Week three of our Ancillary Sword read-along takes us from Athoek Station to the planet below, as Breq embarks on a formal period of mourning in an attempt to stave off alien reprisal. As you would expect during a quiet retreat, there’s so much going on this week there won’t be room to talk about it all!

Week two of our Ancillary Sword read-along finds us on Athoek Station, coming to understand the nuances of life within the Imperial Radch. Every empire is hegemonic, but few empires completed erase all trace of the cultures they have consumed - which is to say this week features a lot of local world building, and hints at the introduction of an intriguing new angle in the near future…

Before I turn my back on 2025, I’m catching up on all the films I saw in the second half of the year (a stack, thanks to the Inverness Film Festival in November). There's 3 new favourites, many films I admired, and a few I appreciated rather than enjoyed and am unlikely to watch again. Top pick for your winter watching: …

Having been enthralled by our visit to the Imperial Radch during ScifiMonth, we’re continuing our read-along this year with Ancillary Sword because there’s no way we’re waiting for next November to find out what Breq does next. Expect spoilers from the get-go as this is the first of four discussion posts, not a review.

I didn’t read a lot in 2025, but I did well on selecting books I enjoyed. Part of that was ruthless DNFFN (DNF For Now) if something didn’t catch my fancy, part of it was leaning into rereads. I’ll focus on first time reads for my annual best of, with an honourable mention for some of the rereads at the end.

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I knew 2025 would be tough, and it absolutely was. Some of that was work-related and predictable, some was unexpected health challenges, and some was the self-inflicted choice to push my physical boundaries, which had the pleasant side effect of bolstering my mental health. Reading and blogging weren’t priorities for me (you’re shocked, I know), but happily a comfort rather than a chore.

Happy new year! Tis the season for retrospectives: I’m kicking off by laughing at my reading challenge progress in 2025. I suggested I would use my challenges to guide my reading in 2025; instead, I once again forgot all about them, not even checking in on them until December 30th. Less challenge, more serendipity. Given I read fewer books in 2025 than I have done in about 20 years (if not longer), you will be unsurprised that I have not made much of a dent!

This month has been full-on, as evidenced by the near-total lack of blog posts (I had stuff planned, I swear) and limited reading. Instead, I focused on friends, family and work deadlines, which means I finish the year exhausted but with a reasonably clear conscience. Reading Round-up I started the month with the Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, but a brief trip to London disrupted my reading and I forgot to go back to it (I will).

What, you thought ScifiMonth was all done in November? Heck no, we’re not done until the final mission logs. Sometimes life finds a way, sometimes it just gets in the way, so it’s taken a few weeks longer than usual to get to the final wrap posts, but maybe that means we can enjoy them all the more. Grab a cuppa, and let’s revisit the SF love shared in the second half of November.

What, you thought ScifiMonth was all done in November? Heck no, we’re not done until the final mission logs. Sometimes life finds a way, sometimes it just gets in the way, so it’s taken a few weeks longer than usual to get to the final wrap posts, but maybe that means we can enjoy them all the more. Grab a cuppa, and let’s revisit the SF love shared in the second half of November.

This is "Newgrange Winter Solstice 2025" by Tony Lanigan on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Newgrange is the best known of the 3 great passage tombs in the Brú na Bóinne complex. The passage and chamber are aligned in a

Alt: a group of men dressed in naval whites are dancing in a room. Channing Tatum is saluting front and centre

Togetherness that’s on the side of suffocating, history that won’t stay put or past, and nature that doesn’t just exist, benignly, but watches and waits….Folk horror deals in dissonance, drea…

This month has been so full I've already misremembered most of the highlights as having happened earlier in the year! I started the month on a mini-holiday on the Fife coast, before diving into the Inverness Film Festival (reviews coming soon) and finally settling into SF reads for ScifiMonth. I also started new meds to try and settle my migraines back down, so here's hoping that makes 2026 manageable in spite of what will be an exciting but relentless year at work.