Book #104 of 2017: Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith (Portuguese Irregular Verbs #1) A lightweight little comedy about a trio of hapless linguistics professors. The plot is thin, but the humor is droll, particularly in its barbs at academia. A short, fun read. ★★★☆☆
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Book Review: All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Book #103 of 2017: All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward A gripping firsthand account of the Watergate investigation, told by the two Washington Post reporters who first broke the story and kept following up on its leads until the scandal ultimately brought down a president. It’s easy for people like me, …
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Book Review: John Dies at the End by David Wong
Book #102 of 2017: John Dies at the End by David Wong (John Dies at the End #1) This novel is weird, both in the sense of uncanny Lovecraftian horrors and in the sense of a bizarre plot related by a rambling unreliable narrator. I think the author was aiming for an Army of Darkness …
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TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, season 4
TV #16 of 2017: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, season 4 The season finale was kind of a letdown, but the season itself was the best S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever been – and close to the best the MCU in general has offered in terms of character-driven informed storytelling and really meaty material for its actors. I …
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Book Review: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
Book #101 of 2017: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (The First Law #1) An overall solid fantasy novel, very much in the George R. R. Martin tradition of court intrigue and gratuitous violence. Unfortunately the plot was slow-moving and fairly opaque, and I found myself struggling to care about most of the characters. Still, …
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Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)
Movie #6 of 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017) This sequel takes everything I loved about the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and turns it up to 11. It helps that the team is already in place at the start of the film, so we get more of their banter and prickly …
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Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Movie #5 of 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) I hadn’t seen this movie since it was in theaters, and my wife hadn’t seen it at all, so we streamed it through Amazon before heading out to see the sequel. Even three years later, it’s still really impressive how much this movie stakes out its …
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Book Review: The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
Book #100 of 2017: The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke An odd little story, focused on a pair of brothers in 21st-century Venice who run away from home to join a gang of thieving street urchins. As when I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I initially found it a little …
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Book Review: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Book #99 of 2017: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (The Shining #2) I’m still not convinced that Stephen King needed to write a sequel to his classic book The Shining, especially after the original had stood on its own for over 30 years. But for an author who struggled with addiction for much of his …
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Book Review: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
Book #98 of 2017: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik (Temeraire #1) The plot of this novel moves at glacier speed, which is fairly agonizing when the premise is as rich as this fantastic alternate history of dragons fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. So although I did love the characters, I’m not sure if I’m …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 