Book #105 of 2025: Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer I read this novel back in high school, a few years after it was first published in 2000, and when I saw it recently on my mom’s shelf, I remembered it vaguely as a Michael Crichton kind of science-fiction, channeling the writer’s deep background research …
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Book #104 of 2025: Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] This is the latest “Secret Project,” a name that author Brandon Sanderson gives to the books he’s written in his spare time outside his regular public writing schedule and produced via crowdfunding instead of traditional publishing. …
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Book #103 of 2025: Nightingale’s Lament by Simon R. Green (Nightside #3) Not great, but I like it better than I did on my last read in 2019. I’ve described the Nightside books before as having rhythms similar to a police procedural TV show, and after a pilot outing and a fairly thrilling followup, this …
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Book #102 of 2025: Mark Twain by Ron Chernow Ron Chernow is a consummate biographer, probably best known for popularizing the tale of an overlooked Founding Father into an account that became the basis for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. Here he turns his attentions a century forward to the life of author Mark Twain, …
TV #34 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 19 I’m maybe overly charitable towards Peter Davison’s first season as the Fifth Doctor, but there were inevitably going to be growing pains after seven years of his predecessor Tom Baker. And to be clear, I am still not saying that this is great television, as a …
TV #33 of 2025: Reservation Dogs, season 3 I rated the first two seasons of this show as 4-out-of-5 stars apiece, and I’m tempted to lower my rating of this last one to a 3. Structurally, it’s kind of a mess, without nearly enough scenes of the kids all hanging out together as friends. Instead, …
Book #101 of 2025: The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1) This is currently my very favorite book, which I’ve now read three times in as many years. (I’m not necessarily committing to maintaining an annual reread, but I’m not ruling it out, either.) Like Kip scribbling additions to …
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Book #100 of 2025: No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris An absolutely infuriating read detailing a half-century of increasing malfeasance at the vaunted pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. Author Gardiner Harris is an investigative journalist who’s spent years digging into these cases, but the most incredible part of …
TV #32 of 2025: Babylon 5, season 5 The last season of this 90s sci-fi show is somehow even weaker than the previous one, although there are enough saving elements here and there that I’ll still give it a three-star rating overall. (And it is better than some of the movies, at least.) The problem …
Movie #8 of 2025: Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers (2002) This TV movie aired four years after the end of Babylon 5, but I’ve chosen to watch it where it apparently falls in the continuity, sometime between the earlier film The River of Souls and the regular series finale. In truth, it could …
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