May was a slow month for reading. I received my second COVID shot on April 30, and with that, the emotional hangover of the past year hit me hard and took all the energy and motivation right out of me.
What this list lacks in breadth it makes up in depth. Each of the above books is 400+ pages, and even with my unusually slow reading pace I made it through the lot with time to spare. Each of them was a really good read, and I had not noticed until writing this post that they are each in a different genre. The Winter is fantasy, the Martine science fiction, and the Anderson is creative nonfiction. I recommend each of the books, and can say that I have not previously read anything like any of them. Of the three, I will be re-reading Imaginary Cities at some point, notebook in hand, as the text therein could easily present over a hundred writing prompts. It is that kind of book.
Like last month, I didn’t read any short fiction, and I feel kind of bad about that, as short fiction is primarily what I write. But with the changing of the seasons, and the COVID vaccinations behind me, I am ready to re-start my morning reading, writing and exercise routine which fell by the wayside precisely on May 1.
Books
- Winter, Evan, The Rage of Dragons (2021.05.09)
- Martine, Arkady, A Memory Called Empire (2021.05.25)
- Anderson, Darran – Imaginary Cities (2021.05.27)
Looks like I will be ending the year as I started it, immersed in short fiction. This month was the first time since March that I put any particular effort into reading short fiction despite my plan at the beginning of 2020 to try to read at least 200 short stories. That sounds like a lot, but considering the average short story takes about half an hour to read at a reasonable pace, that number could easily be doubled without taking a lot of time out of any given day.