Book #74 of 2018: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman I was initially quite charmed by this novel and its titular heroine, whose difficulty with social cues and preference for a strict regular schedule would seem to place her somewhere on the autism spectrum. This diagnosis is never made explicit, however, and as …
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Book #73 of 2018: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie This short, powerful essay is a good introduction to the weight of gender expectations and the ways that girls, boys, women, and men are all unfairly constrained by society’s conventions for them. It’s not a perfect read — the length doesn’t really …
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Book #72 of 2018: Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green (Nightside #2) I’m rereading this urban fantasy series that I loved when I was younger, and while it isn’t quite living up to my memories, this second novel is a vast improvement over the first. The worldbuilding offers a steady stream of …
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Book #71 of 2018: These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (Starbound #1) This sci-fi love story ends a lot stronger than it begins, especially after a surprise development around the three-quarter mark. The two main characters are teens from different social classes — a young war hero and a spoiled heiress — …
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Book #70 of 2018: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda The most distinctive aspect of this suspense novel is its timeline, which is presented Memento-style from back to front. After a quick introduction to establish the narrator and why she’s returned to her hometown, we jump forward two weeks to find that her neighbor …
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Book #69 of 2018: Squire by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #3) I’ve noted before that this quartet of books within Tamora Pierce’s larger Tortall series seems to be the author’s take on the classic boarding school literary genre, like Harry Potter without any looming Voldemort-style threat. Indeed, the plot is the major shortcoming …
Movie #7 of 2018: Ready Player One (2018) As a disclaimer, I really like the novel this movie is based on, which I think gets a bad rap for some GamerGate-style gatekeeping associations that aren’t really present in the narrative itself. It’s also a story that seems really hard to adapt faithfully, and I think …
Book #68 of 2018: The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant This bildungsroman of a young woman growing up in the early 20th century pleasingly recalls both The Color Purple and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it carves out a distinct space for itself with its vibrant characters and pitch-perfect depiction of Jewish-American life. Presented …
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Book #67 of 2018: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #4.5) This book was written after the conclusion of the author’s main Dark Tower series, but it takes place squarely in the middle, just after the fourth novel Wizard and Glass. (As with the prequel novella The Little Sisters of …
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Book #66 of 2018: Star Wars: So You Want to Be a Jedi? by Adam Gidwitz This junior novelization of the second Star Wars film is a significant step down from The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farmboy, which was author Alexandra Bracken’s similar take on A New Hope. Whereas Bracken splits her story into …
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