May 2026 saw me read 1,652 pages (10,626 pages in 2026) and 7 books (43 in 2026). This is down on my normal month, mainly driven by roleplaying book reading, plus getting distracted revisiting The Lovecraft Investigations podcast rather than finishing the audiobook I was listening to on journeys.
On the fiction side, I read the latest Murderbot novella from Martha Wells, Platform Decay, a tale of a corporate extraction from a hostile station. Enjoyable but it didn't groundbreaking. That said, I don't think I was really looking for groundbreaking when I read it. I also read another of my back catalogue of Clarkesworld Magazines, #202, which I enjoyed in little bite size pieces rather than doom-scrolling.
For the Elle Cordova book club, I belatedly read Ted Chiang's Exhalation collection of short stories. They were great thought experiments but they didn't grip me in the same way that they did in his previous collection Stories of Your Life and Others. I'm skipping this month's choice – Emily St John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility – because it's one that I've read recently. Instead, I'm digging into one of her novels that's been in my 'to read' pile for a while, Last Night in Montreal.
Roleplaying books; I read the Blue Planet Recontact Moderator's Guide for North Star 2026 (as a I was running it), and finished The Laundry: Applied Occult Computing. This is the starter set/book for the roleplaying game and has a complete campaign setting in Milton Keynes. I'd have preferred London, but I can see why Cubicle 7 went this way. The scenario does a great job of introducing the rules. I also read Gallows Corner (about which I will post more once I've finished my review) and Caught in the Rain. The latter is a lovely solo game about solving a mystery; as I picked it up on spec, I was pleased with what I got.
So a quiet month; hopefully I'll do better in June.
2 June 2026