Book Review – Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up based on Darcy Armstrong’s recommendation in her Great Courses series on the Black Death, and I’m glad I read it. I particularly loved the view of the 1665 plague from the perspective of a woman living in a fictional version of Eyam, the English village that shut itself off from the rest of the world in an effort to keep the infection from spreading. Geraldine Brooks is an excellent writer, and she uses her talent to explore several aspects of human behavior in extreme conditions. The last chapter and epilogue go a bit too far afield in search of a happy ending, but the bulk of the book was outstanding.

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2025 Year in Review

 In 2025 I finally made it to a goal I’ve pursued for decades: I read 52 books in a calendar year. It turned out to be quite an experience, including a range of types and quality levels.

Though my usual practice is to create lists of eight favorites (a legacy from when all this was on 8sails.com), I’m going with a top ten for books. And even so, this required a few uncomfortable cuts.

• The Icepick Surgeon
• The Secret Loves of Geek Girls
• Sex Lives of Superheroes
• What If?
• War Against All Puerto Ricans
• James
• Mavericks
• How to Hide an Empire
• The World Remade
• Good-Bye to All That

This is also my first year including Goodreads reviews on this blog. Jury’s still out on whether I’ll go back and retroactively add previous years.

And while we’re on the topic of books, I want to extend a huge thanks to the Kansas City Kansas Public Library. Between dead tree books borrowed from the library and ebooks supplied by the library’s Hoopla subscription, I was able to reach my book count goal and save hundreds of dollars in the process. 

On Hoopla I finished 260 titles. Mostly graphic novels, though there were some plain old novels, non-fiction and how-to guides in the mix. To get this down to eight favorites, the first four are series of multiple volumes (most of which were particularly good).

• The Breaking Cat News series
• The Punisher MAX series
• The Gunsmith Cats series
• Godzilla vs. US cities series
• The Stringbags
• Trench Dogs
• William of Newberry
• Big Happy Mushy Lump

In the movie department, it was a year of highs and lows. The highs:

• Weapons
• Red Ghost: Nazi Hunter
• The Long Walk
• Abigail
• Mascots
• Monster Island
• Flu
• The Menu

And the lows:

• House of Long Shadows
• Into the Abyss
• Killjoy
• 28 Years Later
• Everybody Wins
• Gladiator 2
• The Exorcism
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I also encountered a rare moment: I reviewed Playback way back in 2012 and completely forgot that I’d already seen it. It didn’t even seem familiar on rewatch this year. Sadly, I’m guessing the lower rating in 2025 is a result of paying more attention to it this time around. I’ve decided to leave both reviews on the blog. I also seem to have reviewed Flu twice, so perhaps I should be more cautious about checking before posting.

Review – The Marvels

Yeah, this one’s pretty goofy. And though the humor doesn’t always work, it at least deserves an E for effort. Typical of the experience was the sequence in which space alien cats temporarily devour the crew of a space station while “Memories” plays on the soundtrack. And though I long for a day when it won’t be necessary to type this anymore, this production is noteworthy for having three female protagonists none of whom self-actualize or otherwise depend on men to achieve their goals. Mildly amusing

Review – Fantastic Four: First Steps

The source material for Fantastic Four movies could have been written by Stephen King, based on how many terrible movies have been made out of it. This time around the story is a run-of-the-mill retelling of the Galactus plot line with minor twists (a female Silver Surfer, the Thing as a muttering goof rather than a rocky orange rage monster). The real killer here is the art direction. The somewhere-else-in-the-multiverse aesthetic reeks of the Tomorrowland sections of Disney theme parks, somehow equally rooted in a past that never was and a future that never will be. The 1940s, 1960s and 2020s blend awkwardly at best, which doesn’t make the off-putting characters any more approachable. Pity, too. They spent a lot on the cast and the effects. See if desperate

Book Review – Billy Summers

Billy Summers by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After the mockery comparing Under the Dome to The Simpsons Movie, one would think Stephen King would be extra careful to avoid similarities between his novels and other popular mass media. And yet here we’ve got a tale so similar to the HBO series Barry that I found it impossible not to imagine Bill Hader in the title role the whole time I was reading this book. To make things worse, this isn’t exactly tightly plotted. For a story about a hit man, it hangs a lot of rifles on the wall without firing any of them. Halfway through, we get an awkwardly-introduced new character who seems to exist solely to give the protagonist someone to talk to. The main quest ends around the 80% mark. If this had been King’s first book, I doubt there would have been a second.

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Review – Tinsel Town

For the most part this is every bit as terrible as one would expect from a holiday-themed rom com starring Kiefer Sutherland. The protagonist is a washed-up egomaniac actor who gets stuck performing in a Christmas pantomime play in rural England. In addition to predictable high jinks and plot twists, the production teaches a lesson here and there about panto traditions. Derek Jacobi (!) supplies a poignant moment amid the Hallmark-esque treacle. Mildly amusing

Book Review – The Deadwood Bible

The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon by Matt Zoller Seitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Favorite show” joins the ranks of laws and sausages. Matt Zoller Seitz does a good job of writing and otherwise assembling a tome that sheds light on the niche popular HBO show Deadwood. As I’m much less interested in show runner David Milch than I am in his creation, I would have skipped large parts of the book that are devoted to him. Some of it is illuminating, while other parts put the “too much” in TMI. Which is also true for a chunk of the non-Milch material. Those who watch the show along with reading the book will notice errors in the text, though none of them are serious enough to invalidate the authors’ points. I admit that I’d prefer to enjoy the series rather than study it, but I still think fans will find the experience rewarding overall.

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