I have links to my Goodreads shelves, instead of manually listing every book. Unfortunately, Goodreads doesn’t easily offer a way to filter shelves based on genres, such as delineating fiction from non-fiction.
N.B. I connect only with persons on Goodreads that I know IRL.
I’ll continue listing webcomics, comics, and some DNF works not listed on Goodreads, and short fiction.
To jump to a section:
- Notable movies, television series, and other video
- Comics and Art Monographs. Again, for some of the comics I started in the past, I have gone back and adjusted recommendations in the older posts.
- Longer fiction, comics including graphic novels, and non-fiction read in 2021 (Goodreads shelf).
- Shorter fiction
- Unfinished books and comics
Movies, television, and other video
Some good works from Asia:
- Animé for Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits and The Flying Witch, both which only cover part of what’s originally in manga and light novels. I also recommend the manga.
- Delightfully over-the-top Korean series My Holo Love, which has all the themes: sci-fi/artificial intelligence, romance, neurodiversity, and corporate intrigue.
- Ghost Bride, a goofy historical fantasy set in early 20th century Macau. It’s based on the novel of the same name which I didn’t finish; it’s loads of fun.
- Two German language films, both quite different, but both about love, and both bittersweet and moving: I Am Your Man (Ich bin dein Mensch) (2021, Germany) and The Cakemaker (2017, Israel).
For western, more mainstream works, I did enjoy the Shadow and Bone series. Yes, it’s problematic, but it’s one of the better fantasy adaptations I’ve watched, with better representation, IMO; moreover, it provided some delightful brain candy for our weary, post-not-really-post pandemic world.
Comics & Art Monographs
The 💡 (lightbulb icon) indicates a recommendation for a given comic or art monogram. What I include here are works that are (afaik) not listed within Goodreads. Additionally, below doesn’t include ongoing webcomics that I’ve mentioned in earlier annual media posts, as the list is quite long.
Teloka Berry. RED (completed).
Heather Franzen Rutten. Scaredy Cat (completed).
💡 Maddi Gonzalez. Phases (complete).
💡 Jenny Jinya. Loving Reaper (ongoing, episodic).
Kyacchan. Softymetal (ongoing).
💡 Mike Libby. Insect Lab (2010) and Insect Lab Deux (2017).
Barry McWilliams. The Explorers’ Expeditionary League: Volume 1, The Car’Lyn Expedition (complete, 2017).
Yael Nathan. Serpent (ongoing) and Warriors (completed).
💡 Allison Pang & Irma “Aimo” Ahmed. Fox and Willow (ongoing).
💡 Pet Foolery. Pixie and Brutus (ongoing).
RosesnWater. Netvor: Beauty and the Beast (ongoing).
💡 Kate Sheridan. Fallow Time (complete).
Women Write About Comics. Secrets of the Goat People #1 (2017).
Shorter Fiction, Podcasts & Poetry
I list only short stories that I’ve enjoyed enough to recommend, since I listen to (and read) so many every year. I’ve added links to most stories, so that you can read them online for free, if you prefer text instead of audio. Since some of the works were published before 2021, I’ve added the original published date, when I can find it.
Again, I regularly listen (or read) shorts from the following podcasts and publishers:
- Added Aurelia: A Storytelling Podcast.
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Web and podcast content.
- Cast of Wonders podcast — young adult (YA) speculative fiction.
- Clarkesworld Magazine: Web and podcast content.
- Escape Pod: Web and podcast content.
- Added khōreō magazine: Speculative fiction, essays, and a podcast by immigrant about migration and colonialism.
- Lightspeed Magazine: Web and podcast content.
- Our Plague Year, by the creators of Welcome to Night Vale — a series to keep us sane during the pandemic; episodes here.
- Added Null / Void podcast (completed).
- Added Podcast-19, Science journalism from FiveThirtyEight on COVID-19; on hiatus mid-2021 with the advent of the mRNA vaccines.
- PodCastle: Web and podcast content.
- Not a podcast, but a flash fiction and art series by Seanan McGuire and Lee Moyer, called Small Gods (Tumblr version).
- Added Strange Animals, a podcast about fascinating animals and cryptids.
- Strange Horizons: Web and podcast content.
- Welcome to Night Vale podcast. ALL HAIL.
- Within the Wires podcast.
- Tor.com: Web content.
- Uncanny Magazine: Podcasts of some of their published poetry, shorts, and interviews.
- Wolf 359 (completed).
January Adams. “Weaving” (2021).
‘Pemi Aguda. “Masquerade Season” (2021).
Esther Alter. “Cultureship” (2021).
Leslie J. Anderson. “Supergirl’s Last Will and Testament” (poem, 2021).
Ryu Ando. “The karyōbinga sings to Jiro” (2021).
Dani Atkinson. “Three Monsters that Are Not Metaphors” (2021).
Nicole Bade. “Strange Music” (2021).
Elly Bangs. “Deep Music” (2021).
C. A. Barrett. “The Healer of Branford” (2021).
Maya Beck. “Yearning” (2021).
Jana Bianchi. “Not Quite What We’re Looking for Right Now” (2021).
Marie Brennan. “Oak Apple Night” (2021).
Alan Brennert. “Skin Deep” (2021).
Stephanie Burgis. “Love, Your Flatmate” (2020).
Rebecca Burton. “To Hear Them Sing” (2021).
Rebecca Campbell. “The Language Birds Speak” (novelette, 2021).
Isabel Cañas. “My Sister is a Scorpion” (2021).
Adam-Troy Castro. “Answering the Questions You Might Have About the Kharbat” (2021).
Beth Cato. “A Consideration of Trees” (2020).
Eliza Chan. “More Than One Zodiac in High School” (2021).
Grace Chan. “He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars” (2021).
Curtis C. Chen. “Habeas Codex” (2021).
Jessica Cho. “Nine-Tailed Heart” (2021).
P. Djèlí Clark. “If the Martians Have Magic” (2021).
Elizabeth Cobbe. “Contract Witch” (2021).
C. S. E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez. “The Book of May” (2020).
Ian Creasey. “No Strangers Any More” (2016).
Leah Cypess. “Straw Spun” (2012).
Drew Czernik. “Abby’s T-Rex” (2021).
Aliette de Bodard. “The Inaccessibility of Heaven” (novelette, 2020).
Varsha Dinesh. “The Engineer of the Undersea Railway” (2021).
Maiga Doocy. “Of Honey and Grave Dirt” (2021).
Gene Doucette. “Memoranda from the End of the World” (2021).
Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko. “The Last Days of Summer in the City of Olives” (2021).
R.K. Duncan. “Hassan the Executioner Walks Out of Jawasar for the Last Time” (2021).
Timons Esaias. “Excerpts from the Text of an Explanatory Stele Erected for Our Edification by the Scholars of the Outer Orion Tendril” (2021).
Tania Fordwalker. “The Woods Echo Back” (2021).
Eugie Foster. “The Storyteller’s Wife” (2005).
Kate Francia. “Souls” (2021).
Sarah Gailey. “Bargain” (2015) and “Tiger Lawyer Gets It Right” (2020).
Gwynne Garfinkle. “A Wild Patience” (novelette, 2020).
J.L. George. “Diamonds and Pearls” (2021).
Melody Gordon. “Excavate” (2017).
Theodora Goss. “Medusa Gets a Haircut” (poem, 2021).
Alyson Grauer. “Porch Light for the Lonely” (2021).
A. T. Greenblatt. “The Stop After the Last Station” (2021).
J.T. Greenhouse. “An Empty Cup” (2018).
Ivy Grimes. “Cats of Fortune” (2021).
A.M Guay. “Golden Girl” (2021).
Sydney Paige Guerrero. “Matches” (2021).
Shane Halbach. “Bony Bonnie Dead Horse” (2021).
Brenna Harvey. “Toward the Sploff Zone” (2021).
Audrey R. Hollis. “Alexa, Play Solidarity Forever” (2021).
Jennifer Hudak. “The Taste of Centuries, The Taste of Home” (2021).
Kai Hudson. “A Star for Every Word Unspoken” (2021).
Innocent Chizaram Ilo. “Electronic Ghosts” (2021).
Tamara Jerée. “A Serpent for Each Year” (2021).
Robert Jeschonek. “Dog and Pony Show” (novelette, 2021).
Isabel J. Kim. “You’ll Understand When You’re a Mom Someday” and “AP Practical Literary Theory Suggests This Is a Quest (Or: What Danny Did Over Spring Break)” (2021).
L.P. Kindred. “Open 27 Hours” (2020).
T. Kingfisher. “Miss Tansybaum’s Circus of the Moderately Peculiar” (2010).
Benjamin C. Kinney. “Cruise Control” (2021).
Nancy Kress. “Little Animals” (novelette, 2021).
Andrea Kriz. “Communist Computer Rap God” (2021).
Monique Laban. “The Failed Dianas” (2021).
Celia Lake. “Unexplored Territory” (novelette, 2020), which occurs at the same time as Lake’s novel On the Bias.
Erica Plouffe Lazure. “The Mixed Medium” (2021).
Mary Soon Lee. “What Cacti Read” (poem, 2021).
P. H. Lee. “A House by the Sea” (2018).
Gerri Leen. “Locally Sourced” (poem, 2021).
David D. Levine. “Best-Laid Plans” (2021).
Marissa Lingen. “My Favourite Sentience” (2018).
Darcie Little Badger. “Robo-Liopleurodon!” (2018).
Em Liu. “Letters from Yours” (2021).
Brian K. Lowe. “Rights and Wrongs” (2014).
Aviel McDermott. “The Boy Who Feeds the Birds” (2021).
Jessica Meats. “Circle of Memories” (2021).
Rati Mehrotra. “Black Wings, White Kheer” (2021).
Elle Meny. “Ten Lessons for a Curse-Breaker” (2021).
Jo Miles. “The Census Faces Unusual Challenges on Audvarn-3The Census Faces Unusual Challenges on Audvarn-3” and “My Custom Monster” (2021).
Mlok 5. “An Instance” (2021).
Virginia M. Mohlere. “In the Field Where Stories Meet” (poem, 2021).
Annalee Newitz. “#Selfcare” (2021).
Sherin Nicole. “Death, the Universe, and Everything” (2021).
Kiya Nicoll. “A Dragon in Two Parts” (2021).
Wendy Nikel. “Those We See at the Twilight Bridge” (2021).
Leah Ning. “Pull” (2021).
Martha Riva Palacio Obón. “Biography of Algae” (2021).
Yukimi Ogawa. “The Shroud for the Mourners” (2021).
Aimee Ogden. “Deadlock” (2021).
Tochi Onyebuchi. “Presque vue” (2021).
Sarah Pauling. “The Dame With the Earth at Her Back” (2021).
Andrea M. Pawley. “A Heist in Fifteen Products from the Orion Spur’s Longest-Running Catalog” (2021).
Hamilton Perez. “Our Mortal Undressing” (2018).
Hailey Piper. “IF trans THEN mogrify” (2021).
B. Pladek. ”All Us Ghosts” (2021).
Srikripa Krishna Prasad. “Rosie’s Ghosts” (2021).
Ember Randall. “On the Tip of Her Tongue” (2021).
Arula Ratnakar. “Submergence” (novella, 2021).
Jenn Reese. “A Mindreader’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year at the All-Girls Superhero Academy” (2019).
Endria Isa Richardson. “Forest Thing” (2021).
Aun-Juli Riddle. “Sorry We Missed You!” (2021).
Lauren Ring. “One Hundred Seconds to Midnight” (2021).
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez. “This Is Not My Adventure” (2021).
Christopher Mark Rose. “Sentient Being Blues” (reprint, 2021).
Jennifer Lee Rossman. “The Steel Magnolia Metaphor” (2021).
Josh Rountree. “Rewind” (2020).
Iona Datt Sharma. “Heard, Half-Heard, in the Stillness” (2020) and “All Worlds Left Behind” (2021).
Peng Shepherd. “The Future Library” (novelette, 2021).
K.S. Shere. “The Golden Carrot” (2021).
EJ Sidle. “Lesser Things” (2021).
Amal Singh. “A Home for Mrs. Biswas” (2021).
D.A. Xiaolin Spires. “Xiaolongbao: Soup Dumplings” (2021).
Adam Stemple. “The Clock, Having Seen Its Face in the Mirror, Still Knows Not the Hour” (novelette, 2021).
P. G. Streeter. “A Greevbinian Parent Abroad” (2021).
Tovah Strong. “Aster’s Partialities: Vitri’s Best Store for Sundry Antiques” (2021).
Julian Stuart. “Papa’s Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird” (2021).
Sydnee Thompson. “Roar, Sweet Child, Roar” (2021).
M. Elizabeth Ticknor. “Ren of the Thousand Faces” (2021).
Lavie Tidhar. “Judge Dee and the Poisoner of Montmartre” (novelette, 2021) and “Rain Falling in the Pines” (short, 2021).
Lori J. Torone. “Wytchen Wood” (2017).
Alice Towey. “Dark Waters Still Flow” and “The Fortune Teller of Kepler Station” (2021).
Genevieve Valentine. “Blood, Ash, Braids” (2015, reprint in 2021).
Greg van Eekhout. “Spaceship October” (2020).
Carrie Vaughn. “The Book of the Kraken” (2021).
Marie Vibbert. “Loving the Falls” (2021).
Alexander Weinstein. “Destinations of Beauty” (2021).
Sam F. Weiss. “There Will Be No Alien Invasion” (2021).
Martha Wells. “Thorns” (1995).
Liza Wemakor. “Scoria” (2021).
Fran Wilde. “Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.” (2021).
John Wiswell. “Open House on Haunted Hill” (2020), “Gender Reveal Box, $16.95” (2021), and “Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands” (2021).
Claire Wrenwood. “Homecoming” (2021).
E. Lily Yu. “Small Monsters” (2021).
Hal Y. Zhang. “The Empathy Lessons” (2021).
Unfinished
DNF shelf on Goodreads. Sort by date read or date added to see the more recent items.
Long Story Short Productions. Unseen podcast (completed).
M. Sorcier. Sacrimony.