Love in the Time of Covid

A Memoir in 50 Essays

By: Ian Patrick

Narrated by: Michael Richard

Love in the Time of Covid is a memoir in fifty short essays written during the Covid era between 2020 and 2024. The essays describe the author's responses to media reports, debates, and public commentaries on a range of current affairs during the course of the pandemic. His primary focus is on the poisoning of social discourse during this period, when there was 'no love lost' in conflicts between adversarial parties.

©2025 Ian Patrick (P)2025 Ian Patrick

Very good writing and narration

I read my first Ian Patrick book six or seven years ago and wasn't too much into it because of the foreign names, although I thought lots of it was very good. But then I read more, and became transfixed. I thought my first review was a bit harsh but now I think he's a wonderful writer. So this book is very different. It's not a crime thriller but a memoir of the Covid years. It's not about Covid so much as about how we were all misled by the media. I think it is a very, very intelligent analysis of all that went wrong during the 2020-2024 period. I heartily recommend it to readers and listeners (I had read it before I listened to the audio (I got a complimentary voucher for the audio after buying the kindle version), and that was even better than reading it, because the voice and speech of the narrator are very good. All in all, it is brilliant, although I wish the book covered more international politics, but I can't complain because it is very comprehensive, and the essays are all short and very succinct.

The audiobook is even better than the book itself

Albany, NY.

I've had this book on my Goodreads shelf for a few months and have only just got to it recently. I read the writer's "Ryder Quartet" crime thriller six or seven years ago and loved it, so I wasn't expecting this, which is not a crime thriller. It really is a solid analysis of the failures of the media during the Covid -19 period. Some people will say it's a book about Trump but it's not - the author in fact says on half a dozen occasions that although it might sound like a Trump-supporting book, it's not - he only refers to some very outrageous lies told about Trump as a way of showing how the media can't be trusted to be objective, because they are so deranged by Trump. As I wrote this I looked at a totally scandalous BBC Panorama manipulation of Trump's words in order to spin a defective narrative about the man. They take his speech on January 6th 2021 and cut together two sentences nearly an hour apart, to make it seem as if he's exhorting his followers to violence. It is a total fabrication and I hope he sues them, just as he successfully sued ABC and CBS for similar behaviour. Anyway, I recently received an audio token after having bought this book a few months ago, and it has been a real pleasure to listen to the whole thing again after having already read it once. A really good book.

I didn't expect this

I didn't expect to get a memoir when I signed up for a crime-thriller newsletter. I liked the writer's police dramas of a few years back so I approached this with trepidation. But I have to admit I was caught, and read the whole book quite quickly. This is mainly because I share the writer's opinions about the press. I also purchased the digital version with all its links to videos and interviews. That was really fascinating. Then, out of the blue, I received a token to get the audio version, so this adds to the review I had already put on Goodreads. The narration was very clear and comfortable to listen to. All together, then, this is a very good book.

AMAZING RESEARCH AND VERY IMPORTANT

Mervyn P. (Scranton, PA). This was a different genre for me. About six or seven years ago I read the Ryder collection by the same author - well, I listened to it - and I liked it very much although I had a few reservations about the narration on audiobook. On this occasion the narration is excellent (the narrator is a guy called Michael Richards). His voice is crisp and clear with incredible resonance and diction without being pompous.

The book is very well researched, it seems to me. The data and the evidence and the quotations from speakers and interviews and congressional investigations are really fascinating. In one case the author actually goes into the court records of the Michael Brown case - I remember that case - and reports the actual evidence and the court findings to show that the police officer who shot Brown was completely vindicated, unlike the newspapers of the day who were of course predating the BLM hysteria and weren't interested in what actually happened because they wanted another "bad cop" shooting of an "innocent" man. This author is having none of that - he wants the truth and he searched for it tenaciously. He shows why the court findings exonerated the policeman. This is a writer you can trust to expose the distortions 0f journalists who want to report sensational stuff even against the evidence. This writer shows us the evidence. It was very good to learn about all of this during the period of Covid-19. I received a voucher for the audiobook, probably because I bought the ebook.

This should be required reading and listening

I read the writer's crime books nearly ten years ago and was interested to see this new non-crime book. I bought the ebook and then received a code to get the audio, so read and listened at the same time. I enjoyed it a great deal. The analyses are very short and insightful, and I happen to agree with virtually all of them. The book should be required reading for anyone interested in global issues affecting civil discourse. The recent killing of Charlie Kirk demands that people on both sides return to respect for debate and civil argument. This book comes at the perfect time. I urge everyone to read it.