Book #68 of 2017: Storm Front by Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files #1) A pretty generic urban fantasy with an irritating sexist as its hero and narrator. I love a good hardboiled detective story, and adding magic into the mix usually produces some interesting wrinkles, but I still found myself wincing through much of this …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
TV Review: Marvel’s Iron Fist, season 1
TV #11 of 2017: Marvel’s Iron Fist, season 1 Iron Fist improved a little bit in the back half of its first season, but it was still pretty bad. The plot meandered all over the place, the writing was awful, and the lead actor was horribly miscast. Even setting aside the fact that an Asian-American …
Book Review: A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter
Book #67 of 2017: A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter is not exactly the most impartial narrator of his own career, but this memoir manages to stay fairly apolitical while still recounting his term as our 39th president. Carter also devotes a good portion of this book to his occupations …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter”
Book Review: 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence by Howard Means
Book #66 of 2017: 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence by Howard Means This began as kind of a frustrating read, in that the author assumed far more initial familiarity with the Kent State shootings than I personally was able to bring to the table. That got better as it went …
Book Review: It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany
Book #65 of 2017: It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany A raw and emotional novel about a rape and its aftermath, told in alternating perspectives of the victim and the friend who assaults her. Author Amy Hatvany presents a compulsively readable narrative of an issue that, as her title suggests, is all too …
Continue reading “Book Review: It Happens All the Time by Amy Hatvany”
Book Review: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
Book #64 of 2017: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg This 1967 story of a brother and sister running away from home to live in a museum – and the old lady chronicling their adventure – is simply darling. Two kids on their own in New York City …
Book Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Book #63 of 2017: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Years ago, the aristocratic Blackwood family sat down to dinner at their New England estate, but poison in the dishes left only three survivors. Now Merricat, her sister, and her uncle live on in the home where the rest of their …
Continue reading “Book Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson”
Book Review: The Regulators by Richard Bachman
Book #62 of 2017: The Regulators by Richard Bachman This pseudonymous Stephen King novel has too many characters with not enough characterization, which makes it hard to keep track of them or even care when they kept getting gunned down. It doesn’t help that most of the characters share names – but not much else …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Regulators by Richard Bachman”
Book Review: Touch by Claire North
Book #61 of 2017: Touch by Claire North A neat spy thriller about a character who can flit from body to body through skin contact, temporarily taking over other people’s lives while they black out. The entity known as Kepler has lived for hundreds of years that way, ever since discovering the power when facing …
Book Review: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin
Book #60 of 2017: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin Early on in Gretchen Rubin’s year spent practicing habits aimed at her own happiness (and writing about it), an acquaintance tells …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 