Movie #13 of 2020: The Princess Bride (1987) This beloved film lives up to my memories and its own reputation, offering thrills, laughs, and emotional stirrings in equal measure. (I legitimately teared up at the last scene tonight, perhaps because my wife and I have each lost a grandfather this year.) It’s a feel-good movie …
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Book Review: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Book #256 of 2020: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers A difficult read, full of brutal details drawn from the first-hand testimony of enslaved persons and their enslavers alike. Each new specific abuse — each beating, each rape, each division of families — is …
Book Review: Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl
Book #255 of 2020: Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl For the first 10% of this YA novel, it seems like it’s just going to be the tale of a college freshman reuniting with her high school friends to get closure on why they fell out and see if anyone knows the truth behind her boyfriend’s …
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Movie Review: A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote
Movie #12 of 2020: A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote (2020) One part cast reunion, one part stageplay, and one part voting drive, this West Wing special is a bit of an oddity. It’s fun to see the actors reprising their roles 14 years after the show originally ended — with …
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Book Review: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
Book #254 of 2020: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton The pacing to this historical mystery is far too slow to be properly effective, and although the narrative spends a lot of time entertaining the idea of a demonic force plaguing the ship, it’s telegraphed very early on that this is more …
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TV Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 4
TV #45 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 4 I’m glad that this Clone Wars season is presented mostly chronologically, rather than the nonlinear hodgepodge of years before, but the narrative is still more scattered than I think I would prefer, with mini-arcs and standalone episodes that don’t really build on one another …
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Book Review: The Original by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal
Book #253 of 2020: The Original by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal This novella (currently available exclusively as an audiobook) is a thrilling sci-fi adventure, set in a society where most people take in regular doses of “nanogenes” that transform their perception, adding pre-programmed sights, sounds, and textures to an environment that would otherwise …
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Book Review: The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club
Book #252 of 2020: The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club In 1931, Agatha Christie and a dozen of her contemporaries collaborated to produce this mystery novel, each contributing a chapter in turn but not sharing their theories of the case with one another. The result is more than a little disjointed, and it almost …
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Book Review: Court of Lions by Somaiya Daud
Book #251 of 2020: Court of Lions by Somaiya Daud (Mirage #2) This Moroccan-flavored princess-and-pauper sci-fi sequel isn’t exactly bad, but it lacks much of the tension that made the first novel so gripping. The two girls are friends now rather than ruler and reluctant body double, and with the introduction of a new female …
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Book Review: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Book #250 of 2020: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #1) This YA fantasy novel can be a tad exposition-heavy, especially at the beginning, but it offers such a fun setting and enjoyably prickly protagonist that it’s easy to let that slide. The Scholomance is a magic boarding school like none other, a …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 