Gosh, April nearly slipped away without me noting what I read last month. Here we go:

1. Gateway by Frederik Pohl, one of the S.F. Masterworks series and an odd book, more about a man’s visit to his (robot) psychiatrist than exploring the galaxy (and certainly not the space opera I was sold by the blurb on the back), but an interesting start to a series of books for sure.

2. Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague deCamp (unavailable in print copy, ebook only) - what can you do if you're an archaeologist suddenly catapulted into the decline of the Roman Empire? Well, this book from 1939 explores that idea, and is pretty well executed, a contemporary review saying "Next to Wells's "Time Machine", this could be the best time-travel novel ever written.". I had never thought that knowing how to distil brandy would be so important.

3. Because one of them was by Martha Wells (of Murderbot fame) and another by Yoon Ha Lee, I read some of the short stories in the free ebook about health and the planet, Take Us to a Better Place. They were OK but the writing quality was quite mixed and it didn't really feel like a coherent collection.

4. The Place of the Lion by Charlies Williams - one of the Inklings alongside Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Fairly hard going, and it took me a long time to get through this, but really good, really interesting actual literature rather than my regular pulp reading. Feels like I should have had some kind of informed study group to read this with!