Book #75 of 2023: Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #8) Four-and-a-half stars, rounded up. My previous ratings for this fantasy novella series have ranged from two stars (#6) to four stars (#1, #2, and #3), and this is easily the finest of the lot to date. If you aren’t …
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Book #74 of 2023: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby I went back to read this 2019 debut novel on the strength of author S. A. Cosby’s later works Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, and I can confirm that his talent for immersive storytelling is already apparent here. It’s another crime thriller / southern …
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Book #73 of 2023: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders This new release is the third book I’ve read from Senator Bernie Sanders, following 2016’s Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In and 2018’s Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance. If that first title laid out the …
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TV #28 of 2023: Seinfeld, season 1 This classic 90s sitcom gets off to a bit of a rough start — the first season is made up of only five episodes, the pilot of which feels particularly unfinished, with no Elaine, a misnamed Kramer, and a somewhat backwards George-and-Jerry dynamic. Even after that, these early …
Book #72 of 2023: Swamp Story by Dave Barry This comic novel fits squarely in the ‘zany Florida’ genre popularized by writers like Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, or indeed, author Dave Barry himself. If you like such stories of madcap plots colliding against a backdrop of alligators, rednecks, treasure hunters, corrupt politicians, and other Sunshine …
TV #27 of 2023: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 5 I’m not a big fan of the decision to pepper this final season with flash-forward scenes to decades in the future, where we learn that the titular comedienne — and her manager! — will eventually achieve their dream of striking it big in showbusiness. For …
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TV #26 of 2023: The Shield, season 6 This season of The Shield is a bit scattered compared to the ones before it. It’s initially exciting to see that Forest Whitaker is sticking around past his initial one-year-arc, given how thrilling the Kavanaugh investigation of Mackey has been, but then after a couple episodes, he’s …
Book #71 of 2023: Marley by Jon Clinch Jacob Marley is a bit of a blank slate in the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol — which is not a fault; he serves his purpose in the narrative there most admirably — and so he represents a logical candidate for this sort of treatment by …
TV #25 of 2023: Saturday Night Live, season 48 I’m a little behind on this review, since I only belatedly found out that the venerable sketch-comedy series had officially canceled its remaining episodes of this production batch due to the ongoing writers’ strike, rather than postponing them indefinitely. Strictly speaking, then, this was the 16th …
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TV #24 of 2023: Bob’s Burgers, season 13 As usual, this family cartoon is again riding the bubble between a three- and a four-star program for me. I’ll round up on this occasion, because even though I don’t have much new critical insight to offer, enough of these individual episodes seem to stand out as …
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