Reading Roundup Wrapup: June 2020

Pick of the month: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley. I have this ranked third on my Hugo Award for Best Novel ballot... but it's still the best thing I've read this month, which has been kind of fallow quality-wise despite the fact my reading has been almost entirely dominated by Hugo finalists. But despite some minor issues, I did really like this book.

All books read:
1. Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood, with Steps along the Way at Murder, Madness, Mayhem, Movie Stars, Cults, Slums, Sociopaths, and War Crimes by J. Michael Straczynski
2. Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol 3: Conversion by Al Ewing & Rob Williams
3. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
4. The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 9, “OKAY” by Kieron Gillen
5. Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer
6. Emergency Skin by N. K. Jemisin
7. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One by Roy Thomas, with Dann Thomas and Gardner Fox
8. Joanna Russ by Gwyneth Jones
9. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
10. The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
11. Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker
12. To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
13. Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen

All books acquired:
1. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
3. Octopussy & The Living Daylights by Ian Fleming
4. Last Days of the Justice Society of America by Roy Thomas with Dann Thomas
5. Where's My Cow? by Terry Pratchett

Books on "To be read" list: 660 (up 2)
Books on "To review" list: ZERO (down 14)

That's right! I finally cleared out my review backlog. I don't know exactly when I got so far behind (sometime during my exam reading, which was 2012-13), but I've been tracking my review backlog since September 2015, when I had 164 books to review. Tracking it served its purpose of giving me some concrete motivation: a year later, it was down to 76, and then another year, 20. But though it dipped as low as 3 in August 2019, I've never quite cleared out everything, and it steadily climbed upward once I lost all my blogging time during lockdown, peaking again at 23 in May.

Since the semester ended, though, I've been pretty diligent about blogging every day, and I finally wore the list down to nothing this past weekend, when I wrote a review of Middlemarch. (This hasn't appeared yet; I have a buffer of eleven posts stockpiled right now.) I suspect I'll be able to keep it down during the summer, but that it will climb up again come the fall. But I will bask in my accomplishment for now!