Books in September 2024

The September 2024 cover collage…

I read a fair bit over the last month, and journeys for work meant that I made my way through several heavier books on Audible when travelling between sites. Raw stats are 11 books (2 non-fiction, 2 roleplaying and 7 fiction) and 3,052 pages read.

Non-fiction included Dr Jack Lewis’ “Sort your brain out” which is an wonderfully approachable exploration of how your brain works, how it influences your behaviour and the choices that you can make to influence it. It builds on some of the work that we have done for safety at work, so it was fascinating. “Why I’m no longer talking to White People about Race” (by Renni Eddo-Lodge) was a well written but challenging read, as it explores how sub-conscious (and conscious) prejudices and privilege plays out and how you most likely won’t see it if you are from a white background in the UK.

The roleplaying books were Cepheus Universal, which I reviewed here already, and The Dying Earth Revivification Folio, which I will be running at Furnace.

On to fiction; I start with the book that my brain keeps on trying to think of as non-fiction, The Fall of Númenor. This is a very approachable compilation of Tolkien’s writings on the Second Age, focused around the establishment and fall of the Edain island state after the end of the First Age, through to the Last Alliance’s almost pyrrhic victory over Sauron where Elendil, Gil-Galad and later Isildur where killed.  The audio presentation is excellent. If you want to know what Rings of Power is drawing on, then this goes much further as it has IP that the TV producers don’t have access to.

Tom Bradby’s Shadow Dancer was a brutally sad tale of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which doesn’t end well for many involved. Charles Beaumont’s A Spy Alone is a thriller that imagines that there was an Oxford spy ring as well as the Cambridge one, and takes that forward. Paul Vidich’s Beirut Station is another gripping espionage tale set in the middle east.

James SA Corey (The Expanse…) returns with the opening of a new series, The Mercy of Gods. It begins with a human settled world being overrun by overwhelming alien forces and follows the fates of some of the prisoners taken as they start to find out what is really going on. A promising beginning that kept the pages turning.

The last two books were novellas. The first - The Masquerade of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch, is a prequel to the Rivers of London series where Nightingale visits New York after the First World War. It was a fun read. The second, and probably my favourite book of the month (just) was Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Saturation Point, a great bit of world building that has a cyberpunk feel. A team is sent into uninhabitable jungle to find out what is going on. The protagonist used to work there as a scientist and slowly discovers what was really happening when she worked there and after. Gripping, and one that I found hard to put down.

7 October 2024