What a lovely month November has been. The weather may have taken a turn for the worse round these parts, but that just makes it perfect for curling up indoors with a book. I managed to get out of the house for a little bit to go to Sci-Fi Weekender XVIII, but other than that it’s been a busy mix of working and reading, plus a little bit of blogging too. Let’s break it down.

BOOK HAUL

This month saw a fairly respectable book haul as I picked up a few odds and ends before

• Only War, by various authors
• Inferno! Presents: The Emperor’s Finest, by various authors
• Witchbringer, by Stephen B. Fischer
• Void King, by Marc Collins
• Outgunned, by Denny Flowers
• Da Gobbo’s Demise, by Denny Flowers
• Sidewise in Time, by Murray Leinster (Yes, it finally arrived!)
• Queen Amid Ashes & Other Stories, by Christopher Ruocchio
• In the Shadow of Lightning, by Brian McClellan (Non SF)
• The Lost Metal, by Brandon Sanderson (Non SF)

IN TRANSIT

Nothing to report here.

READING

Astoundingly, I managed to complete my entire scheduled reading plan, and even managed to squeeze in a few extra books towards the end of the month.

• Seven Novels, by Jules Verne
• Fire with Fire, by Christian Humberg & Berndt Perplies
• The Root of All Rage, by Christian Humberg & Berndt Perplies
• In the Heart of the Chaos, by Christian Humberg & Berndt Perplies
• Helbrecht: Knight of the Throne, by Marc Collins
• The Vorbis Conspiracy, by various authors
• Kasrkin, by Edoardo Albert
• Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany
• Roderick, by John Sladek
• Sundiver, by David Brin
• Sands of Dune, by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
• Only War, by various authors
• Shadows on the Sun, by Michael Jan Friedman)
• Ape and Essence, by Aldous Huxley (Non SF)

AUDIO

Having caught up with all my podcast listening, I’m now getting back into my audiobook backlog. I’m a few chapters into The Krytos Trap by Michael A. Stackpole, and very much enjoying it.

TV

Andor was incredible, and managed to keep its quality going through the whole series. I’ll hopefully be getting my full review up in the coming days.

ARTICLES

Just the one proper article from me, which was a SciFiMonth contribution in the form of Turning Back Time: The Best SF I read Before Becoming A Blogger.

SPSFC

It was all hands on deck with the SPSFC, as I reviewed the remaining three quarters of my slushpile (8-14, 15-21, 22-28) before announcing the team’s quarterfinalists.

WRITING

I finally dragged my way through the last few thousand words of Away Into the Sickly Light and it is hands-down the worst thing I’ve ever seen through to the bitter end. Glad it’s behind me now and fingers crossed the next one goes a little more easily.

SITE UPDATES

November saw a major overhaul of how this blog looks, which you may have already noticed. I’m still fiddling around with a few bits of review formats, but largely I’m happy with the more professional appearance. Related to that, I’ve dropped my old ‘Reviews, Views, and General Musings’ tagline in favour of ‘The New Home of Science Fiction Academia’ which hopefully signals the direction I’ll be taking the blog in the next year.

This month I sort of took part in SciFiMonth, one of my rare co-efforts with the broader SF community. I say ‘sort of’ because I only wrote the one article. I’ve done plenty of reviews, but honestly they’d have been here regardless. Even so, I’ve enjoyed my time with the tenth anniversary of the celebration, and hope to be a bit more committed next time around.

In terms of statistics, November has been my best month of blogging by a very wide margin. I’ve sailed past 4000 views for the first time, and got a good amount of engagement too. I put this squarely down to the fact that I now have a search function, which I somehow went nearly four years without.