The start of October looked like it was going to be a very slow month for reading, which wasn't unexpected because I had two roleplaying conventions to prepare for in the time. However, that changed greatly when I started to read Martha Wells'
Murderbot Diaries.
In the month I read 11 books (although two of those were very, very short) for a total of 2,253 pages. So a fair few novella length stories. This year, I've read 98 books so far, and a total of 25,314 pages. I will read more books this year than last (102), but the page may or may not be higher.
I read one roleplaying game book (Deepnight Legacy for Traveller) in preparation for TravCon, and half of another scenario book (unrecorded) and I've been dipping into Shadowlands Games' Raven, but that will be finished in November.
I didn't finish any non-fiction, but have read/listened to a large chunk of a book about the Czech Secret Service's links to Middle Eastern terrorism. Again, that will mostly likely be completed next month.
I read two novels by William Boyd - Gabriel's Moon and The Predicament - both of which ware about about the same character, Gabriel Dax, a travel writer who ends up working as an occasional MI6 agent and courier. He has a crush on his handler, and a very different outlook on life. I enjoyed these a lot and will keep my eye out if there is another as there certainly was the space to add another book!
I reread
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (probably three decades on from the last time that I read it) and found it underwhelming once again. There are some fascinating ideas but the way it's written doesn't work for me. Now, this was the classic translation from the Polish to French and then to English and I'm told that there's a better translation now, which I may well check out. This was the Elle Cordova SF book club selection, and it was kind of weird as it became apparent that everyone was reading different translations!
I needed a palate-cleanse after Solaris so I decided to read the first of Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red. I'd picked most if these up in a bundle having watched the AppleTV series, and very quickly realised that the dry humour, sharp observation and energy of the stories was very much reflected in the TV show. I ended up reading 7 books in the series (although two of them were really short stories) back-to-back (and I've already finished the final two I have at the start of November). I found them hard to put down, and found myself ploughing through the whole series, something that very rarely happens for me(*). These are highly recommended. The title of the series originally put me off, but there's an awful lot to unpack alongside the action, as the stories do a good job of exploring sentient rights! They're mainly novella length, so quick reads.
For reference, after All Systems Red, I followed up with:
Artificial Condition,
Rogue Protocol,
Exit Strategy,
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy,
Home: Habit, Range, Niche, Territory,
Network Effect.
(*) Finding Iain M Banks' books when I was a university was the most notable example of this for me. I ended up spending a lot of my part-time job's salary burning my way through everything that he'd published in the early 1990s.
2 November 2025
