Book #49 of 2023: Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander by Victoria Goddard I like this midquel novella to author Victoria Goddard’s excellent fantasy tome The Hands of the Emperor, but I think I’m not totally impressed by it, especially after the previous short spinoff work for this series Petty Treasons seemed to up the …
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Book #48 of 2023: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets On the one hand, this translated novella offers a blisteringly grim look into the work of content moderators for social media platforms like Facebook: the employees paid to review posts that other users have flagged, to remove any material they confirm as …
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Book #47 of 2023: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany This 1966 Nebula Award co-winner is a product of its time and the New Wave movement that grew into the cyberpunk aesthetic, the sort of hard sci-fi that tends to be more interested in big ideas than compelling characters. It’s practically overflowing with tossed-off worldbuilding details …
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TV #12 of 2023: Shadow and Bone, season 2 I continue to enjoy this YA fantasy adaptation, but I think this second season fumbles its ending enough that downgrading my rating to three-out-of-five stars feels appropriate overall. After rushing through a condensed version of the novels Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising that close …
Book #46 of 2023: The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum Overall an excellent #ownvoices slice-of-life YA contemporary, about a frum — ultra-observant Orthodox — Jewish teen who finds himself shunned by his insular community for striking up a friendship and potential romance with an outside girl. Hoodie (short for Yehudah) is …
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Book #45 of 2023: Lirael by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #2) Another fine fantasy adventure, although I have never loved it quite as much as its predecessor. Jumping forward a couple decades and following an entirely new cast is a risky maneuver, and while I feel it pays off fairly well, I do miss …
TV #11 of 2023: Six Feet Under, season 2 Credit where credit’s due: the second year of this funeral home drama is a noticeable step up from the first, and it continues to improve over the course of its run, building to a finale that’s a clear series high point thus far. The show appears …
Book #44 of 2023: Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #36) I like the espionage hijinks of this novel, although the plot never reaches the thrills of author Agatha Christie’s stories that are more focused in that domain, such as those in her Tommy and Tuppence series. And the setting of a …
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Book #43 of 2023: What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Oprah Winfrey A difficult but insightful read, with lots of detailed discussion about early childhood traumas, including the specific situations of kids who witnessed or experienced sexual abuse and graphic violence. As a parent …
TV #10 of 2023: The Shield, season 5 Easily the best run of this series since the first. Forest Whitaker is an outstanding new addition to the cast, and while it’s simple to peg him as the latest Hollywood heavy hitter to come to TV for a one-season arc — like Glenn Close the year …
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