Book #9 of 2019: An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim A bittersweet sci-fi take on the immigrant / refugee experience, this debut novel from author Thea Lim imagines a world in which people can enter into indentured servitude and time-travel to when their services are needed, generally to pay off a loved one’s medical …
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Book #8 of 2019: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses #1) I’m pretty underwhelmed by this retelling of Beauty and the Beast by way of Twilight, which somehow captures some of the worst impulses of both those narratives. There’s no real build-up to the heroine’s …
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Book #7 of 2019: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon This book is hard to summarize without giving away meaningful plot events, but I definitely enjoy the way that its story unfolds. It’s something of a Great American Novel, one of those attempts to distill the experience of a particular place …
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TV #1 of 2019: Friday Night Lights, season 2 After a remarkably grounded debut season — one that I called “practically flawless” in my review — the follow-up for this high school football series tips way over from drama into melodrama. I can only imagine that network interference is to blame for the sudden tonal …
Book #6 of 2019: Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down by Gina McIntyre It turns out that the ‘behind-the-scenes’ information promised herein is all pretty surface-level, and the tone is sometimes distractingly twee, as when the characters are described like they’re from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and not a TV show. (“Joyce Byers. Abilities: …
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Book #5 of 2019: A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza This #ownvoices novel is a beautiful portrait of a Muslim Indian-American family, and a great example of how a skilled writer can situate intense drama in the quiet relationships of a household without resorting to any larger-than-life action or melodrama. The struggles of …
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Book #4 of 2019: Archenemies by Marissa Meyer (Renegades #2) I like this superhero spy sequel much more than its predecessor, but I’m still struggling with some of the basic concepts of this series. Nova’s hatred of the Renegades — which continues to be a bizarre name for an official government peacekeeping force — has …
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Book #3 of 2019: The Final Days by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein This 1976 semi-sequel to All The President’s Men continues Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the Watergate era, drawing on trusted confidential sources to provide an exhaustive behind-the-scenes account of the events leading up to Richard Nixon’s resignation from the White House. It’s …
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Book #2 of 2019: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell This domestic thriller about a ‘mommy blogger’ whose best friend goes missing aims to be the next Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, but that effort is hampered by a dull execution. There’s a little bit of tension in the first half of …
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Book #1 of 2019: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky I can understand why this book is a classic of Russian literature, but it’s a long and digressive tome, and as with author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s earlier novel The Idiot, it regularly prioritizes philosophical debate over its plot and characters. I would have preferred far less …
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