Book #33 of 2023: Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie A rather silly beginning, in which we learn that the stranger who could have corroborated an accused murderer’s alibi was hit by a truck, developed a case of short-term amnesia, and promptly departed for a two-year polar expedition, thus missing the publicity about the trial …
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Book #32 of 2023: Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn A frustratingly three-star read. The premise is fine, but it’s one I’ve seen too many times before: an assassin’s employers for some reason decide they’ve become expendable, try unsuccessfully to kill them off, and then find themselves on the receiving end of the …
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Book #31 of 2023: A Sliver of Darkness by C. J. Tudor This is a pretty consistently solid collection of horror (or horror-adjacent) short stories, many revolving around some type of dystopian apocalypse and its aftermath. Oftentimes I find such ensembles to vary dramatically in quality across their contents, but here I think I’d give …
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Movie #3 of 2023: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) It looks like I’m out of step with the critical consensus on this one, based on the early reviews, but whatever: I really liked the latest piece in Marvel’s increasingly complex cinematic universe! Maybe I’m just riding the high of being back in a movie …
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Book #30 of 2023: The Afterward by E. K. Johnston I like the idea of following up with a band of adventurers after they’ve completed their quest to save the world, and all the more so that our focus is on a pair of young women who became romantically entwined on that adventure but are …
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Book #29 of 2023: Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard (Carter & Lovecraft #1) The vibes of this fantasy noir, in which a private investigator learns that H. P. Lovecraft actually experienced some of the cosmic horrors he wrote about and gets caught up in a plot with the writer’s descendant, are top-notch. As …
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Book #28 of 2023: The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink Two-and-a-half stars rounded up, in recognition of the fact that I’m not in the target audience for this middle-grade horror/fantasy novel, despite how I often enjoy that genre regardless, or how much I love author Joseph Fink’s unrelated Welcome to Night Vale podcast and books. …
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TV #7 of 2023: Six Feet Under, season 1 So far, I’m pretty ambivalent about this early aughts HBO drama about a family who own and run an independent funeral home. A lot of the personal arcs and relationships are interesting, especially given how the show starts (fittingly enough) with a loss that reconfigures the …
Book #27 of 2023: Exiles by Jane Harper (Aaron Falk #3) This is the third and apparently final novel to feature Australian detective Aaron Falk, but oddly, I think I would have liked it better if it had been a standalone story about somebody else. By bringing back a police protagonist who’s already solved murders …
TV #6 of 2023: Gilmore Girls, season 2 Another strong outing of this multigenerational family drama, with more cracks evident between ‘best friends’ Lorelai and her daughter Rory as the latter navigates her junior year of high school. The storytelling all-around feels more competent than in the debut run, and I appreciate the early course-correction …
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