Book #94 of 2019: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (Lady Astronaut #1) I really like this alternate history novel, in which a natural disaster in 1952 accelerates the timeline of space travel and a female pilot and mathematician struggles to break the glass ceiling of the new rocket program. The first quarter or …
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Book #93 of 2019: Doctor Who: Scratchman by Tom Baker with James Goss “Doctor Who Meets the Scratchman” was the working title of a movie script written by Tom Baker (who played the Fourth Doctor) and Ian Marter (who played his companion Harry Sullivan), during their time starring on Doctor Who back in the 1970s. …
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Book #92 of 2019: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy #2) This sequel is less laugh-out-loud funny than the original Hitchhiker’s novel, which makes it harder to look past the looseness of the plot (or the few snobby digs at the working class). There …
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Book #91 of 2019: Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb (The Tawny Man #1) As expected for the seventh entry in her larger Elderlings saga, the world of Robin Hobb’s first Tawny Man novel feels quite well-developed and lived-in at this point. And it’s a real thrill to revisit the surviving characters from her initial Farseer …
Book #90 of 2019: Doctor Who: Regeneration by Philip Segal with Gary Russell This oral history of the 1996 Doctor Who movie is unauthorized and poorly-edited, making it feel somewhat amateurish despite being written by one of the project’s executive producers and earliest champions. But it’s packed with inside information on the production, including some …
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Book #89 of 2019: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid I’ll admit I wasn’t immediately hooked by this oral history of a fictional 70s rock group, yet I found myself fairly riveted by the end. The ‘behind-the-music’ format is familiar for a documentary but pretty unusual for a novel, and author Taylor …
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TV #13 of 2019: Santa Clarita Diet, season 3 As always, I’ve laughed a lot this season at the twisted presentation of an oddly functional human-zombie marriage, but the plot doesn’t really surprise me as much as it has in the past. Instead the show just keeps falling back on its old common patterns, to …
Book #88 of 2019: Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin (A Targaryen History #1) One of the main attractions of George R.R. Martin’s famous A Song of Ice and Fire series, as well as its HBO adaptation Game of Thrones, is the richly textured backstory that the author has built up for his fantasy …
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Book #87 of 2019: The Man Who Risked His Partner by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Man Who #2) Stephen R. Donaldson is primarily a fantasist, and his The Man Who detective series borrows heavily from that toolkit. I wouldn’t necessarily call it worldbuilding, but the setting of these books feels ever-so-slightly heightened and off-kilter from …
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Movie #4 of 2019: Crazy Rich Asians (2018) I had a somewhat lukewarm reaction to the novel this movie is based on, so although I was glad for the representation of an all-Asian blockbuster rom-com, I never made it a priority to watch myself. But it really is as fun as everyone said last year, …
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