Book #68 of 2023: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers (Zamonia #1) [Updated version of my review from 4/23/2020] I absolutely adore this wild and whimsical adventure novel, detailing the tall-tale nautical escapades of a talking blue bear. (Life inside a stable tornado! The famous dueling liars of Atlantis! Impressment on the …
Continue reading “Book Review: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers”
Book #67 of 2023: Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories by Garth Nix Overall I would say that this book of short fiction — most but not all of it situated in either fantasy or an adjacent genre — is a success. The strongest piece is probably the novella that …
TV #21 of 2023: Gilmore Girls, season 4 I think this is where Gilmore Girls turns a corner for me in terms of my appreciation versus enjoyment of the characters and the ongoing slice-of-life narrative around them. It remains a strong series, and this year in particular does a fine job of navigating two big …
TV #20 of 2023: Classic Doctor Who, season 6 The end of an era for the show, in several different ways. This 1968-1969 run is the final year to be aired in black-and-white, and from a modern perspective, it contains the last episodes that are missing from the BBC archives, with only the audio recordings …
Book #66 of 2023: The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie Early on, this novel carries some of the wistfully philosophical vibes of author Agatha Christie’s pseudonymous Mary Westmacott books, and although that tone is dropped as the story goes along, I think it still might have worked better if it had been published under a …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie”
Book #65 of 2023: Even Greater Mistakes by Charlie Jane Anders This short story collection feels less uneven than many of its ilk, but unfortunately, that’s because I’ve tended to respond to each entry with the same disappointed half-sigh. Most of them show an interesting spark, either of character, premise, or background worldbuilding! I especially …
Continue reading “Book Review: Even Greater Mistakes by Charlie Jane Anders”
Book #64 of 2023: Pines by Blake Crouch (Wayward Pines #1) I picked up this 2012 novel on the strength of author Blake Crouch’s later sci-fi thrillers like Dark Matter and Recursion, but this earlier effort isn’t really in the same league. It’s long on vibes but short on story, and although I haven’t seen …
TV #19 of 2023: Six Feet Under, season 4 For most of this season, I expected I would give it the same three-star rating that I’ve assigned to its previous runs, reflecting a series that is deeply uneven: an engaging family drama with some individual scenes that are affecting and periodically profound meditations on death …
Book #63 of 2023: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher A fun little horror novella about a woman whose mom’s house is being haunted by the malevolent spirit of the protagonist’s abusive grandmother. It’s a quick read overall, but I think it stays a bit too long in the initial stage of the …
Continue reading “Book Review: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher”
TV #18 of 2023: Star Trek: Voyager, season 7 I’ve never been too enamored of Star Trek’s extended Lost in Space riff, but this final season is such an improvement over the previous outings that I’m happy to bump my rating up to four-out-of-five stars. My earliest complaint about this series, taken from my review …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more