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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg”
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. …
Continue reading “Book Review: Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young”
Book #50 of 2020: Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch #2) This second novel in the Akata Witch duology has a messier and more episodic plot than its predecessor, but it also feels more like a fully-formed fantasy vision rather than just an #ownvoices West African take on Harry Potter. (Although as with that …
Continue reading “Book Review: Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor”
Book #49 of 2020: Doctor Who: At Childhood’s End by Sophie Aldred with Steve Cole and Mike Tucker As the final companion when the ‘classic’ series of Doctor Who went off the air in 1989, the character of Ace McShane casts a long shadow over the franchise. Her nuanced characterization and complicated relationship with the …
Book #48 of 2020: Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #3) This has always been my favorite Chrestomanci book, even though it’s a bit of a spin-off, with the multiverse-hopping enchanter only showing up in the last third or so of the text (and not requiring any prior reader knowledge to understand and appreciate …
Continue reading “Book Review: Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones”
Book #47 of 2020: White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America by Margaret A. Hagerman There’s an unfortunate disconnect between this 2018 book’s title / framing and its actual content, which discusses author Margaret A. Hagerman’s ethnographic study of thirty affluent white families in one midwestern community from 2011 to 2012. …
Book #46 of 2020: Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison I don’t read (or watch) a lot of westerns, but I’ve mostly enjoyed this tale of an orphaned rancher who restyles herself as a man to strike off across the frontier in search of her last surviving kin and ultimately falls in love with …
Continue reading “Book Review: Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison”
Book #45 of 2020: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse A delightful middle-grade fantasy novel that incorporates elements of traditional Navajo folklore while avoiding the paint-by-numbers plot that such modernizations often entail. (I hesitate to call the work #ownvoices, since author Rebecca Roanhorse is not Navajo herself and she makes clear in an afterword …
Continue reading “Book Review: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more