This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

Quite a lot of travel that month – I went to Eastercon at Heathrow via Belgrade, Serbia, and returned via Sofia, Bulgaria. In Belgrade I had a happy reunion with R, who had worked for me in Bosnia in 1998; I hired her the week before her 20th birthday, and she had barely changed.

On my birthday I went with F, and work colleagues T and A, to an sf convention in Antwerp, which was great fun too.

Of course the big sf news of the month was the success of the Sad and Rabid Puppies in dominating the ballot for the Hugo Awards, something I wrote a lot about and which continues to resonate.

I read 40 books that month, but did not finish most of them.

Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 17)
A Slip of the Keyboard, by Terry Pratchett
Here's One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves
The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 4)
Wages of Sin, by Andrew M. Greeley
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett

SF (non-Who): 28 (YTD 63)
Memory of Water, by Emmi Itäranta
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North
The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber
Babayaga, by Toby Barlow – did not finish
The Supernatural Enhancements, by Edgar Cantero – did not finish
Shanghai Sparrow, by Gaie Sebold – did not finish
Jani and the Greater Game, by Eric Smith – did not finish
Fish Tails, by Sherri S. Tepper – did not finish
The Rain-Soaked Bride, by Guy Adams – did not finish
Shadowboxer, by Tricia Sullivan – did not finish
The Stonehenge Letters, by Harry Karlinsky
Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle – did not finish
The Monster's Wife, by Kate Horsley – did not finish
The Return of the Discontinued Man, by Mark Hodder – did not finish
Timebomb, by Scott K. Andrews – did not finish
Hurricane Fever, by Tobias Buckell – did not finish
Kushiel's Justice, by Jacqueline Carey
The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword, by Jack Campbell – did not finish
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier – Steadfast, by Jack Campbell – did not finish
Resistance, by Samit Basu – did not finish
Glass Shore, by Stefan Jackson – did not finish
The Rhymer: An Heredyssy, by Douglas Thompson – did not finish
Ex-Purgatory, by Peter Clines – did not finish
Indigo, by Clemens J. Setz – did not finish
The Happier Dead , by Ivo Stourton – did not finish
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell – did not finish
Symbiont, by Mira Grant – did not finish
Sky Pirates, by Liesel Schwartz – did not finish
After Me Comes the Flood, by Sarah Perry – did not finish

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 15)
Burning Heart, by Dave Stone
Timeless by Steve Cole
Ship of Fools, by Dave Stone
Lethbridge-Stewart: Top Secret Files, by Andy Frankham-Allen, Nick Walters, Graeme Harper and David A. McIntee

Comics : 3 (YTD 9)
Ms Marvel vol 1: No Normal, by G.Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch
Sex Criminals, vol. 1, by Matt Fraction

~6,500 pages (YTD 25,500)
11/40 by women (YTD 31/104) – Dunnett, Itäranta, North, Sebold, Tepper, Sullivan, Horsley, Carey, "Grant", Wilson, Perry
4/40 by PoC (YTD 8/104) – Buckell, Basu, Alphona, Upchurch

Several books I really enjoyed this month: the erotic fantasy Kushiel's Justice, which you can get hereMs Marvel, which you can get hereScales of Gold, in Dunnett's Niccolo series, which you can get here. Some real turkeys as well, of which my least favourite was After Me Comes the Flood, by Sarah Perry; you can get it here.