Book #185 of 2017: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett This was a fun hardboiled detective story, and one that I ultimately liked better than the author’s more famous work, The Maltese Falcon. That’s largely due to Nick and Nora Charles, a retired Pinkerton and his wife who are reluctantly dragged into the unfolding investigation …
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Book #184 of 2017: Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #1) This was a fun fairy tale of a princess who runs away to live in a cave with a dragon to avoid an arranged marriage. As expected, it’s full of girl power for younger readers, although it’s a bit jarring …
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Book #183 of 2017: Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare The plot of this Shakespearean history is a trifle thin, detailing only a sliver of England’s War of the Roses, but we’re mostly here for the humor, which offers more laughs than some of the bard’s actual comedies. The most famous bits involve Prince …
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Book #182 of 2017: The Science of Game of Thrones: From the Genetics of Royal Incest to the Chemistry of Death by Molten Gold – Sifting Fact from Fantasy in the Seven Kingdoms by Helen Keen A fun little pop science book with a ridiculously long title, offering nuggets of learning all vaguely related to …
Movie #15 of 2017: The Room (2003) Honestly, what is there left to even say about this awful movie at this point? No matter what you’ve heard, I guarantee you, the reality is even worse than that. It’s such an entertaining trainwreck to watch, though. Fun personal fact: I watched this movie for the first …
Book #181 of 2017: The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey The setup to this book resembles Never Let Me Go, which similarly puts children in a bizarre setting with evasive caretakers who encourage them to accept everything as normal. But whereas that novel frustrated me by dragging out its reveal for almost …
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Book #180 of 2017: Perelandra by C. S. Lewis (The Space Trilogy #2) This was a much more overtly religious book than Out of the Silent Planet, but I liked how the core of the story was essentially just a human arguing with a demon in the Venusian Garden of Eden. Lewis is skilled at …
Book #179 of 2017: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #1) Anyanwu is an African shapeshifter who has survived for centuries by healing all physical damage and keeping her body young. She thinks there’s no other person remotely like herself until she meets Doro, a man millennia past his own natural lifespan but whose …
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Book #178 of 2017: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #3) This third novel in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals quartet is the first one that I’ve felt approached the quality of the other books I’ve read in her wider Tortall series. The main character is still absurdly overpowered – she’s already able to magically communicate …
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TV #36 of 2017: The Grinder, season 1 I have such a soft spot for this silly little show about an actor convinced he can practice law at his brother’s firm just because he used to play a lawyer on TV. It’s just so rich in character-driven humor and meta-commentary on TV show plots, and …
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