November is SciFiMonth and this year has been EPIC. My heartfelt thanks and love to everyone who took part – it’s been an absolute blast from start to finish! I read fewer books than I hoped; I was having too much fun scanning the SciFiMonth feeds – and the life admin I put off last month demanded a fair bit of my attention. I’m still not done. But I’m still alive, so I guess it can take a bit longer? And first I better start drafting the final Mission Status of the year. Sniff.
Reading Round-up
No surprises that my November reading has been SF focused! I even squeezed in a reread of Altered Carbon for a SciFiMonth Book Was Better… but ran out of time to write it up before the end of the month. Never mind, guess I’ll pop it into storage and resleeve the idea in a few weeks time.
- Europe at Dawn – Dave Hutchinson ★★★★☆
- Six Wakes – Mur Lafferty ★★
- Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan ★★★★
- Record of a Spaceborn Few – Becky Chambers ★★★☆
- Bitesize Books: Killing Gravity – Corey J White ★★★★
- Bitesize Books: Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach – Kelly Robson ★★★
- Tremontaine: What the River Wants – Ellen Kushner
Review Round-up
- Do You Dream of Terra-Two? – Temi Oh ★★★
- The Prey of Gods – Nicky Drayden ★★★☆
- Rosewater – Tade Thompson ★★★
- Bite-size Books: Water into Wine – Joyce Chng ★★★
Stacking the shelves
SFX Bookcon 2 blew any hope of restraining myself this month out of the water as I bought copies of books I’d loved as ARCs so I could get them signed, plus got a goodie bag with book goodies and oh yes SciFiMonth and the Black Friday weekend sales happened. And my blogiversary. My TBR never stood a chance.
Reading statistics
My goal – as always – is to read diversely and to love every book. I’ve put no targets on my reading this year beyond a number of books, but I’m tracking some stats for my own interest.
- 77 / 75 books or novellas + 5 DNFs
- 26 male (34%) / 44 female (57%) / 5 trans, non-binary or genderfluid (6%) + 1 group effort
- 23 (30%) – by authors of colour
- 10 (13%) – by LGBTQIA authors
- 20 ARCs / 11 off the shelf (it doesn’t count if I bought them to read them straight away)
- Game of Books score: 403 / 400 – guess December is all bonus reading!
Subjective Chaos
Just when you thought that was a wrap for additional commitments in 2018, we’re delighted to announce that the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards will be back in 2019 to take another stab at a hotly-debated, intensely courteous and delightfully collaborative go at identifying the best novels of 2018.
We’ll be keeping the same categories (Best Fantasy, Best SF, Best Novella, Best Series, Best Blurred Boundaries), and beginning the nomination process in January.
What are your hot tips for the best of 2018 (so far)?
onemore.org 