At the end of 2019 I read the first book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabalson and was hooked. I began the year 2020 by reading through the rest of the books in the series. Book 2, Dragonfly in Amber, was pretty good and wrapped up some of the story lines in book one. But Voyager, book three, was fantastic and still remains one of my favorite in the series.
During the late spring and early summer I got back into Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s series. The series combines colorful and zany characters, funny dialog and fascinating historical events. With a year like 2020 is was just the type of escape that I needed.
I read several book in 2020 by Douglas E. Richard, who is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Veracity is a novel that explores the idea, “What if you developed a technology that made it impossible for anyone to lie? About anything. Would this save humanity from itself? Or would it tear society apart?” Through character dialog and character experiences the author is able to explore the pros and cons of living in a world where lies can be detected by anyone. Although you may think it’s a win-win scenario, there are some downsides to total truth.
Another Douglas E. Richard series that I got hooked on was the Alien Artifact series. The first book is named The Enigma Cube. The introduction to the book on the Amazon.com page says, “To secure a dazzling future they must travel to a perilous past.” Not only is it a time travel story, it’s a near future sci-fi story featuring technology like enhanced “super soldiers” and advanced drone technology.
The news that Amazon was making a mini-series from the Wheel of Time book series by Robert Jordan got me excited. I had hope that Amazon would spend the money and do a good job adapting the books. They signed on some good talent like Rosamund Pike to play Moiraine. The news inspired me to re-read the series again since it had been a few years. It was another good escape from the madness that was the year 2020. However, it’s a long series so by the end of book 6 I was ready for a change and wanted to read something else.
I’m a huge fan of the book series Dune by Frank Herbert. My favorite mini series adaption is the Sci-Fi Channel three-part mini-series that came out back in 2000. The news hit social media in 2020 that a new production of Dune was underway. Naturally I was curious and had hope they would do a good job. I read that the plan was to make a two part movie in order to tell the story better than was possible in a standard 2 hour movie. That was encouraging news. It seemed like the new movie production had an impressive cast of actors and actresses. Understandably, COVID 19 paused production and release of the first movie. However, I was still inspired to get the first three books in the series electronically on my Kindle. So far I have re-read the first two books.
For fans of Jodi Taylor like me, the big event for the end of 2020 was the release of book two of the Time Police series named Hard Time. I was not disappointed. This is a great story and series and I am an fan. The characters are wonderfully imperfect.
As I’m writing this article in 2021, I just received season six of the Outlander series on Blu-ray. This season is based on the book named, A Breath of Snow and Ashes – (Outlander 6) by Diana Gabaldon.
- Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander 2) – Diana Gabaldon
- Blood of Elves (Witcher Series) – Andrzej Sapkowski
- Voyager (Outlander 3) – Diana Gabaldon
- Drums of Autumn (Outlander 4) – Diana Gabaldon
- The Fiery Cross (Outlander 5) – Diana Gabaldon
- A Breath of Snow and Ashes – (Outlander 6) – Diana Gabaldon
- An Echo in the Bone – (Outlander 7) – Diana Gabaldon
- Written in my Hearts Own Blood – (Outlander 8) – Diana Gabaldon
- Eagle in the Sky – Wilbur Smith
- Journey of the Pharaohs (NUMA Files) – Clive Cussler
- And the Rest Is History: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Eight – Jodi Taylor
- An Argumentation of Historians: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Nine – Jodi Taylor
- Hope for the Best: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Ten – Jodi Taylor
- Cry Wolf – Wilbur Smith
- Veracity – Douglas E. Richards
- Hungry as the Sea – Wilbur Smith
- Plan for the Worst: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Ten – Jodi Taylor
- The Enigma Cube – Douglas E. Richards
- War Cry – Wilbur Smith
- The Solomon Curse (Fargo 7) – Clive Cussler
- The Long and the Short of It: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Short Stories – Jodi Taylor
- Why is Nothing Ever Simple: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Short Story – Jodi Taylor
- Pirate (Fargo 8) – Clive Cussler
- Origin – (Robert Langdon 5) – Dan Brown
- Oracle (Fargo 11) – Clive Cussler
- Timeslingers – Jay Sherer
- Contact – Carl Sagan
- The Last Dragon Slayer – Jasper Fforde
- Song of the Quarkbeast – Jasper Fforde
- Eye of Zoltar – Jasper Fforde
- Blue Gold (Re-read) – Clive Cussler
- Eye of the World (Re-read) – Robert Jordan.
- A Pivot in Time (Enigma Cube 2) – Douglas E. Richards
- The Great Hunt (Re-read) – Robert Jordan.
- The Dragon Reborn (Re-read) – Robert Jordan.
- The Shadow Rising (Re-read) – Robert Jordan.
- The Fires of Heaven (Re-read) – Robert Jordan.
- Lords of Chaos (Re-read) – Robert Jordan.
- Dune (Re-read) – Frank Herbert
- Dune Messiah (Re-read) – Frank Herbert
- Hard Time (Time Police Series #2) – Jodi Taylor
- Marauder (Oregon Series 15) – Clive Cussler & Boyd Morrison
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