Having dodged the bullet for over four years, May 2024 was the month when I finally caught Covid-19. For about a fortnight I simply didn’t have the enthusiasm or energy to do anything much, including reading, though curiously I did become obsessed with playing Sudoku, to the point that I was actually dreaming about it at one stage.
I read twelve books in May 2024 taking my total for the year so far to fifty six books, though that total is a bit deceptive in that nine of the twelve books were chapbook length (in effect short stories), picked up in an attempt to ease back into the reading habit after a fortnight off the wagon.
None of the newly read made my Top Twenty list, so that’s unchanged from April 2024.
Glass Shatters Fist – James Cooper
Growing Things and Other Stories – Paul Tremblay
The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
The Good Unknown and Other Ghost Stories – Stephen Volk
The Ravenglass Eye – Tom Fletcher
The London Seance Society – Sarah Penner
The Three – Sarah Lotz
Hyde – Craig Russell
The Supernatural Enhancements – Edgar Cantero
Tower of Silence – Sarah Rayne
I Will Surround You – Conrad Williams
Joyland – Stephen King
Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories – China Miéville
Imposter Syndrome – Edited by James Everington & Dan Howarth
The Other Lives of Miss Emily White – A. J. Elwood
The Lost Village – Neil Spring
Beloved Poison – E. S. Thomson
Dark Asylum – E. S. Thomson
Black Feathers – Edited by Ellen Datlow
Among the Lilies – Daniel Mills
N.B. These rankings are not intended as noting literary merit – only an expression of how much pleasure each of these books gave me. And, of course, the whole process is highly subjective – at any other time my ratings might be entirely different.
Trumpetville 