TV #57 of 2023: Bosch: Legacy, season 2 I’m still mad that the first season of this Bosch spinoff sequel ended with — spoiler alert — its young female lead getting abducted from her home by the serial rapist she’d been investigating. It was a cruel cliffhanger and threatened fridging, and while I have no …
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TV Review: Star Trek: Picard, season 1
TV #56 of 2023: Star Trek: Picard, season 1 Patrick Stewart seems to be enjoying himself in reprising the title role of this Star Trek sequel series set and produced decades after his time on The Next Generation, but this whole first season is built around a huge miscalculation of what sort of story would …
TV Review: Loki, season 2
TV #55 of 2023: Loki, season 2 This first second year of a Disney+ Marvel show could have easily faltered, given the production troubles that have been leaking out about the studio in general, the pivot away from their previous model of standalone miniseries events, and the recent domestic abuse allegations and arrests of major …
Book Review: Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
Book #119 of 2023: Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter Not everything in this short novel quite works for me, but for the most part, it’s an arresting and bitterly funny satire on modern corporate life, skewering the emptiness and performativity inherent to some degree in any buzzword-heavy tech job. The protagonist describes letting her ‘fake …
Book Review: Orion and the Conqueror by Ben Bova
Book #118 of 2023: Orion and the Conqueror by Ben Bova (Orion #4) This isn’t the worst title of the Orion saga — it’s a noticeable step up from the angst-ridden previous volume — but it might well be the most boring. Much how the first half of Vengeance of Orion was little more than …
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TV Review: Party Down, season 3
TV #54 of 2023: Party Down, season 3 This workplace sitcom about a crew of hapless Hollywood caterers hoping to make it as actors ironically never found much of an audience in its two original 10-episode seasons back in 2009 and 2010, and even today, I don’t know that I would say it’s popular enough …
Book Review: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson
Book #117 of 2023: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #27) This Star Trek novel was originally published back in the year 2000, soon after the series Deep Space Nine had come to an end. In it, author Andrew J. Robinson writes from …
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Book Review: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
Book #116 of 2023: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin Is it a little gimmicky and unrealistic that a 16-year-old would bump her head and lose all memory of the last four years? Sure. But in the hands of author Gabrielle Zevin, that premise turns into a neat exploration of high school identity, …
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TV Review: Star Trek: Short Treks, season 2
TV #53 of 2023: Star Trek: Short Treks, season 2 This second — and so far, final — batch of quick Trek adventures remedies one of my complaints about the first season: that it was too beholden to the show Discovery in particular, instead of taking advantage of the wider canon at its disposal. And …
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Book Review: Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang
Book #115 of 2023: Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang The short stories in this collection are largely fine, but even the best among them — I’d personally single out “Klara” about an intense college friendship with unexpressed queer undertones and the opening entry “Unknown by Unknown” about a house-sitter’s uncanny interactions with a mysterious painting …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 