Book #213 of 2017: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #2) Although this second novel in the Dark Tower series takes place just after the first, author Stephen King hits the ground running with immediate deadly peril and a propulsive cross-dimensional adventure. It’s a dramatic shift in pace from the …
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Book #212 of 2017: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger A short but intriguing read on how close social ties may help mitigate against depression, PTSD, and other mental conditions. I thought the author relied on several assumptions that a longer work could have better interrogated, but it’s an interesting thesis with some …
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Book #211 of 2017: The Fate of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #3) There are a lot of scenes in this final novel of the Tearling trilogy that feel intended to be climactic but have little narrative build behind them – either in this book or the two before it …
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Book #210 of 2017: What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton This book represents a deeply personal reflection from Hillary Clinton on her loss in the 2016 presidential election. She knows full well that many people are tired of relitigating the campaign, and that some would even like her to disappear from public life forever, but …
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Movie #17 of 2017: La La Land (2016) I liked this movie, but I certainly didn’t love it or think it deserved all of its awards and accolades. I think a lot of my reaction stems from Ryan Gosling’s character, who I never thought showed anything close to a redeeming quality. (Seriously, he gets fired …
Book #209 of 2017: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach Mary Roach’s in-depth look at the human digestive process is pretty gross, but thankfully less stomach-churning than her earlier book on dead bodies. (The author’s irreverent tone works better here too, where the lighter subject matter makes her jokes come off as …
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Book 208 of 2017: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann A creepy true-crime account of the serial murders that plagued the Osage Indian Nation in the early 20th century, as outsiders sought to gain access to the tribe’s lucrative oil business. The investigation into …
Book #207 of 2017: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency #1) Taken in its own right, this is a charming little collection of cozy mysteries, packaged as a novel but really more like a succession of independent cases with a little bit of a character …
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Movie #16 of 2017: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) This series has always been goofy, but this movie felt particularly lazy in justifying its various set pieces. Most of it also didn’t seem all that impossible? Like, it was still a solid enough action movie, but most of the scenes could have been lifted …
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Book #206 of 2017: Nightmares & Dreamscapes by Stephen King This is a fairly typical early Stephen King collection: a few stories are great, most are simply good, and a couple are pretty bad. On the upper end of that scale we have Dolan’s Cadillac, which is a King take on The Cask of Amontillado, …
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