Book #186 of 2020: Destroy All Monsters by Sam J. Miller This novel plays with some interesting ideas, but it’s developed too loosely to be very effective. The two teenage protagonists, both repressing a certain trauma from when they were kids, are literally now living in different worlds: her in something like our reality and …
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Book #185 of 2020: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro It takes a while for me to warm up to this novel about an English butler looking back on his life, and I still wouldn’t say I love it by the end. Yet I have come to appreciate author Kazuo Ishiguro’s skill at …
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Book #184 of 2020: Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton This is a wild fever dream of a novel, heavy on the New York City party scene of sex, drugs, and drinking but somewhat lacking in any likable characters. Everyone in this story is some combination of vapid, foolish, and/or entitled, and although the plot …
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TV #30 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 1 This first season of the CGI show is a definite improvement over the 2008 feature film, and I appreciate the travelogue aspect of showing off different Star Wars settings. Still, it seems pretty nonessential to the canon so far, beyond the rare glimpses of …
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Book #183 of 2020: Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh At first, this novel seems like it will be a simple whodunnit, perhaps even a Miss Marple pastiche, with its 72-year-old heroine making inquiries among the residents of her small town. The case stems from an unsigned note she’s found in the woods nearby: …
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Book #182 of 2020: Starsight by Brandon Sanderson (Skyward #2) This sci-fi sequel goes in a pretty unexpected direction, but it’s all the stronger for it. After spending the first book training as a fighter pilot to defend her planet from alien attack, Spensa is suddenly whisked across the galaxy to the enemy capital on …
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Book #181 of 2020: Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This American history title offers an in-depth look at Reconstruction — the short period immediately after the Civil War, marked by a measure of meaningful progress towards racial equality — and the Jim Crow …
Book #180 of 2020: Last Day on Mars by Kevin Emerson (Chronicle of the Dark Star #1) I’ll give a charitable three stars to this middle-grade sci-fi adventure, which hasn’t quite gripped me but may prove more exciting for younger readers. I do like that it’s basically a junior version of The Martian, with a …
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Book #179 of 2020: The Street by Ann Petry Upon reading this novel from 1946 I am stunned, both by the sheer raw power of the text and by the fact that I’d never even heard of it before seeing a friend’s rave review earlier this year. The title clearly had an impact at the …
Book #178 of 2020: Jingo by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #21) This is a reasonably funny satire on the pointlessness of war, but as with many of Terry Pratchett’s books, there’s a certain degree of low-level racism and sexism underpinning some of the jokes. (Although the most overtly bigoted characters are generally positioned as fools, the …
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