Book #4 of 2016: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #2) Facebook memories reminded me that a year ago last night, I stayed up past midnight for finish an ebook I was hooked on: Firefight by Brandon Sanderson, an outstanding sequel to one of the freshest series premieres I had read the …
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TV #3 of 2016: The Good Wife, season 5 I’m utterly gobsmacked by how amazing this season of television is. I loved the show to pieces already, but this stretch really elevates it to a whole new level. (I’ve already gone back and watched “Hitting the Fan” several times, and it works even better in …
Book #3 of 2016: The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo Somewhat cute, but the author’s voice was a little too intrusive for my tastes. It’s also weird that there’s an evil rat clearly hypnotizing people throughout the book and then nothing ever comes of that. But whatever. I was definitely not in the intended …
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TV #2 of 2016: Master of None, season 1 This is my second time watching this odd comedy / experimental short film series from Aziz Ansari, and I think I liked it even better — there were a lot of subtle foreshadowing hints about how the season ends that I didn’t pick up on before. …
Book #2 of 2016: The Martian by Andy Weir This was good, but I think I like the movie more. Granted, there was some cool stuff that didn’t make it to the screen – I’m thinking particularly of the dust storm and the interruption of contact with NASA, but also having the Beck/Johanssen romance not …
Book #1 of 2016: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger So much better than I was expecting it to be. I remember seeing a trailer for the movie adaptation way back in the day, which made me think this story was going to be really Nicholas Sparks-y. And it was, to some degree, but …
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TV #1 of 2016: The Legend of Korra, season 2 Honestly, what even was that? I’ve never been a huge fan of this particular franchise, but this season represents a new low for me. It’s just such a mess on pretty much every level: plotting, character arcs, worldbuilding, you name it. And for Korra and …
Book #88 of 2015: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin I may have been too old when I first came at this book, because the whole affair left me supremely unsatisfied. Kids might be caught up in the adventure of the premise and enjoy watching the characters hunt for clues, but I felt as though …
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Book #87 of 2015: Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce (Song of the Lioness #1-4) I read this fantasy quartet bound as a single hardback edition, only realizing later that the different sections of the story were actually separate books. For that reason — and because I’m piecing together this review from scattered notes …
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Book #86 of 2015: The King’s Justice by Stephen R. Donaldson I wasn’t super blown away by either of the two (unrelated) novellas in this book, but even middle-of-the-road Stephen R. Donaldson is still worth the read. And there are echoes of many of the stories I love from his collection Reave the Just and …
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