2025 Reading Challenge 24 Hogfather
It has been a long time since I read any Terry Pratchett. I used to read his books religiously as and when they came out in paperback. I loved the Corgi...
2025 Reading Challenge 23 Fingers Crossed
I grew up listening to music and going to gigs in the 90s, when that much criticised genre of music, shoegaze, was in full swing. I probably loved as much as...
2025 Reading Challenge 22 The Sword Triumphant
I’ve been listening to the Gareth Hanrahan trilogy, Lands of the Firstborn, on audiobook, but I pre-ordered a print copy of the final part to complete this...
2025 Reading Challenge 21 The Missing and the Lost
This is game designer and writer (or is it writer and game designer?) Robin D. Laws second non-RPG foray into The Yellow King mythos, after a collection of...
2025 Reading Challenge 20 Normal People
This is as far away from tabletop roleplaying games as I can think. I’ve been wanting to read this novel for a while. It seems Sally Rooney is everywhere...
2025 Reading Challenge 19 Metamorphosis
This was a last-minute swap in as I found I was going to be losing a weekend to an RPG con. Just seventy-odd pages, but he’s a writer I’ve loved since I...
Dice on the Borderlands
A big thanks to Cris and Jo for hosting some very successful RPGing at Chepstow Castle. This is Dice on the Borderlands. Chepstow Castle Glorious sun and...
2025 Reading Challenge 18 The Spy who came in from the Cold
Whilst I had the title The Spy Who Loved Me (cheesy 70s Roger Moore Bond flick) dancing around in my head, this is almost the antithesis of a Bond film. No...
2025 Reading Challenge 17 The Troop
A switch to more modern horror. I knew nothing about this. Somehow, it made its way into social media adverts, but it seemed like a bit of a successor to...
2025 Reading Challenge 16 The Masque of the Red Death
A penny in the honesty box, this was my emergency, get out of jail book. A mere eight pages, but I’ve also been dipping into other stories from Poe in this...
Play-by-Post for Gumshoe One-2-One
From October to April, I’ve been running the Gumshoe One-2-One scenario Alteregomania in a play-by-post style. Alteregomania by Michael Duxbury, Art by Chris...
2025 Reading Challenge 15 The Old Man and the Sea
Picked up one of the big dogs, Ernest Hemmingway. It is one of my “cheat” books, a short hundred-page-or-less book that allows me to get through busy weeks....
2025 Reading Challenge 14 The Drought
I picked this book because I knew I’d be running Cosmic Dark, the soon-to-be-released TTRPG from Graham Walmsley. Graham had mentioned that he’d been...
Mar 25, Why is a Raven like a writing desk?
A glance at what’s new and shiny from the ever-creative Raspy Raven folk. Active Campaigns The Dee Sanction Don’t miss out on The Dee Sanction Monad Edition...
2025 Reading Challenge 13 The Screaming Staircase
For the record, I loved the Netflix series Lockwood & Co., and it was only after getting into it that I realised it was also a series of books. A deep shame...
2025 Reading Challenge 12 Plague Ship
Thanks to Ian Cooper, the design lead for Questworlds who ran a brilliant playtest of Pioneer Space, his Rocket Punk genre pack, and introduced me to Andrew...
2025 Reading Challenge 11 Ancillary Sword
I was looking forward to coming back to the Imperial Radch universe having read Ancillary Justice when it came out and enjoying a unique and thought-...
2025 Reading Challenge 10 Down and Out in Paris and London
I’ve got a few George Orwell books on my reading list. Still, this one is new to me. I’ve often been fascinated and appalled by how society treats the lowest...
2025 Reading Challenge 09 Generation X
I picked up and first read Generation X as a disaffected youth looking for a job. I'd left university and was taking on various McJobs, whilst trying to find...
2025 Reading Challenge 08 The Wasp Factory
A writer who is still close to my heart, Iain Banks with or without the M left us on 9 June 2013. A massive gap in British literature and a small one in my...
