Movie #13 of 2015: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) This is such a good movie on every level, from character to worldbuilding to plot to sheer pulse-pounding spectacle. I still have the film score roaring through my head, and I might need to go back and see it again in 3D. This is easily my …
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Book Review: Every Day by David Levithan
Book #54 of 2015: Every Day by David Levithan (Every Day #1) I really liked this story of an agender teenager who wakes up each morning in a different person’s body. I did think there were some ethical issues behind the premise that didn’t get explored (although there were a lot that did), and the …
TV Review: Arrow, season 3
TV #22 of 2015: Arrow, season 3 Although this season of Arrow does some much-needed rehabilitation of Thea and Laurel and gives us the joyous piece of human sunshine Ray Palmer for a hot second before he jumps ship to the new Arrowverse spinoff, overall it’s a bit of a letdown of illogical storytelling and …
Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
Book #52 of 2015: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker I wasn’t sold at first, but I ended up really liking this story about two mythical beings in nineteenth-century New York. It definitely got better as it went along – the beginning is brimming with characters that don’t have a clear relation to …
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Book Review: Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson
Book #45 of 2015: Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson This sci-fi novella is unfortunately the most disappointing thing I’ve ever read from Brandon Sanderson. (I guess something had to be…) It has some neat ideas, but for the most part they’re woefully unexplored, and the resolution just doesn’t hit the logical or emotional beats that …
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Book Review: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
Book #42 of 2015: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #4) I’ve yet to be really blown away by this series, and it’s getting harder to ignore their awful gender politics. Count Olaf’s (nonbinary?) lackey who looks like neither a man nor a woman is regularly treated as a grotesque …
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Book Review: Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan
Book #41 of 2015: Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson by Randall Sullivan I don’t know how I feel about this one. I did learn a lot, and Michael Jackson had a very interesting life, but this narrative is a really disjointed telling of it. It keeps hopping around in time …
Book Review: Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
Book #35 of 2015: Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld I really love this novel, which is the first thing I’ve ever read from author Scott Westerfeld. It utilizes a cool narrative structure with two parallel stories told in alternating chapters, each of which has a pretty awesome female protagonist. One is a first-time Young Adult novelist, …
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Book Review: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror by Dina Temple-Raston
Book #31 of 2015: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror by Dina Temple-Raston This was a fascinating piece of local and national history that I’d had no idea about before stumbling across this book in the library. Basically, the Lackawanna Six were a small group of …
Book Review: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
Book #30 of 2015: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King This short book reminds me somewhat of the author’s earlier From a Buick 8 with its lack of resolution at the end, but I think that aspect is handled a lot better here. Although we don’t really get any answers about the cold case of …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 