Books in April 2023

 

April’s reading rate.

April was a steady month. I read 10 books (which brings me to 38 for the year), reading every day again for a total of 2,328 pages.

The mix this month was tilted heavily towards roleplaying books, including re-reads of Svalbard and Star Trek Adventures in preparation for North Star in just under a fortnight. I read the whole Liminal roleplaying game line (4 books) and loved it, along with Thay: Land of the Red Wizards for D&D, inspired by the recent movie.

I spent a chunk of time in the car so listened to two reasonably serious non-fiction audiobooks. One “We Own This City”, by Justin Fenton, covered police corruption in Baltimore and the operation that brought it down, and was fascinating. The other was “All In” by Lisa Nandy. I don’t often read political books but I was interested on her take on ‘levelling up’, especially as she’s looking at it from a Northern perspective. It was an agenda focused on localism and empowering communities, and leaves me with hope that if Labour win the election we may see something different rather than more of the same unmanaged decline in favour of London which we’ve faced since the late 1970s.

The only novel I read was N K Jemisin’s “The City We Became”, which I enjoyed a lot, a tale of New York’s avatar’s awakening. Five different people develop powers reflecting different boroughs as the city attains consciousness and they become aware that something is attacking them. Enjoyable.

Overall, a good month in books, except I failed to read First Age’s reading challenge set on the https://www.gamingtavern.uk/ so I shall have to return to that and read the book for this month as well.

3 May 2023