TV #43 of 2016: Star Trek: The Animated Series, season 2 I really liked Star Trek: The Animated Series, even in this abbreviated second season. I think it’s for the same reason I’ve been enjoying finally getting into the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas: the cast brings the same energy and joy they do …
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Book #85 of 2016: Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman This memoir is far less dramatic and action-packed than its fictionalized Netflix adaptation. (And the real Piper frankly comes off as a lot less awful than her TV counterpart.) But fans of the show will still recognize much of its source material here, …
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Book #84 of 2016: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck A short but powerful read. Lennie is so clearly doomed from the start – I have to imagine Stephen King had the big man in mind when he created the character of John Coffey for The Green Mile – but Steinbeck unfolds the story …
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Book #83 of 2016: The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones For a comedy of manners, The Uninvited Guests wasn’t really all that entertaining. It had some bright spots here and there – mostly to do with the younger daughter, who is absent for most of the text – but as a whole this was just …
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Book #82 of 2016: Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury I can’t decide whether this was an exceptionally weak collection of Ray Bradbury stories, or whether the author just doesn’t speak to me like he did when I was younger. Either way, I really didn’t care for this collection. “A Piece of Wood” and “Punishment …
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Book #81 of 2016: Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce (Beka Cooper #2) The second Beka Cooper novel continues her character growth nicely, settling her into her new role as a full Guardswoman with the assignment of a major counterfeiting case that sends her off largely on her own into a brand-new city. It’s a good way …
TV #42 of 2016: Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, season 1 My favorite part of this sitcom is definitely watching James Van Der Beek play a heightened parody of himself. Plus Krysten Ritter is always fun and it’s cool to see Dreama Walker in a more comedic role after her stint as Zach’s …
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Book #80 of 2016: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King This is a mixed bag, as short story collections so often are, but three stories really stand out from the crowd. “The Mist,” like its film adaptation, is a tense thriller of man-versus-monster that captures the fragility of our everyday lives and how quickly a routine …
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Book #79 of 2016: The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman (Detective Jacob Lev #1) The Golem of Hollywood reads like a Jewish version of American Gods, as written by someone like Michael Connelly. It’s a strange genre mashup, mixing a police investigation of a serial killer with elements of Judaic mythology …
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Book #78 of 2016: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #1) “Sexy teen werewolves” is usually not my genre of choice, but Maggie Stiefvater’s characters are so well-realized that I was hooked on this novel regardless. Even a character like Isabel Culpepper, who could easily have been just a mean-girl stereotype, gains …
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