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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Movie #1 of 2019: Doctor Who: Resolution (2019) As with last year’s – okay, last week’s – Black Mirror experiment Bandersnatch, I’m choosing to treat this New Year’s special as a movie, given that it’s built to stand on its own, outside of a proper season of Doctor Who. Like the Christmas specials of Who …
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Movie #22 of 2018: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) This metafictional choose-your-own-adventure streaming special about a programmer’s breakdown while creating a choose-your-own-adventure game is an odd property to review. Is it a movie? A TV episode? A video game itself? I’ve chosen to treat it as the first option, since that’s what the crowd-sourced wisdom of …
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Movie #21 of 2018: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) Believe the hype. I’ll freely admit I was reluctant to watch this movie, both because I shy away from animated superhero content in general and because what I knew of its premise — a crossover team-up of different versions of Spider-Man — seemed aimed at comic …
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Book #252 of 2018: The Library Book by Susan Orlean This is a weird, messy book, but it has definitely lodged itself into my head and my heart. One part true crime investigation into the devastating 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library, one part oral history of that library and the broader library …
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