TV #36 of 2023: The Shield, season 7 The penultimate sixth season of this police drama was its weakest in my opinion, and this final year takes a little while to shake itself back into gear. Early on, there’s a continued focus on the macguffin of a blackmail box (or as I kept mishearing it, …
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TV Review: Gilmore Girls, season 6
TV #35 of 2023: Gilmore Girls, season 6 Another season that’s entertaining on the surface, especially with the built-in viewer investment in these characters, but frustrating in terms of underlying logic and plot structure. Certain choices feel like they’re being imposed externally by the writers, rather than arising naturally from the individual personalities on screen, …
Book Review: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan
Book #92 of 2023: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan A scathing account of the abuse that runs rampant in the TV and film industry, drawing on hundreds of interviews across more than a decade of author Maureen Ryan’s investigative journalism career. Some sources have gone …
Book Review: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson
Book #91 of 2023: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] The latest Kickstarter novel from author Brandon Sanderson falls somewhere between the last two in quality for me. I don’t think it’s as strong a story as Tress of the Emerald Sea — nor that …
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Book Review: Goldenhand by Garth Nix
Book #90 of 2023: Goldenhand by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #5) My original review of this novel from shortly after its publication in 2016: “A triumphant return to the Old Kingdom, finally resolving the fate of the lost Abhorsen, Clariel. (Note: Clariel’s early life is described in the prequel novel which bears her name, …
Book Review: Doctor Who: Classics Omnibus Volume 1 by Pat Mills, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Dez Skinn, Paul Neary, Steve Moore, Grant Morrison, John Ridgway, Bryan Hitch, and Steve Parkhouse
Book #89 of 2023: Doctor Who: Classics Omnibus Volume 1 by Pat Mills, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Dez Skinn, Paul Neary, Steve Moore, Grant Morrison, John Ridgway, Bryan Hitch, and Steve Parkhouse Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. This 2010 anthology gathers 19 comic book stories by a variety of authors and artists, originally published in the …
Book Review: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie
Book #88 of 2023: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #9) This 1962 novel, published in the U.S. as simply The Mirror Crack’d, offers a fun little murder mystery that’s kept me guessing throughout. No one seems to have had any motive that could account for the neighborhood woman’s …
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Book Review: All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
Book #87 of 2023: All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby Author S. A. Cosby’s latest novel is his best work yet, a gripping southern noir with heavy shades of True Detective and extreme depictions of mutilation out of something like Hannibal. Check my content warnings below — it’s definitely not for the faint …
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TV Review: Seinfeld, season 2
TV #34 of 2023: Seinfeld, season 2 A marginal improvement over the first year of this 90s sitcom, though it retains Jerry’s dreadful stand-up material on the binary differences he sees between men and women. Outside those scenes, the storytelling engine is working a little better now at spinning minutiae into twenty-minute comedy pieces, but …
Book Review: She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
Book #86 of 2023: She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran A creepy #ownvoices haunted house story that never quite clicks into gear, perhaps because the premise is just a bit too convoluted for my tastes. Our queer teenage protagonist, visiting her father in Vietnam while he fixes up an old manor home, is …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 