Book #55 of 2016: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Americanah is a fascinating look at America (and Nigeria) both from the outside and the in. It’s also a frank examination of the subtler effects of race and racism, which writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie manages without ever becoming didactic about it. Her characters are sharp and …
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Book #54 of 2016: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne begins with an irresistible premise: a crotchety old Maine woman walking into a police station to confess to a murder. It largely lives up to that premise, helped along by the unique (for King) narrative structure, which presents Dolores’s story as one …
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Movie #13 of 2016: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) I wanted so badly to like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and I think it does have elements that work for it. I like that, coming ten years after the end of TOS, the film’s characters have actually aged ten years and some of them …
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Book #53 of 2016: Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction, but Salvation City is such a bland example of the genre. It’s no Station Eleven or The Stand – it’s not even an Earth Abides. Instead, it’s just a fairly boring story of one fairly boring child after a plague …
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Book #52 of 2016: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones This book is very well-written, and it excels at bringing these characters and 1970s Atlanta to life. I don’t go for literary fiction all that often, but I couldn’t resist this premise, of two black girls growing up in the same town with the same father, …
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Book #51 of 2016: The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi (The Star-Touched Queen #1) The Star-Touched Queen is about a young princess who gets saved from death through a marriage to a mysterious stranger, followed by her quest to save him from a force of evil once his secrets finally come out. It’s really a …
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Book #50 of 2016: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline An exciting blockbuster of a novel that absolutely deserves the Steven Spielberg adaptation it’s now getting, Ready Player One tells the story of a group of video game nerds going up against an evil corporation to follow a series of obscure clues left in the …
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Book #49 of 2016: Yes Please by Amy Poehler Amy Poehler’s first book is 50% hilarious memoir, 50% gentle self-help book, and 100% unabashed feminist tome. The only problem is that Poehler’s feminism is not very intersectional, and there were a few parts that really rubbed me the wrong way. On two separate occasions in …
Book #48 of 2016: The Arrivals by Melissa Marr People from throughout earth’s history find themselves mysteriously transplanted to another world, where they awaken in bodies that do not age and can come back to life when killed. If that sounds interesting… then I strongly recommend To Your Scattered Bodies Go and its sequels in …
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TV #34 of 2016: Game of Thrones, season 6 This series has definitely entered its endgame, and it is an absolute thrill to watch all these far-flung characters and plots finally converge, even if the story logic isn’t always as sound as it appeared before. I think the writers have also been somewhat receptive to …
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