Book #175 of 2025: Royal Gambit by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #4) I think this 2025 title is my favorite installment of its urban fantasy series yet, and like the others, it can essentially be read as a standalone piece. The Checquy are a British intelligence agency tasked with protecting the realm from supernatural …
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Book #174 of 2025: Doctor Who: Love and War by Paul Cornell (Virgin New Adventures #9) The New Adventures series of Doctor Who novels, put out by Virgin Publishing after the TV show went off the air in 1989, has until now played somewhat safe with its core premise. The Seventh Doctor and Ace were …
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Movie #20 of 2025: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) Neither Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) nor Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) ever mentioned that the titular archaeologist’s father was a fellow antiquities scholar, but he fits seamlessly into the plot of this third film in a way that, for …
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Book #173 of 2025: Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon A sprawling novel of two families, one Black and one Jewish — husbands who run a used record store, wives who operate a midwife practice, and teenage sons who are secretly romantically involved — in a time of turmoil for their extended California community. I’ve generally …
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Movie #19 of 2025: V for Vendetta (2005) Seemingly more timely now than it was two decades ago upon release, this movie offers a thrilling tale of a terrorist antihero inspiring people in dystopian England to rise up against their oppressive government. (Things in the U.S. are obviously nowhere near as bad as they are …
Book #172 of 2025: You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White If you’ve read any of author Andrew Joseph White’s YA works, you know that they tend to be rich in both horror themes and #ownvoices details pulled from his own transgender experiences, often with those two elements structurally intertwined in order …
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Movie #18 of 2025: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) I’ve long held that this second Indiana Jones feature is the worst of its series (or of the original trilogy, at least), which in consequence has meant that I’ve probably seen it the least often. And though I tried to approach this rewatch …
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Book #171 of 2025: Star Wars: Dark Legends by George Mann This 2020 title, recently re-released as an audiobook, offers a fun concept, executed well: seven short stories in the Star Wars universe, all with some sort of spooky flair. I don’t want to oversell the horror here — these are PG scares, and not …
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Book #170 of 2025: Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #2) I’m finally checking out the rest of the Talented Mr. Ripley series, beginning with this first sequel that followed in 1970 (fifteen years after the original volume, although only six have passed for our protagonist). When we rejoin him, he’s living a …
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Book #169 of 2025: Just Another Judgement Day by Simon R. Green (Nightside #9) This urban fantasy sequence has been in a bit of a holding pattern since the end of the Lilith arc in volume six (half a series ago now), and this next installment doesn’t do much to change that. Suzie and John …
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