Book #130 of 2024: Tradition!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World’s Most Beloved Musical by Barbara Isenberg The stage musical Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway in September 1964, so with its sixty-year anniversary coming up, I thought I would check out this title, written to …
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Book Review: The Babysitters Coven by Kate Williams
Book #129 of 2024: The Babysitters Coven by Kate Williams (The Babysitters Coven #1) Given the title, I was expecting this 2019 series debut to be a smart and loving homage to The Babysitters Club, with some nice new witchy twist thrown in on top. Instead, it’s unfortunately more of a half-baked Buffy-meets-Labyrinth affair, with …
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Book Review: Aftershock by Chris Archer
Book #128 of 2024: Aftershock by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #6) Another excellent and propulsive installment of this 90s middle-grade alien conspiracy series. We’ve got time travel now! The latest protagonist to turn thirteen and unlock special powers from her extraterrestrial heritage is one of the popular kids in school — not quite a mean girl, …
Book Review: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Book #127 of 2024: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia The bulk of this novel surrounds the production of a fictional Hollywood movie in the 1950s, centering on its insecure young starlet who’s been recently plucked from obscurity in Mexico and thrust unexpectedly into the glitzy limelight (not to mention its dark racist …
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Book Review: Phoenix by Steven Brust
Book #126 of 2024: Phoenix by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #5) I’m perhaps a bit biased, as this was the first Vlad Taltos book that I ever picked up back in the day, but I do think it’s a big step forward from the previous volumes and possibly a series-best entry. In typical bouncing timeline …
Book Review: The Daughters’ War by Christopher Buehlman
Book #125 of 2024: The Daughters’ War by Christopher Buehlman An excellent and appreciably queer new prequel to 2021’s The Blacktongue Priest, although the two stories are so standalone that they could probably be read in either order. Approaching them by release date, as I have, merely underscores the tragic nature of the present title: …
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Book Review: Stone Speaks to Stone by Victoria Goddard
Book #124 of 2024: Stone Speaks to Stone by Victoria Goddard A roughly-standalone prequel novella to author Victoria Goddard’s Greenwing & Dart series (which is itself just a smaller piece of her overarching Nine Worlds fantasy saga). I’ve chosen to read it after the first three G&D novels, which feels like the right choice, as …
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Book Review: You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace
Book #123 of 2024: You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace A heavy but hilarious dark comedy / noir mystery investigation / trenchant antihero character study, this tale of a suburban female serial killer has major early Dexter vibes in all the best ways (mixed with something like Where’d You Go, Bernadette, perhaps). …
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TV Review: Star Trek: Prodigy, season 2
TV #37 of 2024: Star Trek: Prodigy, season 2 A thoroughly excellent time-travel adventure, and probably the best season-over-season improvement in all of Star Trek. The debut year of this animated program was endearing but clunky, with an unclear intended audience and a disappointing incorporation of its Delta Quadrant setting. However, the show improved as …
Book Review: On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci, M.D.
Book #122 of 2024: On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci, M.D. Dr. Anthony Fauci may not have become a household name until the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but that experience capped off a long and distinguished career in patient care, scientific research, and public health policy. In this 2024 autobiography, the …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 