Finished reading The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, about how a wargame hack (D&D) came to be understood as a “role-playing game”, and what that meant to early players and theorists. I can’t recommend this book to you; only you know if you would find this interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course.
Finished reading Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, described as a novel but really a set of closely-connected short stories. As reviewers have said, the racism is far more scary than the horror, though the second half of the book does bring nice bits of the Lovecraftian “sure, magic is evil, but maaayyybe just this once?”.
Finished reading This Is How You Lose the Time War, a novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Well, wasn’t this a delightful read. If you like letters, time travel, and/or love, you’ll be delighted too.
Finished reading TARDIS Eruditorum, Volume 7: The Sylvester McCoy Years by Elizabeth Sandifer, part of a series of critical surveys of Doctor Who. Though a fan of the show, I’ve never seen a single episode of this era, much less read any of the novels, so I expected to skip my way through this volume. But Sandifer always had something interesting to say, and I found myself reading cover to cover.
Set aside The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty about halfway through. I’m frankly a little baffled by the good reviews; I’m not sure I was even reading the same book. Maybe you’ll like it — obviously plenty of people do — but it’s not for me.