Book #174 of 2022: The Measure by Nikki Erlick The high-concept premise here is certainly intriguing: everyone in the world wakes up to find a box containing a string whose length correlates to their exact lifespan. The shorter your string, the sooner you’ll die, and like any story about attempting to cheat death, some of …
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TV Review: Happy Endings, season 3
TV #55 of 2022: Happy Endings, season 3 Overall, I’d have to call this last season of Happy Endings a step down from the preceding one. The comedy is way more hyperactive, sometimes to the extent of substituting volume and repetition for wit, and many episodes build to a big slapstick moment like the program …
Book Review: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule
Book #173 of 2022: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule I sometimes have difficulty rating pieces of nonfiction, but my general principle is to weigh a work against the best possible version of itself, by asking what the author is trying to accomplish and how …
Book Review: The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly
Book #172 of 2022: The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #6) One thing I appreciate about author Michael Connelly’s ongoing Harry Bosch franchise (1992 – present) is that it has always played fairly with the passage of time. With the exception of a few short stories that revisit prior points in the …
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TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 10
TV #54 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 10 A full decade into its span, and I am running out of things to say about Bob’s Burgers. This is the first season I’ve seen in a while that’s actually been new to me — I originally stopped watching after the previous one finished airing in 2019, …
Book Review: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
Book #171 of 2022: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #2 / Mistborn #5) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] As I mentioned in my review of that previous title, this era of the Mistborn series grew out of a writing exercise that author Brandon Sanderson liked enough to expand …
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TV Review: The Good Fight, season 6
TV #53 of 2022: The Good Fight, season 6 A relatively strong end to a perpetually-messy series that nevertheless captured a lot of the tension of life in a time of rising American fascism. Did Andre Braugher need to get brought in as the firm’s latest named partner? No, not particularly. Was the season weakened …
Book Review: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison
Book #170 of 2022: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison This title is too straightforward for too long, telling the story of a woman getting bit by a werewolf with little to distinguish it from any other iteration of that plot. It’s all competent, but somewhat unremarkable, and as I read along, I kept impatiently …
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Book Review: Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Book #169 of 2022: Long Division by Kiese Laymon This 2013 authorial debut has some interesting ideas and a distinctive voice for its protagonist(s), but it strikes me as overall too jumbled and underdeveloped to land with much impact. The plot, as I understand it: a young Black teen in the modern age, struggling with …
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Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Book #168 of 2022: Dracula by Bram Stoker First published in 1897, this gothic horror novel remains an influential classic. Its characters like Van Helsing and the bloodsucking Count himself are now household names, and so many of our cultural ideas about vampires that subsequent stories have either reiterated or consciously pushed back against can …
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