Book #59 of 2020: Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation by Stuart Gibbs (Charlie Thorne #1) There’s a certain ludicrous National Treasure energy to the basic concept of this middle-grade spy novel — in which the CIA recruits a twelve-year-old girl genius to help them track down a secret formula that Albert Einstein revealed on …
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Book #58 of 2020: Shouldn’t You Be in School? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #3) I’ve come around to the idea that this prequel quartet is not really going to add anything meaningful to our understanding of the background for A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I wish it would tell a more …
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Book #57 of 2020: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole This is for the most part an enjoyable madcap picaresque, but its entitled manchild of a protagonist can be awfully infuriating. Admittedly much of the humor of the text is at that character’s own expense, but I still found myself gritting my teeth …
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Book #56 of 2020: The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future by Andrew Yang The first part of this 2018 book by then-presidential candidate Andrew Yang lays out a clear assessment of the growing trend towards industrial automation and accompanying job loss, but …
Book #55 of 2020: The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (The Poppy War #1) I really like the beginning of this novel, with its Ender’s Shadow plot — i.e. an orphan child acing the entrance exam for a prestigious military academy — set in a fantasy world inspired by modern Chinese history. But it …
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TV #4 of 2020: The Mandalorian, season 1 The plot to this season doesn’t really resolve as neatly as I would like, and a few character beats don’t feel properly motivated, but overall it’s a stellar achievement — no pun intended — for the first live-action Star Wars show. The budget behind this project must …
Book #54 of 2020: Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg Author Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s continual process of trying on and discarding various metaphors to describe his experience with gender dysphoria and transition reminds me of Carmen Maria Machado’s masterful In the Dream House, which adopts a similar approach to the …
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Book #53 of 2020: Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar (Wayside School #4) I’m a little torn in my reaction to this novel. On the one hand: it’s good quirky fun, with author Louis Sachar seamlessly slipping into his old rhythms a full twenty-five years after the last Wayside School book. …
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Book #52 of 2020: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink This is an engagingly written pop science book, and it’s short enough that I do recommend it for anyone interested in learning some surprising patterns behind hourly mood swings, peak performance times, and the like. It’s cleverly positioned as a …
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Book #51 of 2020: Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young (Girls with Sharp Sticks #1) Blown away by this series debut, which reads like a wild blend of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Stephen King’s The Institute, with shades of The Handmaid’s Tale and Westworld to boot. Its story of a finishing …
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