Blimey, this has been a busy month. For those who haven’t noticed, it has been a month filled with heatwaves and near-drought conditions. Perfect weather for sheltering inside with a book. That’s not quite how I spent my month, however. Instead, June was a month that I hit the road and went on a rather epic book crawl.

A little over a week ago, I was lucky enough to see Chris Hadfield give his ‘Journey to the Cosmos’ talk in Brighton. It was a great evening of science, music, and inspirational messages. If you get the chance to see him in person, I highly recommend you take advantage of the opportunity.

Since I have relatives living nearby, I decided to stretch out my stay for a few days. And what does a bookworm do when he’s far from home? That’s right, he book crawls. I hit a bunch of towns from Portsmouth in the west through to Eastbourne in the east. Portsmouth itself was a bit of a failure, as despite having two large used bookshops, there was precious little science fiction on display. Happily, Chichester proved more rewarding, and I picked up some Rendezvous with Rama sequels, and a whole bunch of Stephen King short friction. One of my old favourites in Chichester, Kim’s Bookshop, has now closed, but it looks like there’s a new second-hand bookshop opening there next month.

In more good news, Kim’s Bookshop still has their Arundel shop open. If you’re in the area, I cannot recommend this place highly enough. I could have spent hours there in the attic, and walked away with a bagful of battered paperbacks. Almost as delightful was Camilla’s Bookshop in Eastbourne, where you’ll find books piled high in just about every corner. I filled a few gaps in my Star Trek library at Camilla’s.

Brighton itself is a treasure trove of book-holding charity shops, but I want to give a special shout-out to The Last Bookshop. Their SF stock is mostly drawn from the Gollancz Masterworks range, and all at less than £5. Well worth a trip if you want some classic science fiction to read.

Of course, while I was travelling through all these literary wonderlands, I was representing the blog in style. I’ve joked about making merch for a long time (and briefly had an At Boundary’s Edge beanie hat, about which the less said the better), but now I have an At Boundary’s Edge cap that’s perfect for the hot weather we’re experiencing. Bizarrely, I’m not the only one. I have convinced one friend to wear my merch ( and she models it far better than me), and there’s a chance that more hats will be out in the wild come FantasyCon. That’s right, I’m heading to FantasyCon in October, and my usual brand of nonsense is coming with me.

Returning to June, I was of course running a game of Junk or Jewel? I read ten books this month, all but one of which have under a thousand GoodReads ratings. My extended trip has caused me to fall behind on actually reviewing, but my ratings break down as follows:

• 1 Star: 0 Books
• 2 Stars: 3 Books
• 3 Stars: 3 Books
• 4 Stars: 2 Books
• 5 Stars: 2 Books

I will happily call that 30% Junk, 40% Jewel, and 30% somewhere in-between. Not bad going for books that clearly don’t get the love they deserve.

It’s horrifying to think that we’re almost halfway through 2025, but even scarier is the fact that some people have already been doing their halfway check-ins. Since I won’t be reading any more books in the next five hours, I can now do a six-month reflective, but I’m going to sift through the data a bit before bringing you my full report. You can expect that, and a whole lot more, in the weeks to come.