Book #140 of 2019: Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope I appreciate this novel’s Israeli kibbutz setting — and debut author Jessamyn Hope’s inclusion of so many non-religious aspects of Jewish life there — but I find the characters to be a uniformly miserable bunch. It’s hard to root for any of them to do anything but …
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TV #30 of 2019: Stranger Things 3 My biggest issue with this series as a whole is its tendency to fracture the narrative into engaging yet isolated small-group subplots that never intersect much with one another. And that’s definitely on display in this third outing, which is especially rough at the beginning before those disparate …
TV #29 of 2019: iZombie, season 5 iZombie has been a bit lifeless for a while now, and it finally shambles to a rest here. I hate to say it about a series that I once loved, but the last season of this zombie-cop comedy is just awful. The case-of-the-week stuff occasionally still delivers, but …
Book #139 of 2019: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald Written in the wake of her father’s death, this 2014 memoir from author Helen Macdonald is an unsettling and complicated account of how she felt drawn to train a young goshawk as a way of processing her emotions. Alongside this personal narrative, she also …
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TV #28 of 2019: Jane the Virgin, season 5 What a beautiful send-off to a beautiful show. Jane the Virgin has gone down a few narrative dead-ends over the years, but its final season leans strongly into the character relationships that have always made its telenovela twists and heightened magical realism elements land so well. …
Book #138 of 2019: Jade City by Fonda Lee (The Green Bone Saga #1) Let me start with the good and say that I love the setting of this book. It doesn’t offer the most fleshed-out worldbuilding, but it’s the rare fantasy story told in a place that’s not our own yet has comparable levels …
Over on Patreon, I just posted a recap of everything I read (and watched) in July, including links to individual reviews and an update on my progress in migrating the older reviews over to this new blog site. Thanks to everyone who has already subscribed!
Book #137 of 2019: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt An evocative travelogue of late-twentieth-century Savannah that could use greater structure throughout. The introduction of a certain true crime element around the midpoint adds some focus to the back half, but before then I kept wondering where this narrative was …
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Book #136 of 2019: Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool by Emily Oster One of the major challenges facing new parents is the sheer over-abundance of advice out there — which has admittedly always been somewhat of an issue, but is exacerbated by the explosion of digital resources …
Book #135 of 2019: The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple There’s no such thing as a truly neutral history, but author Brenda Wineapple has assembled a fine presentation of the facts surrounding America’s first presidential impeachment attempt. She does not shy from calling Andrew …
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