The cat is outside and I’ve had my mandated minimum five hours sleep, which seems what this second COVID year is allowing me right now. I hope to get back to something a bit more usual for me, but who knows? I’m awake, there’s a day job to go to, and that’s about that. Although I was a bit up and down over the weekend, I think I can say the second COVID shot had little or no impact on me. Getting vaccinated was good and important and, unless you have a compelling medical reason not to, you should too.

I’ve been watching a lot of television over the past year or so – subscribed to a million services, tried a bunch of things, watched a handful of half-series I mean to get back to and usually don’t (like Mare of Easttown and Sweet Tooth), but now feels like a time for reading.

As I’ve been saying here, I just finished Zen Cho’s Black Water Sister, Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, and am three quarters through Lavie Tidhar’s The Hood. Very different books all three, but big chunks of fantasy all. I find myself, as I reach the end of the Tidhar, casting my eye around for a change of pace. Maybe the latest Chuck Wendig (I used to read big horror novels) or the new Adrian Tchaikovsky (I love me some space opera). I also randomly bought ebooks of some old Elmore Leonard and Ross McDonald novels, because I’ve enjoyed some crime stuff. Looking at the next book, though, lots of white guys. Will think on that. I don’t mind dropping some into the mix, but you want to keep it varied.

I also have a few things on the Kindle to get to. I am perfectly happy reading digitally, I have to say, but I never get the same feel for how far through a book I am when I read that way. One of the things print still has, I guess.

Anyway, if anyone’s reading this, be happy to hear your books recs for 2021 titles I should be reading.