Book #198 of 2022: When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb My shorthand pitch for this debut novel would probably be something like “Good Omens meets The Golem and the Jinni“: a tale of the early twentieth century, richly steeped in #ownvoices Jewish elements, in which a friendly angel and demon who …
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Book #197 of 2022: The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun A bitter little novella about a Korean man who’s bedridden and initially only able to communicate by blinking, having been severely disabled by the car accident that also killed his wife. Lacking any other family to take him in, he’s looked after by his mother-in-law, who …
Book #196 of 2022: Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes A thrillingly creepy sci-fi horror novel in the same general vein as movies like Event Horizon, Alien, or Sunshine, where human/corporate greed may be the true enemy (for anyone who can survive the crazed assault of its previous victims). Out on the far vestiges of …
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Book #195 of 2022: Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds I was hoping this would be a cute little Hanukkah read, but it’s instead been a source of perpetual frustration and discomfort for me. The basic premise is that the narrator is desperate to get with the crush who’ll be visiting her grandparents’ house …
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TV #60 of 2022: Classic Doctor Who, season 4 This is the most incomplete surviving season of Doctor Who, meaning it has the highest number of episodes currently missing from any modern archive: 33 gone, and only 10 available to be viewed. As with all of the absent material for Who, we do have audio …
Book #194 of 2022: Desert Star by Michael Connelly (Ballard and Bosch #4) Author Michael Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch story — his 38th book in this broad continuity of LA cops, lawyers, and reporters, if my math is right — finds the detective once again ensconced in the department where he spent most of his …
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Book #193 of 2022: The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #4 / Mistborn #7) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] Despite retaining its fantasy wild west trappings, the remainder of “Mistborn Era 2” has never lived up to the sheer entertainment value of The Alloy of Law for me, and …
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TV #59 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 11 Maybe a slight step up from the year before? Most episodes of this family cartoon remain unchallenging comfort television with a group of characters we know and love, but there’s at least some effort here to occasionally push one or another of them into unfamiliar growth territory. …
Book #192 of 2022: Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel There are hints in this 2009 debut novel from author Emily St. John Mandel of the talents she’d bring to later works like Station Eleven, but on the whole, it’s a bit miserable. This is a story about sad people acting inexplicably …
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Book #191 of 2022: Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen A good but not great Star Wars novel, taking place after Anakin and Padme get married at the end of Episode II but before he takes on Ahsoka as his padawan in the Clone Wars movie. The premise / goal here seems twofold: to show …
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