I quite fancied having a blog for another reason: keeping track of what I’ve read and watched. I average at about one book a week - it all blurs after a while. It’s nice to keep track of things (no, don’t fancy goodreads, for a variety of reasons).

So. December. For rather obvious reasons I kept my reading light and cheerful - I believe in mood engineering through the use of books, music and caffeine.

Such a great month for books! A bunch of long-awaited sequels appeared all at once.

The Mortal Word (Genevieve Cogman): the Invisible Library series is great. Interesting universe, strong female character who loves books and doesn’t take any shit from anyone, great tension building and explosive resolutions. This one delivered again - I keep waiting for Genevieve Cogman to run out of steam, but it hasn’t happened yet. Irene has to set up a peace treaty between the dragons, representing order, and the faeries, representing chaos, and someone seems bent on sabotaging things.

Lies Sleeping (Ben Aaronovitch): another long awaited sequel - the Rivers of London this time. I love Peter Grant’s down-to-earth, ironic inner voice, and the attention to architecture and social nuances. A couple of the other installments of this series felt a little short, but this one was a good length. Peter has to foil another plot to bring destruction to London by the faceless man. It brings one of the main plots of the series to its conclusion, which led some to speculate whether this was the last book - however Ben Aaronovitch seems to be gathering material for a sequel according to his twitter account, so more should be coming.

The Labyrinth Index (Charles Stross): after a few more or less successful attempts to change protagonists, Charles Stross seems to have found his voice again with Mhari, the vampire executive. She continues the fight to keep various eldritch entities from taking over the world - this time by saving the president of the United States (who’s more modelled after Obama than the current resident). It’s a great read and totally over the top, a very enjoyable pastiche of James Bond action mixed with Lovecraft.

Use of Weapons (Iain Banks): not so cheerful this one. I read this book for the Elite SF Reading Team (if you’re into science-fiction and around Bath, unlikely cross-section, let me know) as it’s known as one of the best of the Culture novels. I was once against impressed by Iain Banks’s naming skills. The main character is called Cheradenine Zakalwe, which almost, but not quite, sounds like a character of african descent who wandered into War and Peace. Zakalwe is a master strategist, and is used by the Culture’s Special Circumstances to command in military actions designed to push emerging cultures into what the Culture perceives as the right direction (theirs). It’s a reflection on war, when is the price of victory too high, the moral ambiguity of the Culture’s equivalent of the CIA using any possible means to impose their ideal vision of what the world(s) should be. I won’t spoil it, but after having read a fair number of Banks’s novel, I do think he has a signature move.