
I just went on an end-of-year shopping spree, for books, music, and movies.
E-books: Ted Chiang, "Stories of Your Life and Others"; Molly Brooks, "Sanity and Tallulah"; Nnedi Okorafor, "Binti"; James Alan Gardner, "They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded"; Nalo Hopkinson, "Brown Girl in the Ring"; Lionel Casson, "Libraries in the Ancient World"; Tom Gjelten, "A Nation of Nations".
Dead Trees: Bill Willingham, "The Dark Ages"; Nicholas Riasanovsky, "A History of Russia"
CDs: Gerry Rafferty, "City to City"; Jimmy Buffett, "Songs You Know By Heart"; Sara Bareilles, "Kaleidoscope Heart"; Kinks, "The Essential Kinks"; Adele, "25"
DVDs: "Thor", "Iron Man 2"
I've only read one story by Chiang, "The Life Cycle of Software Objects", which I believe won a Hugo. The movie "Arrival" was based on another of his stories, and he seems to be considered one of the current masters of the SF short story. Molly Brooks is the author of the now-complete webcomic "Power Ballad", which I recommended a while back. The Gardner is the sequel to "All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault". I've been meaning to read some Hopkinson and Okorafor for a while, and these are their most famous books. "The Dark Ages" is the next installment of "Fables". The nonfiction - Casson, Gjelten, Riasanovsky - have been recommended to me in various places.
No comment on the music, except that I love Sara Bareilles' music, and the others have been on my to-get list for a while. As for the DVDs, I'm still working on collecting the MCU movies.
Some of them are already here; the rest should arrive in the next week, week and a half. (I'm still waiting for that Joan Jett album; they're telling me it will arrive in the same time frame as today's purchases.)