May 2021 books

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 most important news of the month was getting my first COVID injection. Weird to think that the pandemic had been going on for fourteen months at this stage. I also seemt o have started going back to the office at this stage, and we were holding office parties in the nearby parks.

With the public holidays, I had two excursions southwards: to Mons on my own, and with two colleagues to see Merovingian metalwork at Mariemont near Mons.

I met up with long-lost cousins in Belgium, and helped solve another genealogy case in the USA.

And I kept up my ten-day blogging about the pandemic.

I read 16 books that month.

Non-fiction 2 (YTD 16)
Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens: Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor, by Frank Collins
Statement and Correspondence Consequent on the Ill-Treatment of Lady de la Beche by Colonel Henry Wyndham, edited by Ann Auriol

Non-genre 3 (YTD 10)
Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally
The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant
Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom
 

SF 7 (YTD 54)
The Evidence, by Christopher Priest
In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells
Cloud on Silver by John Christopher
All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
Finna, by Nino Cipri
City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett
      

Comics 4 (YTD 14)
DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, by Adrian Tomine
Ghost-Spider vol. 1: Dog Days Are Over, by Seanan McGuire, Takeshi Miyazawa and Rosie Kämpe
Invisible Kingdom, vol 2: Edge of Everything, by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward

4,600 pages (YTD 25,900)
6/16 (YTD 39/98) by non-male writers (de la Beche/Auriol, Sharma, Cipri, Hans, McGuire/Kämpe, Wilson)
3/16 (YTD 18/98) by PoC (Sharma, Tomine, Miyazawa)

All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma, is really fantastic. You can get it here.

Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom, really sucks. You can get it here.