Book #113 of 2020: Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Albert Marrin I’ve been reading up on last century’s ‘Spanish’ Flu pandemic, which seems the closest historical precedent for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis of today. And this title is a generally solid contribution to that body of knowledge, but it has …
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Book Review: The Plague by Albert Camus
Book #112 of 2020: The Plague by Albert Camus This 1947 novel is pretty astonishing to encounter in 2020, in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Albert Camus was not seeking to predict the future, and his presentation of a fictional outbreak in his own decade is of course not a perfect match for …
TV Review: Dead to Me, season 2
TV #17 of 2020: Dead to Me, season 2 The first season of this show felt somewhat at war with itself, trying to marry a serious exploration of grief with an over-the-top, twist-heavy plot in a way that ultimately hindered either aim. This time around, the writers have largely jettisoned the former element — and …
Book Review: Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Book #111 of 2020: Exhalation by Ted Chiang This long-awaited second collection of science-fiction from author Ted Chiang more than lives up to the promise of his earlier Stories of Your Life and Others (which contained the basis for the alien linguistics movie Arrival). These tales don’t just posit exciting technologies or shed light into …
Book Review: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
Book #110 of 2020: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas This is a difficult read, challenging the widespread mode of philanthropy — in both direct charity and private-sector services — that aims to improve people’s lives but does little to address any underlying systemic forces at play. (For …
TV Review: Bosch, season 6
TV #16 of 2020: Bosch, season 6 Amazon’s middlebrow police procedural starts off strong this year, but seems to lose a little focus as it goes along. I think the news that only one more batch of episodes remains has also put pressure on the writers to wrap up several long-running subplots, resulting in a …
Book Review: Onyx & Ivory by Mindee Arnett
Book #109 of 2020: Onyx & Ivory by Mindee Arnett (Rime Chronicles #1) This YA fantasy debut has clear potential that I’m hoping the sequel improves upon, with more worldbuilding details about the wider setting and less interpersonal drama that it seems like one good open conversation would resolve. I do like these protagonists and …
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TV Review: Shameless, season 2
TV #15 of 2020: Shameless, season 2 I like how this show seems to be following the Friday Night Lights model of jumping forward a few months in between seasons, using the time skip to refresh and reorient the plot by dropping some threads, advancing others, and introducing still more. I also appreciate that this …
Book Review: The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones
Book #108 of 2020: The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #6) This last Chrestomanci novel to be published is also the latest within the setting’s chronology and the final volume in author Diana Wynne Jones’s suggested reading order. I don’t know that it completely works as a grand finale for the series — …
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TV Review: The Good Wife, season 1
TV #14 of 2020: The Good Wife, season 1 The first year of this CBS legal procedural starts out a little clumsier than I remember, with a bit too much focus on the title character’s children and some of the main cast feeling just lightly sketched-in. But the cases (and judge personalities, a rarity for …
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