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Books in May 2026

Dom

Dom

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Infographic exported from TheStoryGraph.com showing a collage of the covers of the books I read this month, arranged in a 4 wide and 2 deep matrix. The top of the graphic shows an orange and blue avatar of myself with sunglasses on, with the text @cybergoths May 2026 Reads beside it. The books are described in the post below.​


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

Continue reading...
 
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7 books (1375 pages) for me in May bringing me up to 33 books (9539 pages) for the year so far.

One RPG book this month in the Freeport Trilogy as I finally got around to running that and we finished it off this month.

The Alex Gerlis book has been on my shelf for a few years and, while I enjoyed it, the blurb on the back of the book was misleading. The blurb is basically the last third of the book. You need the first two thirds to understanding the rest but it did feel like I was sold a dummy. Not sure I'll pick up any of the others they've written.

The two Rivers of London short stories were nice fillers and remind me that I really want to get back to the core books (I've a few left to read).

I may also be getting Stainless Steel Rat fatigue as the latest one wasn't as much fun to listen to. There are a couple left to read but I might leave these for a while yet.

Finally, but also the first one I read in May, was If Russia Wins which is an interesting look at how things could turn out. Quite scary reading as I couldn't see too many holes in the author's theories!
 
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