Book #210 of 2020: Crossings by Alex Landragin This genre-bending novel is a deeply immersive tale of people who can swap souls from body to body, prolonging their existence but not necessarily retaining their waking memories in the process. Spanning multiple centuries, it’s a work of historical fiction as well, incorporating real figures like Charles …
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Book Review: The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
Book #209 of 2020: The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #3) This 1994 novel opens with detective Harry Bosch on trial for his shooting of an unarmed man four years ago, a civil complaint brought by the widow against the city. (The deceased was a suspected rapist and serial killer, and Bosch mistakenly …
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TV Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 2
TV #36 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 2 This cartoon is incrementally improving, but I still don’t love it just yet. I’m most invested when the writing manages to tell me something new about a character or concept from the wider franchise, which is why I perked up around this season’s mini-arc …
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Book Review: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Book #208 of 2020: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz I admire the goal for a Howard Zinn-like retelling of the American story, focused on the original inhabitants of this landmass and their descendants. That’s a worthy project to restore a voice to people who have traditionally been misrepresented and …
TV Review: The Office, season 1
TV #35 of 2020: The Office, season 1 This 2005 debut was a little rough at the time, and another decade and a half of evolving cultural norms haven’t made it any better. Michael Scott is of course a walking HR complaint of offensive and inappropriate behavior, but even our ostensible hero Jim would be …
Book Review: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Book #207 of 2020: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (Space Opera #1) I love the concept for this novel, which is basically Eurovision meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In fact, that Douglas Adams series seems to be the exact model for author Catherynne M. Valente, from the zany screwball comedy to the …
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Book Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Book #206 of 2020: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson This title didn’t grip me right away, I think because I was expecting the sort of powerful testimony in author Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, with its deep ethnographic dive into the lived experiences of a rarely discussed segment of …
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Book Review: A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost
Book #205 of 2020: A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost An entertaining if rambling celebrity memoir, which I’ve found most interesting for its backstage look at the production of Saturday Night Live. But there’s also a surprising amount of gore in the descriptions of author Colin Jost’s more memorable injuries and infections, and some …
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Book Review: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Book #204 of 2020: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #2) This is a strange sequel to Gideon the Ninth, retaining the excellent focus on lesbian space necromancers but shifting perspectives from the snarky cavalier of the first book to her bitter former enemy. Harrowhawk has also gone mad and literally forgotten …
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Book Review: The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #203 of 2020: The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever #2) This fantasy sequel is structured somewhat like The Empire Strikes Back, a downbeat middle chapter that recontextualizes an earlier victory as a minor skirmish and not the decisive blow it may have seemed. In Lord Foul’s …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 