TV #44 of 2020: The Twilight Zone, season 1 In its first year, the latest iteration of this classic anthology series offers a collection of interesting and well-acted premises that never quite stick the landing for a successful denouement. Every episode seems to either trail off without a point or descend into heavy-handed moralizing, and …
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Book Review: Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Book #249 of 2020: Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland I appreciate the fresh perspective of this YA novel about a Mexican-American girl whose mother was deported and went missing and presumed dead trying to cross back into the country, but the story takes a sudden genre veer midway …
Book Review: The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy by Stephanie Kelton
Book #248 of 2020: The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy by Stephanie Kelton I’ll be honest and admit up-front that I don’t have the economics background that is likely necessary to evaluate all of this book’s claims. But it seems clear that neither do most politicians, and that …
Book Review: Dune by Frank Herbert
Book #247 of 2020: Dune by Frank Herbert (Dune #1) This 1965 sci-fi classic is a triumph of worldbuilding, with an influence on the genre that can be seen everywhere from the desert planets of Star Wars to the feudal intrigue of Red Rising. But it bored me to tears when I tried to read …
TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 6
TV #43 of 2020: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 6 Perhaps because Star Trek wasn’t a part of my childhood (and because I prefer my television to have more serial plotting), I’ve never quite loved this show, but it’s generally been a solid collection of sci-fi stories in an interesting sort of setting. So …
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Book Review: Daughter of Regals and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #246 of 2020: Daughter of Regals and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson Stephen R. Donaldson is one of my very favorite authors, and although I don’t remember liking this 1984 collection of fiction as much as his novels or the later Reave the Just and Other Tales, my current reread through his oeuvre …
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Book Review: The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager
Book #245 of 2020: The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager This title is a firsthand account of author Sara Seager’s experiences with death — primarily that of her young husband to cancer, but also those of her father, a dog, and two cats — as well as a look at …
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Book Review: Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold
Book #244 of 2020: Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold A dark and gory feminist tale, perfect for the chilly weather and dimmer evenings we’re getting now at the tail end of the year. It’s a loose retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, where the girl in the woods is a teenager going home to …
Book Review: Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko
Book #243 of 2020: Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (Raybearer #1) A lovely piece of #ownvoices YA fantasy, with an all-black cast and imaginative worldbuilding loosely inspired by West African mythology. Debut author Jordan Ifueko is clearly breaking from the eurocentric genre norm here, but she also seems to have ventured further afield from the Orisha …
Book Review: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Book #242 of 2020: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #29) This wasn’t my first Discworld title, but for a long time, it was the only one I had read in the subseries about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. It’s the volume I’ve reread the most as well, so I can attest that it works just …
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