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, …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison”
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Long Division by Kiese Laymon”
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 …
TV Review: Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, season 1
TV #52 of 2022: Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, season 1 Despite carrying the novelist’s name prominently appended to the title, this is one of those curious adaptations that alters or completely jettisons nearly all of its source material, for better or for worse. The difference is immediately apparent, since in the original book …
Continue reading “TV Review: Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, season 1”
Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Book #167 of 2022: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea #1) Author Ursula K. Le Guin’s first Earthsea novel — following two short stories in the setting she’d already published elsewhere — recounts the early life of its titular character, whom we are repeatedly told will someday be the most powerful …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin”
Book Review: A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
Book #166 of 2022: A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #7) Another standard and somewhat forgettable / interchangeable Agatha Christie mystery, taking its title from the old nursery rhyme about the four and twenty blackbirds. As usual with this author, those lines of doggerel are soon linked with a series of …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie”
Book Review: Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe
Book #165 of 2022: Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe A dybbuk is a ghoulish spirit from Jewish folklore, traditionally said to be haunting a person or place due to unfinished business at the creature’s time of death. In this middle-grade novel, there’s such an entity lurking around the mikvah (a ritual bath site) …
Continue reading “Book Review: Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 