern crime drama is circling an interesting idea of rival families exchanging child hostages a la Game of Thrones, but there’s not much of a plot to latch onto here beyond random violence. The most intriguing element, a 1950s black mafia, isn’t really …
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