Book #79 of 2023: Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not) by José Rizal By sheer coincidence, I finished reading this title on the Philippines’ Independence Day, exactly 125 years since that nation’s revolutionaries declared its freedom from Spain. That’s rather fitting, as the 1887 novel in some ways seems to have inspired their movement against …
Continue reading “Book Review: Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not) by José Rizal”
Book #78 of 2023: Clariel by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #4) I like a lot of things about this Old Kingdom prequel, but it’s objectively a pretty disjointed novel. The first two-thirds paint a fascinating picture of the setting as we’ve never seen it, both by virtue of being so far in the past …
TV #29 of 2023: Star Trek: Enterprise, season 3 Credit where credit’s due: this season is a solid step up in quality for what’s previously been the weakest iteration of Star Trek to date. It’s still not a total success story, but this run makes a lot of smart choices to shake up its formerly …
Continue reading “TV Review: Star Trek: Enterprise, season 3”
Book #77 of 2023: Double Sin and Other Stories by Agatha Christie An odd little collection, published in 1961 (and then only in the US) but including stories from as far back as 1925. Three of the eight entries had even been previously released in other Agatha Christie volumes — “The Last Seance” in 1933’s …
Continue reading “Book Review: Double Sin and Other Stories by Agatha Christie”
Book #76 of 2023: How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis, LPC Probably the best self-help book I’ve ever read, and all the more so for its short length, with author KC Davis evincing none of that genre’s usual need to belabor her points ad nauseum …
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders”
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 …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more