TV #25 of 2020: Shameless, season 6 I generally wind up feeling more generous towards a year of Shameless as it approaches its endgame, and that’s definitely true again here. The beat-by-beat legwork of the plotting can be a tad shaky — it feels like we’re told Ian has his mental illness under control, for …
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Book Review: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
Book #154 of 2020: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings #3) This conclusion to the classic fantasy trilogy probably has too much falling action after the main stakes are resolved, and its treatment of the anonymous hordes of dark-skinned humans who rally to the banner of …
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Movie Review: 13th (2016)
Movie #9 of 2020: 13th (2016) A decent overview of how America has continued to marginalize its black population after the abolition of slavery, first through discriminatory Jim Crow laws and now via mass incarceration that disproportionately targets African-American men. I particularly appreciate the insights into the corporate interests keeping the growing prison system full, …
Book Review: Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega
Book #153 of 2020: Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega I simply adore the Dominican-American family at the heart of this fantasy novel, most of whom are spirits of the dead that only twelve-year-old Lucely can see. To everyone else they appear as fireflies, as per the #ownvoices folklore that author Claribel A. Ortega is …
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Movie Review: Hamilton (2020)
Movie #8 of 2020: Hamilton (2020) A Broadway recording like this — taped back in 2016, but only released now for Disney’s streaming service — could be a tricky property to rate / review. After all, are we judging the dialogue and songs for the show itself? The performers in this particular staging of it? …
Book Review: Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
Book #152 of 2020: Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad This short antiracism tract provides some handy definitions and examples, splitting the broad problem of white supremacy into more specific interconnected issues of privilege, fragility, complicit silence, and so forth that (white) readers …
TV Review: The Good Wife, season 3
TV #24 of 2020: The Good Wife, season 3 The third year of this law drama is its best one yet, and not only because it finally acts upon the romantic will-they-won’t-they dimension that’s mostly lingered in the background subtext for the first two seasons. There’s also the smart writing decision to bring Eli’s crisis …
Book Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Book #151 of 2020: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë This 1848 novel is a neat early tale of women’s liberation, and one I was not expecting to have such sparklingly funny dialogue throughout. The comedy of manners doesn’t occlude the impact of the heroine leaving her abusive husband — although it makes …
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Book Review: Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life by Paula C. Austin
Book #150 of 2020: Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life by Paula C. Austin Interesting but far too brief, with the whole first third of the text a dry academic overview of author Paula C. Austin’s archival source material. In the rest of the book, she brings the …
Book Review: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
Book #149 of 2020: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow This 2020 YA novel has so much to say about contemporary racism and sexism (and their intersection, sometimes called misogynoir), and I could see it both validating the experiences of some readers and providing others a valuable window into their lives. From school …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 