Movie #12 of 2019: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Thanks to Disney+, I’m finally diving into this branch of the Star Wars franchise that spans the gap between the prequel films Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I’ve heard the ensuing TV series gets better, but this …
Continue reading “Movie Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)”
Book #216 of 2019: Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia (Tristan Strong #1) Middle-grade fiction is very hit-or-miss for me, but I loved this series debut right from the start. #OwnVoices stories rooted in the perspective of their authors’ cultural heritage have become increasingly popular, and this latest novel from …
Continue reading “Book Review: Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia”
Book #215 of 2019: The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware Despite my hopes, Ruth Ware’s mystery thrillers keep not quite working for me. This one takes its obvious inspiration from The Turn of the Screw, adding to that classic framework of a governess beset by her unsettling charges and the possibility of ghosts …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware”
Book #214 of 2019: The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children by Wendy Mogel This volume is part crash-course on traditional wisdom from Judaism and part demonstration of how it can inform modern child-raising. As with most parenting books — or self-help guides more generally — the advice can …
Book #213 of 2019: The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King Given a recent string of underwhelming titles, I decided to revisit this old favorite of mine. It was the first Stephen King book that I ever read, and it got me hooked on the author at a stage when I didn’t feel brave …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King”
Book #212 of 2019: Permanent Record by Edward Snowden This volume by infamous CIA/NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reminds me somewhat of James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, and not just because I read both of them for my local book club. Each is also half memoir and half political tract, finding a controversial public figure recounting …
Continue reading “Book Review: Permanent Record by Edward Snowden”
Book #211 of 2019: Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb (The Rain Wild Chronicles #4) This final volume in The Rain Wild Chronicles embodies all of the problems of that fantasy quartet. It’s long and uneventful and curiously detached from its characters, none of whom seem to have much of an arc or any particular …
Continue reading “Book Review: Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb”
Book #210 of 2019: Renia’s Diary: A Holocaust Journal by Renia Spiegel with her sister Elizabeth Bellak I have mixed feelings about this diary of a Polish Jew who was killed by the Nazis at age 18. The obvious comparison point is fellow Holocaust victim Anne Frank, but Frank was a consummate observer who hoped …
Book #209 of 2019: Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt This is an interesting topic, and I appreciate the array of studies that author Tom Vanderbilt has assembled for the task, but I find many of his arguments hard to parse, reliant on unjustified …
Book #208 of 2019: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson This is one of those popular history volumes that’s a deep dive into a fairly narrow topic, and I definitely learned a lot about the shipwreck incident that’s usually rendered as just a sentence or two in the account of …
Continue reading “Book Review: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more