Book #168 of 2025: Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum This 2024 title is a fascinating account of how abstaining from pig meat became emblematic of Judaism, in a way that indexes Jewish / non-Jewish identity far beyond any other kosher practice. Author Jordan D. Rosenblum, a religious …
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Book Review: The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly
Book #167 of 2025: The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #8) A timely, enjoyable, and yet ultimately anticlimactic legal thriller. The case is almost ripped-from-the-headlines: a high school student murders his ex-girlfriend at the apparent behest of his A.I. chat companion, leading her mother to sue the tech company behind the product. Attorney …
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Book Review: Come My Boys: Memoirs Of Thirty-Four Years On The American Stage And A Lifetime In Theta Delta Chi by Norman Hackett
Book #166 of 2025: Come My Boys: Memoirs Of Thirty-Four Years On The American Stage And A Lifetime In Theta Delta Chi by Norman Hackett I have the dubious honor of being the first person on Goodreads to ever review this title, which was printed in 1960 for a very specific audience. Norman Hackett was …
Movie Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Movie #17 of 2025: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) There are some movies that I think, if you see them when you’re young enough, you can never hope to be truly objective about their qualities. Such is the case with Raiders of the Lost Ark (retroactively retitled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the …
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Book Review: King Sorrow by Joe Hill
Book #165 of 2025: King Sorrow by Joe Hill A beast of a novel that fully earns its epic scope, proving once and for all that author Joe Hill has escaped from his father Stephen King‘s shadow but will always be indebted to him for the shared family style (as well as a few charming …
Book Review: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
Book #164 of 2025: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban The most striking aspect of this 1980 dystopian novel, set in the remains of England many generations after a nuclear war, is its use of a highly-modified English vernacular to represent that possible future. There are run-on clauses and evidence of grammatical changes from our tongue, …
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Book Review: Doctor Who: Empire of Death by Scott Handcock
Book #163 of 2025: Doctor Who: Empire of Death by Scott Handcock I enjoyed author Scott Handcock’s novelization of the recent Doctor Who episode 73 yards, but it turns out that when he has weaker material to work with, the output is correspondingly worse. (And let’s not let him off the hook entirely there either, …
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Book Review: Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
Book #162 of 2025: Angel Down by Daniel Kraus A harrowingly propulsive rush through the trenches of World War I, full of sickening visceral images of war in service to a bizarre speculative twist: the presence on the battlefield of a literal angel screaming in agony, whom our protagonist, unaware of her identity, has been …
TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 21
TV #51 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 21 Another bifurcated season of Doctor Who that I wish I could separate into its weaker and stronger parts — although here it’s particularly unfortunate that the former installments bookend the latter. The middle of this run delivers a fine span from RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS through …
Movie Review: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007)
Movie #16 of 2025: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007) “Movie” is probably a bit of a misnomer here, as this title wasn’t initially intended to constitute a standalone feature at all. Instead it would be merely the first installment of a new Babylon 5 series pitched as an anthology of smaller-scale stories, in contrast …
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