Overall mood: unsure – this has been a busy month, an exciting month, a stressful month, and a sombre month all rolled into one, but my reading surprisingly picked up more than I anticipated. With my daily routine slowly returning to standard proceedings, and my data analysis for my PhD well underway, I have been finding more time to read. I have also been creating routines and schedules for my daily and weekly workloads so that I can read more, which is especially important moving forward as I don’t want to be stuck on a screen all day.

Books read:

Platform Decay by Martha Wells

I loved reading this, not only because Murderbot is one of my favourite book characters ever written, but because this series has become a real comfort comedy for me. It is fun, interesting, a little sci-fi jargon to keep my brain learning new things, and full to the brim with incredible characters, action, and enough snark and sarcasm to fuel a pack of teenagers for weeks on end. Platform Decay continues to bring brilliance and wit to this series and to science fiction in general, and for that I highly recommend (as always).

The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire by India Holton

The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire is sweet, saucy, a little bonkers, and a lot of fun, and I am so glad that I picked it up this month. It is a soft historical fantasy romance that will have you giggling and curling your toes, as well as laughing out loud at the wildly outrageous action and interactions on the page. Love’s Academic has been such a brilliant series to read for something lighthearted and fun, and I am very much looking forward to reading them all again soon.

How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division by Elif Shafak

This short yet impactful book is informative, confronting, and will have you exercising your critical thinking skills for the better. It is stark in its statements and, six years after publication, still reads like it was only yesterday. The events these days are still just as relevant to the outlook of this book, if not further showcasing how far we are descending the more we lie this way. It is enlightening, and I hope more people read this and provide thought to further the support for our communities globally.

Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel

This award-winning poetry collection had me loving all over the narrative style, structure, poetic prose, stanzas, and every word on the pages of this book. Black Sugarcane is exceptional, it is innovative, it is thought-provoking, and it it a statement maker. I have not read a poetry collection quite like this, and I long to read more of Nafanua Purcell Kersel’s writing, because this is sheer wonderment and it has awoken the poetry bug deep within me.

I also reread a few of my academic texts in advance of more PhD literature reviews and phrasing for my findings chapters. These are Reading Bestsellers: Recommendation Culture and the Multimodal Reader by Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo and Literature and Social Media by Bronwyn Thomas. I also had a read through a few chapters of Critical Conversations in Kaupapa Māori by Te Kawerau Hoskins and Alison Jones, but not the whole thing.

Currently reading:

Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Reread)

The End and the Beginning by K. J. Holdom

Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce