This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging at the end of October 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.
The highlight of the month for me was Reclamation, the 2022 Eastercon, at which I was one of the Guests of Honour.
We got the Hugo ballot out; I celebrated my 55th birthday in a pub on Place Lux (the same place where I had celebrated my 50th, five years before); and I took little U to the Magritte Museum in Brussels.
I ticked off the last ceilings of Jan Christiaen Hansche:
And I posted the single post that has generated most views since I moved this blog to WordPress.
I read 25 books that month.
Non-fiction read in April 8 (YTD 29)
Human Nature / Family of Blood, by Naomi Jacobs and Philip Purser-Hallard
Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Colour, by Joy Sanchez-Taylor
The Ultimate Foe, by James Cooray Smith
Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini
Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters
Stucwerk, Hechtwerk van het Kasteel te Boxmeer, by W.V.J. Freling
The Limbless Landlord, by Brian Igoe
Full Circle, by John Toon 
Non-genre fiction read in April 1 (YTD 8)
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac MacCarthy
SF (non-Who) read in April: 11 (YTD 32)
Blackthorn Winter, by Liz Williams
Purgatory Mount, by Adam Roberts
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell
L’Esprit de L’Escalier, by Catherynne M. Valente
Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher
Elder Race, by Adian Tchaikovsky
Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers
The Past is Red, by Cat Valente
A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow 
Doctor Who books read in April: 4 (YTD 15)
Doctor Who: The Ultimate Foe, by Pip and Jane Baker
Legends of Camelot, by Jacqueline Rayner
The Man from Yesterday, by Nick Walters
Doctor Who: Full Circle, by Andrew Smith 
5200 pages (YTD 21,800)
11/25 (YTD 32/88) by non-male writers (Jacobs, Sanchez-Taylor, Williams, Valente, McGuire, Chambers, Valente, Harrow, J Baker, Rayner)
2/25 (YTD 12/88) by non-white writers (Sanchez-Taylor, Cooray Smith)
The best of these were two BSFA finalists, Blackthorn Winter, which you can get here, and the Diverse Futures anthology of essays, which you can get here; and a Hugo finalist, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which you can get here. I will never warm to either The Ultimate Foe or its novelisation, but you can get the latter here.