Resolution.

 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the futuristic year of 2019 - yes, I'm fully aware of all the science fiction movies set in 2019 that don't particularly match what is now the present:  Blade Runner, Daybreakers, Akira, The Island, The Running Man, and apparently The Road, although I have no recollection of the date being mentioned in either the book or the movie.*

And Dark, was Dark not set in 2019?

Regardless, with the new year upon us, I feel obliged to look at the results of last year's resolution to make a dent in my backlog of paper novels, to the tune of one a week.  As is so often the case, I didn't manage to keep up with my initial burst of enthusiasm, but if nothing else, I think that I at least managed to break even between reducing the backlog and new acquisitions.

In my defense, I did do some re-reading as well, but overall I wish that I had managed to do better than I did, the books that I did read made for entertaining additions to my repertoire. (Although, to be honest, part of the reason for my non-compliance can be blamed on a couple of books that simply did not hold my interest for a variety of reasons.)

However, it's a new year, and with that, I can make a fresh start with the same goal. I've kicked things off with The Fifth Season, the first book in N. K. Jemisin's award-winning The Broken Earth trilogy - my apologies to all of the nay-sayers who claimed that Jemisin's Best Novel Hugo wins were the result of political correctness, but as it turns out, she's actually just quite a good writer. The Fifth Season was a very good book -  imaginative, unique, clever, and well-written - and I'm looking forward to the next two in the trilogy.

Sadly, I'm retrenching in terms of visual media.  I'd love to be watching everything that's out there in the marketplace, but I feel that I'm just too far in the hole to catch up.  As such, I'm going to concentrate on core programming like Star Trek: Discovery - I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually a bit relieved that Doctor Who is taking a hiatus for 2019, I can use the break for something else.  To be honest, I haven't even watched the New Year's special yet, hopefully I can get that out of the way before the 2020 season starts.

Right - 2020:  that will be Edge of Tomorrow, Mission to Mars, Pacific Rim, A Quiet Place and Reign of Fire.

Happy New Year to all!

- Sid

* And, really, when you look at that list, I have no regrets that the future has proven inadequate to those visions of it from the past.  I think that Blade Runner is the best of a bad lot in terms of possible futures from that particular collection of options.