Since late 2003, I’ve been recording (almost) every book that I have read. At 200-300 books a year, that’s over 5,000 books that I have written up here. These are the most recent; I also record the books I have read each week and each month. These days each review includes the second paragraph of the third chapter of each book, just for fun; and also usually a purchase link for Amazon UK. (Yes, I know; but I get no other financial reward for writing all of this.)
I have a couple of other blogging projects. Every 1 January, I post about science fiction stories set in the year to come, but written more than twenty years before. So far I have done this for 2020 (little did we know…), 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.
I am also posting weekly analysis of the most well-known book set in every country, by the imperfect measure of ownership on the three main bookshelf sites, LibraryThing, Goodreads and Storygraph. You can find those posts here.
This WordPress blog replaced my Livejournal in March 2022. I was able to copy across all of my old Livejournal posts; unfortunately the internal links in old posts will still in general point back to Livejournal, and though I was able to import images, I wasn’t able to import videos, so it’s a little imperfect.
Comments welcome.
Top posts on this blog (most views in the last seven days):
This was the first of the Thirteenth Doctor series of comics from Titan, the rest of which I had read and enjoyed, so coming back to the beginning now. This also exhausts the massive store of Doctor Who comics that I got from a Humble Bundle purchase in 2022, and it was certainly worth the rather minimal amount I paid for the lot.
This was an excellent note to finish on, as well. It’s a Christmas story, so reading it in the sunmmer wasn’t ideal; but Houser, who is one of the great Who comics writers, catches the Thirteenth Doctor’s voice absolutely perfectly. There is a fun plot as well to do with memory loss and a fake Santa Claus, but really you’re enjoying the ride. You can get Time out of Mind here.
This brings to an end my shelf of books that I acquired in 2022.
Last book acquired in 2022, read in July 2026 (Time Out of Mind)
Last book acquired in 2021, read in October 2025 (Het lijkt Washington wel)
I have got the gap down from 8 years for the 2010 books to two and a half years now.
My pile of unread books from 2023 is not as big as the 2022 pile was, only 25 of them – 14 non-fiction, 10 sf, and one poetry collection. Starting off the list are:
Bridging Worlds, ed. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki – the shortest book of those that I acquired in 2023 and have not yet read
Brian W. Aldiss, by Paul Kincaid – the non-fiction book that has lingered longest unread on my shelves
Twenty-first Century Blues, by Steve Walker – the sf book that has lingered longest unread on my shelves
Last Exit, by Max Gladstone – the top unread book of those I acquired in 2023.
Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) won the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Japanese writer to do so. In his acceptance speech he makes the point that it was 55 years since it last went to “an Oriental“, which is rather shocking. His Nobel lecture is about Buddhism, suicide and poetry. Snow Country was his first well-known novel, from thirty years before (published in various formats up to 1937). The Chairman of the Nobel Committee said of it:
we see a brilliant capacity to illuminate the erotic episode, an exquisite keenness of observation, a whole network of small, mysterious values, which often put the European narrative technique in the shade. Kawabata’s writing is reminiscent of Japanese painting; he is a worshipper of the fragile beauty and melancholy picture language of existence in the life of nature and in man’s destiny. If the transience of all outward action can be likened to drifting tufts of grass on the surface of the water, then it is the genuinely Japanese miniature art of haiku poetry which is reflected in Kawabata’s prose style.
It has only two chapters; so here is the second paragraph of the third section of the first chapter:
He started back as he saw the long skirts – had she finally become a geisha? She did not come toward him, she did not bend in the slightest movement of recognition. From the distance he caught something intent and serious in the still form. He hurried up to her, but they said nothing even when he was beside her. She started to smile through the thick, white geisha’s powder. Instead she melted into tears, and the two of them walked off silently toward his room.
translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
Maybe I was just in a bad mood on the two nights I read this (I was reading it alongside Xenophon’s Ephesiaca, which is a lot more fun) but I found that this moved rather slowly for such a short book. The core plot is about a married man and his feelings for a sex worker who he meets in a mountain resort, and the actual places are described very effectively, but I found it difficult to get into the heads of the characters and might not have finished it if it had been longer. I can see also how the writer is co-opting the form of Western novel into a Japanese context (which in fairness is what the Nobel Committee wanted to celebrate). But it’s a rare miss for me in this sequence.
This was also my top unread book by a non-white writer; next on that pile is another Japanese novel, Inspector Imanishi Investigates, by Seichō Matsumoto. Next in my list of non-white-male Nobel Literature laureates is Wole Soyinka, and I have his Death and the King’s Horseman ready.
Current Racebook, by Tochi Onyebuchi Hail, Penang!, by George Bilainkin Dead Lions, by Mick Herron
Last books finished Little Green Men and other stories, by Chris Boucher The Compleat Angler, by Isaak Walton The Listeners, by James Gunn Last Exit, by Max Gladstone (did not finish) The Compleat Angler: A Graphic Adaptation, by Gareth Brookes and Izaak Walton Death and the King’s Horseman, by Wole Soyinka
Next books Blake’s Seven: Scorpio Attack, by Trevor Hoyle Inspector Imanishi Investigates, by Seichō Matsumoto Kristin Lavransdatter II: The Wife, by Sigrid Undset
I normally start my reviews by quoting the second paragraph of the third chapter, or equivalent, but I’m going to save the second section of Book 3 of the Ephesian History to the end, because it deserves special treatment.
I was inspired to get hold of this because when I visited Gent last month, I was struck by Joseph Paelink’s The Fair Anthia Leading Her Companions to the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, which represents a scene from the first chapter, and inspired me to seek out the source material.
It’s the story of Anthia and Habrocomes (the ‘H’ tends to get dropped in translation), who fall in love and set off on a largely involuntary saga of travels around the Eastern Mediterranean, where they are shipwrecked, separated, kidnapped, threatened with seduction, encounter sultry pirates, brigands, merchants and merchant’s wives, believe each other to have died and are finally reunited. Sorry to spoil the ending, but this is a book written in about 200AD and anyway it’s about the journey, not the destination. It is a tremendous romp speaking from the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire and looking back to a more adventurous era. I have seen the Ἐφεσιακά described as the earliest known novel; I’d like to know more about the competitors for that title, but I can sense a format pushing at the boundaries and trying to find out what it can do.
You can easily get the 1727 translation by John Rooke on the Internet Archive. John Rooke also translated Arrian’s account of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, but little else is known of him. My eye was caught by a couple of sentences in the preface:
I muſt not however omit acquainting my Readers, that I have given a different Turn to one Paſſage, towards the beginning ot the third Book, becauſe it would not have ſounded well in an Engliſh Ear; and whatever Toleration the ancient Greeks might plead, it is entirely repugnant to the Genius and Cuſtoms of our Country. Whoſoever underſtands the Original may eaſily find out the Deviation, and to thoſe who do not, the Knowledge thereof is no ways material: This I only add, leſt any ſhould pretend to accuſe me for want of Skill in the Language, and take this Paſſage for a Handle.
Believe it or not, the passage in question is the very second chapter of Book III. Bear with me as I present it below in the original Greek and in Rooke’s translation. The context is that Habrocomas has fallen in with a hot bandit chap called Hippothous, who now tells his own origin story. I have added emphasis to a couple of key points.
“My Birth,” says he, “I owe to Perinthus, a City near the Confines of Thrace, and I am one of her chief Citizens: You must have heard how famous a City Perinthus is, and how rich her Inhabitants. Whilst a Youth, I was struck with the Charms of a fair Virgin there, whose Name was Hyperanthe. When first I saw her lead up the Perinthian Maids in a Dance, I lov’d her, nor could contain my self longer than the Time when the Vigils of her Country’s Festival were solemniz’d. ’Twas then I approach’d her, and entreated her to be favourable to me. She no sooner heard my Moan, than she inclin’d to Pity, and promis’d whatever she might. Our first Loves begun with Kisses, Embraces, and many Tears from my Eyes. Afterwards, we could upon Occasion, retire from the World, and enjoy each other’s Converse, without Suspicion, by Reason of our tender Years.
Long had we indulg’d our selves with this Freedom, and long had we passionately lov’d each other, when some God envy’d our Happiness. For from Byzantium, which is not far distant from Perinthus, arriv’d a certain Man, named Aristomachus, one of the chief of the Place, fam’d for Wealth, and a haughty Carriage. He had scarce enter’d the City, but (as if by the Direction of some God) he fix’d his Eyes on Hyperanthe, then in my Company, and was instantly struck with Surprize at her Beauty, which indeed was most astonishing. He was desperately in Love, and unable to restrain the Violence of his Passion, and therefore declar’d himself first to the Virgin, but finding no Encouragement there, she rejecting his Suit, because of her steady Affection to me, he perswades her Father, a Man cruel and covetous, to commit her to his Care for her Instruction, he presenting to teach her the rules of exact Behaviour.
He no sooner gain’d his Wishes, than he first shut her up at Perinthus, and afterwards convey’d her to Byzantium. I follow’d; and leaving all my other Affairs, whenever Occasion offer’d, I never fail’d to visit her. But these Opportunities rarely happening, our Kisses became less frequent, and our Converse more difficult, for we were strictly watch’d. At last, able to endure this no longer, I fix’d my Resolution, went to Perinthus, dispos’d of all my Effects there, took the Money, and return’d to Byzantium, where (by Hyperanthe’s consent) with Sword in hand I enter’d the House of Aristomachus, by Night, burning with Wrath, and gave him his Death’s Wound, as he lay encircled in her Arms. All Things being then hush’d in Silence, I escap’d unperceiv’d, carrying my Hyperanthe with me, and reaching Perinthus that Night, we embark’d directly on board a Ship, which lay ready for us, and every Body being ignorant of what had happen’d, we design’d to pass over into Asia.
The Beginning of our Voyage was pleasant enough, but after we had pass’d by the Island Lesbos, a violent Gust of Wind attack’d us, and overset our Ship. I, with my Hyperanthe, endeavour’d to reach the Shore by Swimming, and whilst I supported her, my own Labour seem’d the less, but Night coming on, and my fair one’s Strength and Spirits failing, she perish’d in the Waves. I, with some Difficulty, drew her Body on Shore, and gave her Burial. I sigh’d deeply, and shed many Tears over her, and not having Time to erect a Monument, happen’d, by Chance, to find a Stone, fit for the Purpose, which I plac’d over her, and whereon I engrav’d this extempore Epigram, to the Memory of her unhappy Fate.”
For ever sacred be this Place ToHyperanthe’sName, Hippothousno Tomb can raise, Thy Beauties to proclaim. My fairest Flower, alas! is fled, By faithless Winds opprest, Remorseless Waves roll’d o’er thy Head And robb’d thy Mate of Rest.
“From that Time, I resolv’d not to return to Perinthus any more, and therefore directed my Course into the greater Phrygia and Pamphilia, where, distress’d by Want, and disorder’d in Mind, I betook my self to Robbing. I serv’d, at first, as a Guard to the Party to which I belonged, but having, afterwards, gather’d 62a Band of my own, in Cilicia; I became famous, ’till, at last, all my Companions were surpriz’d and slain, or taken, a little before I saw you. This is a brief Account of my Adventures: Now, my Friend, oblige me with yours, for you seem driven by some strange Necessity to travel.”
From the English translation alone, it’s a fairly standard story of love gone tragically wrong, one of several in the course of the Ἐφεσιακά. But the part that Rooke felt he could not translate directly into English is this: in the original Greek, it’s absolutely clear that Hippothous fell in love, not with a beautiful young girl called Hyperanthe but with a beautiful young boy called Hyperanthes (incidentally otherwise recorded only as a Persian name). He didn’t see a young girl dancing with the other maidens; he saw a beautiful young man (μειράκιον) exercising in the gymnasium (πρῶτα ἐν γυμνασίοις διαπαλαίοντα). This was what Rooke felt “entirely repugnant to the Genius and Cuſtoms of our Country”. It’s not the only case of same-sex romance (let alone lust) in the Ἐφεσιακά, but it’s the one where the reader is most clearly meant to sympathise with the unhappy lover. Incidentally the 1797 translation into French is perfectly clear that Hyperanthes is a boy.
Hyperanthes‘ epitaph in the English translation bears very little resemblance to the Greek original, except that the dead youth is compared to a flower in both, the name being an obvious enough play on ἄνθος meaning ‘flower’.
Anyway, this short romp from an earlier age is well worth seeking out. I have linked to the Rooke translation and the French version above, but there is also an educational edition which you can get here.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
The major personal developments for me in October 2006 were breaking the news of my imminent job change to colleagues and friends, and also finding a daycare place for B, whose behaviour was becoming too difficult for her special school to cope with. We had some diversion also at work when it was rumoured that we might get the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. (We didn’t.) My foreign trips were a rather weird one-day trip to Ankara, Turkey, (the only time I have been there); a much less weird conference in Chişinău, Moldova; and a half-term visit to my sister in Burgundy at the end of the month, taking in the Eiffel Tower en route (inspired by Barnaby Bear). Here’s the view from the top (well, as far as we could get), with F (aged 7) practicing to be a teenager.
Sadly this was also the month that we lost David Stewart, of Irish sf fandom.
As well as enjoying I, Claudius and the first episodes of Torchwood, I read 16 books that month.
As usual when confronted with a range of unwelcome alternatives, Mrs Thatcher tacked and veered from one point to another, interrupting Geoffrey Howe’s attempts at ordered exposition and from time to time bringing things back to square one with an observation of startling primitiveness. Why could we not redraw the border to exclude predominantly Catholic areas and relieve ourselves of the expense of paying social security to people who did not want to belong to the United Kingdom anyway? It was pointed out that this would not solve the problem: Catholic and Protestant communities were too intermingled in border areas; and even if adjustments were made to the border, the main body of Catholics lived in West Belfast and would remain within Northern Ireland. In that case, why not a wall through the centre of Belfast like the Wall through the Centre of Berlin? (No one seemed to want to comment on this). Following this line of thought, the Prime Minister asked why arrangements could not be made to transfer those members of the minority community who did not wish to remain under British rule to the Republic. After all, she said, the Irish were used to large scale movements of population. Only recently there had been a population transfer of some kind. At this point the silence round the fire became transfused with simple bafflement. After a pause, I asked if she could possibly be thinking of Cromwell. ‘Cromwell: of course.’ ‘Well, Prime Minister, Cromwell’s policy was known as “To Hell or Connacht” and it left a scar on Anglo-Irish relations which still hasn’t healed’. The idea of a population transfer was not pursued.
I am going to start by noting that a couple of my recent Facebook posts about Irish politics have attracted some tedious trolling from drive-by commenters. I will wield the block function more readily in future, for trolls of any variety. I will also note that the lastcouple of offenders were from one side rather than the other.
Several people had recommended this book to me as the authentic insider account of the negotiations behind the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1983-85. They were right; it’s absolutely what I wanted to read.
Goodall was the right hand of Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong, who was the brains behind the entire process; the story Goodall tells is one of constant negotiation between the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Northern Ireland office and the prime minister herself, plus occasional appearances from the Irish government, where Garret Fitzgerald as Taoiseach was closely engaged and senior officials very motivated to make things happen.
My basic question was, what was the origin of the Agreement, which gave the Irish state direct input into policy-making in Northern Ireland in the absence of a devolved government? The answer appears to be that Armstrong was the prime mover; after her second election victory, he put it to Margaret Thatcher that the only place in the world where British troops were being killed in anger was inside the United Kingdom, and something had to be done. He was also friendly with Dermot Nally, his equivalent on the Irish side, as both had been closely involved with the Sunningdale negotiations of 1973, only ten years earlier. But it helped that he had Thatcher’s complete confidence, and that she too saw the logic that something had to be done.
One widely circulated theory that I did not find much evidence for from Goodall’s account (though of course his is necessarily a partial view) was that the Americans had pressed the UK into signing the Agreement at the urging of John Hume. I am sure that Hume did his best to mobilise the Americans to that end, but without Armstrong there would have been nothing to mobilise about. There were several points when negotiations reached a low point, and it was Armstrong who decided to invest his personal political capital into saving the process. Hume was not close enough to the negotiations, let alone to Thatcher, to have been able to do that.
Anyone who subscribes to the very silly notion that Garret Fitzgerald and Fine Gael were crypto Brits should read this; it’s absolutely clear that the Irish government which he led pushed the case of Irish nationalism very effectively, and came out with more concrete results than sixty years of whining about Partition had achieved. At the same time there was a learning process for the Irish side, to discover how far the British could go and for how much in return. And I must say it is striking how many rounds of negotiations were concluded over luxuriously catered lunches and dinners, and the beverages consumed afterwards. (Though you still had to report back in the morning.)
It’s also very striking that the only woman with a speaking part in the whole process is Margaret Thatcher. At the time she was the only woman in the British cabinet, and there was also only one woman in the Irish cabinet (Gemma Hussey). Their officials and advisers were all middle-aged white men too, and so were the political party leaders in Northern Ireland (who were barely consulted anyway, including Hume). And this is only forty years ago.
I found a passing reference to an elderly retired British diplomat who I know, who played a minor part in keeping the show on the road at a late stage, and sent him snapshots of the pages where he is mentioned. He was delighted; he had no idea that he was in the book.
I think that the Anglo-Irish Agreement was a success, and that it was critical in bringing about the Good Friday Agreement thirteen years later, now 28 years ago. It was constructed to be almost unwreckable. It showed political Unionism very clearly that a return to majority rule was not on the cards. Unionism was deeply traumatised, but they had it coming to them, having wilfully destroyed the Sunningdale power-sharing arrangement and failed to put forward anything even half as good themselves. It was an important and significant on the way to lasting peace.
One of several essays by other people in the last third of the book also asserts that the Agreement gave a push to the new thinking in the IRA and Sinn Fein that led to the Hume/Adams talks, the secret channel with the British government and the ceasefire. I think the biggest factor there was certainly exhaustion from decades of conflict with no progress, but the fact that there was a political process happening demonstrated that other ways of investing energy could bear fruit.
I still don’t quite understand Thatcher’s own psychology here. I suspect that she thought there would be clear and immediate benefits on security co-operation – I remember a very conservative family friend telling me, the weekend after it was signed, that if there were security benefits, then infuriating the Unionists would have been worth it. Any such benefits were not really obvious; there were 57 deaths in the Troubles in 1985, which was actually the lowest of any year between 1971 and 1994, so the violence actually increased after the Agreement. But it clarified the landing zone for how it could be brought to an end.
A nice little collection of 3-4 page stories about each of the Doctors from Hartnell to Capaldi, including also Hurt, structured as the Doctor’s memories flashing through their mind as they change from Capaldi to Whitaker. Not terribly deep, but quite joyous. You can get The Many Lives of Doctor Who here.
Denmark is in Northern Europe, with a land border with Germany to the south (adjusted after the first world war) and a very close sea border with Sweden to the northeast. It has been a recognised state for almost 1100 years, and historically at different times controlled Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Iceland, New Jersey, what are now the US Virgin Islands, chunks of England and Germany, and is still the sovereign power over Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Fans of politics will know the TV show Borgen, based on a slightly alternate reality where Margrethe Vestager (or someone rather like her) becomes prime minister.
Danish is one of the northern Germanic languages, related to English, Dutch and German, more closely to Swedish and even more closely to Norwegian, which only became a separate literary language in the nineteenth century.
I have only been to Denmark a couple of times, though I have many Danish contacts – in particular, I was friendly with Uffe Ellemann Jensen, the former foreign minister who missed out on becoming prime minister in 1998 by 85 votes. In my 27 years in Brussels, I have always found Danish officials (and other Danish people) easy to engage with. So it’s a place I have positive feelings about.
See here for the methodology of these posts, though NB that I am now also using numbers from StoryGraph. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in the current boundaries of Denmark.
The top three here were also the top three, in the same order, when I crunched these numbers in 2015, and the other books I found then also feature in the above list.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s best known play, and it is very specifically set in Denmark. We had the Shakespeare effect before for Italy, and I haven’t crunched the numbers yet, but I expect the same for Cyprus.
Number the Stars is a novel about a Jewish girl in hiding during the Holocaust. Some of it is set in Sweden, but the majority in Denmark.
More than half of Beowulf is explicitly set in Denmark. Hrothgar is the king of the Danes and Heorot is his palace.
The Little Book of Hygge is about good living, firmly set in Danish culture and habits.
The Keeper of Lost Causes aka Mercy (originally Kvinden i buret, “The Woman in the Cage”) is the first in a series of crime novels featuring Department Q of the Copenhagen police.
Smilla’s Sense of Snow aka Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (the latter is closer to the original Danish title, Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne) is another crime novel, about the death of a Greenlandic boy and the Greenlandic roots of the woman who investigates it.
The Chestnut Man is another crime novel.
For once, I did not have to disqualify any books here; the top eight tagged as ‘denmark’ on the various sites are the eight listed above. However that’s only because I included the StoryGraph numbers; without them, two books which I would have disqualified were ahead of The Chestnut Man: Out of Africa by ‘Isak Dinesen’ (set in Kenya) and Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard (set in Biblical Palestine).
Danish women writers bubble under on my calculations. Karen Blixen (‘Isak Dinesen’) has already been mentioned. The Employees by Olga Ravn is set in outer space. On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle is set in France. The top book by a Danish woman writer (probably) set in Denmark is Janne Teller’s existential teen story, Nothing.
After the Arthur C. Clarke award on Wednesday night (again, congratulations to Emma on her win for When There Are Wolves Again!), I had time on Thursday to look at a couple of art museums in London – and then was inspired to check Belfast’s offerings the next day.
I must have walked past the Courtauld Gallery a hundred times or more. It’s just inside Somerset House, which I have visited for both business and pleasure. There are three floors of superb art. It reminded me of the Mauritshuis in The Hague – very digestible. Just to pick two items from the permanent collection that jumped out at me (these are the Courtauld’s own photographs):
This is known as the Courtauld Bag; an intricately decorated handbag made from a single brass sheet, ornamented with silverware, presumably made for a rich woman in the Mosul are of what is now Iraq in the 14th century. Amazing stuff.
This needs no introduction. The Courtauld has only two van Gogh’s, but if one of them is “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear”, there is no reason to complain.
There is a lot more, especially of the Flemish and Dutch masters and the Impressionists, but this is going to be a long post anyway so I’ll just recommend that you see for yourself.
For £4 extra at the moment you can get into a temporary exhibition exploring Barbara Hepworth’s use of color. I have had an affection for her work since my Cambridge days, as one of the six copies of her Two Forms (Divided Circle) was on display in the Memorial Court gardens in those days. (It has now apparently been moved to Downing College.) One doesn’t think of her as a particularly colourful artist, but the case is well made. Here is her Sea Form, a 1958 bronze which allowed her to experiment with the patina.
I have no excuse for not previously visiting the Courtauld. I have every excuse for not previously visiting the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration which has been open under that name only since June 2026, which is after the last time I was in London. (It was previously the House of Illustration, from 2002 until it closed for relocation in 2020.) As of this writing, Quentin Blake is still alive and turns 94 later this year.
There are three floors, the top one displaying a fairly small selection of Blake’s own art. The very first thing you hit once you come in is a couple of illustrations for Waiting For Godot from 2021 (when he would have been 88). Quentin Blake and Waiting for Godot are two things I had not expected to see linked (though in fact he did a lot of sketches to accompany theatre reviews in Punch in the mid-century).
There are also a set of characters from Macbeth as played by crows – here, Lady Macbeth and a Scottish Doctor.
One gets a real sense of how Blake feels that his art has a purpose.
The middle floor had a small exhibition of work by Welsh / Sri Lankan artist Murugiah, which has vibrant colors and movement but the only piece that really got me was the wooden sculpture, “Compassion”.
But the ground floor currently holds a fascinating history of LGBT comics, including one where I snorted with laughter at the translation from the original Dutch – yeah, “awesome” covers some of the meaning of “geil”, but not all of it. The standards are all there, notably Alison Bechdel, but there are some more obscure items as well such as Sapphowoman, the lesbian superhero of Belfast from around 1990.
The museum is in Clerkenwell, in a 19th-century engine house and coal stores which used to be part of the Water Board’s operations. The nearest Tube station is Angel. Well worth a visit.
In parentheses, I also went to an exhibition about 1996 in the Barbican. This was not substantial, mainly Spice Girls and European Championship with a bit of Blair and Blur and other stuff. Still, it is odd to think that it is as far in the past now as 1966 was then.
On Friday, back in Norn Iron, we ventured forth en masse to the Ulster Museum, but determined to look at the art collection on the top floor as a priority. There is a temporary exhibition highlighting the museum’s textiles collection, which had to be completely rebuilt after almost all of the hundreds of stored artifacts were destroyed by an IRA firebomb attack in 1976. (The explanatory displays make no reference to who planted the firebombs, but it is not difficult to find out.) I didn’t get any good pictures of the exhibits, which need to be seen in three dimensions anyway, but here is the museum’d promotional video. Unlike the rest of the museum, you have to pay for this bit.
https://youtu.be/5vJo0Y2pARY?si=XAcKBRmTZX29d4v_
The museum’s regular art collection is better than I remembered. Even U appreciated it, as she sometimes does, here with “The Patron (The Festival of Saint Kevin at the Seven Churches, Glendalough)” by Joseph Peacock, painted in 1813.
I love the expression on the face of Miss Cherry Crawford (1768-1845), the only woman admitted to the Brotherhood of the United Irishmen, whose son was one of the founders of the museum. The portrait by Joseph Wilson was painted in 1789 when she was 21 and full of rebellion.
Finally, Sir John Lavery painted his wife Hazel (who also used to appear on Irish bank notes) watching a German air raid on London in 1917. The planes may not look much like biplanes, an she looks very small compared to the furniture and the window, but there is a tremendous sense of the outside world of war, intruding on the artist’s studio.
I have always tended to start at the bottom of the Ulster Museum and work up, which meant that by the time I got to the art gallery (if I got there at all) I was tired and ready to go home. It was good to ring the changes.
Anyway, that was some very thought-provoking holiday art.
I had started the term with my battels paid and over a hundred pounds in hand. All that had gone, and not a penny paid out where I could get credit. There had been no reason for it, no great pleasure unattainable else: it had gone in ducks and drakes. Sebastian used to tease me – ‘You spend money like a bookie’ – but all of it went on and with him. His own finances were perpetually, vaguely distressed. ‘It’s all done by lawyers,’ he said helplessly, ‘and I suppose they embezzle a lot. Anyway, I never seem to get much. Of course, mummy would give me anything I asked for.’
I had read this many years ago, appropriately enough borrowed from the library at Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy at Cambridge University, where I spent a lot of time as an undergraduate. Fisher House in the late 1980s was still shaking off the traumas of twenty years before, when the veteran chaplain Monsignor Gilbey was displaced after three decades.
There were ongoing tensions between the posh and the less posh, and between traditional Latin vs folk Mass worshippers, two cleavages which had substantial but not 100% overlap, and where being Irish I was able to flit around the boundary. Once or twice a year, the octogenarian Monsignor Gilbey would sweep in to visit and celebrate Mass the old way, exciting the acolytes. There was palpable nostalgia for the days that Waugh writes about in Brideshead Revisited and elsewhere.
Indeed, it’s a little shocking to realise that this 1946 novel was only half as old in 1986 as it is now in 2026. I loved it then, and I loved it on rereading. Sure, it’s about a bunch of privileged upper-class kids, and sure, the author is being didactic about Catholicism; but the interpersonal dynamics are fascinating and the dialogue really cracks along. Just to pick one minor character, the narrator’s father, stunningly and apparently unintentionally rude in every conversation:
‘So you’re being divorced,’ said my father. ‘Isn’t that rather unnecessary, after you’ve been happy together all these years?’ ‘We weren’t particularly happy, you know.’ ‘Weren’t you? Were you not? I distinctly remember last Christmas seeing you together and thinking how happy you looked, and wondering why.’
It’s that ‘wondering why’ that makes it a classic line, and I hope John Gielgud got to say it in the TV version. (I have not checked.)
My only complaint is that we end rather weakly, with Sebastian disappearing off stage and Charles unable to get it together with his sister Julia at the point when it all seemed possible. But sometimes life doesn’t offer completely satisfactory endings, and it’s the author’s choice to tell us rather than show us what happens to Sebastian. A return visit that did not disappoint me. You can get Brideshead Revisited here.
This was my top unread book acquired last year, my top unread non-genre fiction book, and my top book not yet reviewed here. Next on all three piles is Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
September 2006 was a momentous month for me: ploughing through unread emails in Budapest on the evening of the 1st, I found a message from Independent Diplomat, with whom I had been in communication for about eighteen months, inviting my application for the position of director of their not-yet-established Brussels office. I applied, was interviewed later in September, and got offered the job early in October. Apart from my trip to London for the interview, I also went to Washington DC and New York for networking and to Athens for a conference during the month.
6,900 pages (YTD 43,100) 5/22 (YTD 25/144) by women 2/22 (YTD 7/144) by PoC
Two New York tales topped my personal list for the month: my old friend David Feige’s autobiographical account of the American justice system, which you can get here, and the graphic version of the 9/11 Commission report, which you can get here. The worst book of the month was Nebula-winning The Terminal Experiment, which was not quite as bad as I had expected, but my expectations were low; you can get it here.
Second paragraph of third section (of the first of two chapters):
‘That’s all the sixes,’ his companion said, joining us.
Another of the recent Who novelisations, by the writer of the original TV story. I don’t seem to have made a note about this story when it was first broadcast. When I first rewatched it in 2013, I wrote:
I fear this is becoming a boring refrain, but I had forgotten how good The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit actually is. I think it is our first proper base-under-siege story in New Who (perhaps arguments can be made for The End of the World or Dalek, but I won’t) and perhaps it’s a return to that comfort zone of Old Who, with the difference of a more diverse base crew than Old Who would have had (the black guy would never have been in command in the old days, and the smart woman would never have been chief scientist). The scarily different bit is not so much the monster – though it is well done, both the descent to the pit and the technical realisation of a superhuman incarnation of evil – but the Ood, who are very creepy indeed. Having a slave race never works out well in Who, but here the message is that by exploiting the Ood, humanity has opened a potential route for its own destruction. Terrific stuff.
In 2022, coming back to it for Simon Bucher Jones’ Black Archive, I wrote:
Rewatching it now, I was again pleasantly surprised. David Tennant is always watchable, but here the chemistry between him and Billie Piper is at its peak. It also struck me that the plot element of the TARDIS being lost on a world where a more cosmic battle is playing out had been done before, and worse, in Frontios.
I didn’t rewatch it again before reading the novelisation, as my memory was still pretty fresh.
This is another one of the good ones. It is presented as a set of testimonials, and other incidents, from the enquiry that the Krop Tor base crew faced when they finally got back. This neatly solves a story-telling problem: you don’t need an omniscient narrator when you have a bunch of different viewpoints, and each admits from the start that each has only a partial view of the events.
Doing the story that way means that you end up with quite a different experience of the plot from watching the original TV version, but a good one. It also centres the guest characters, and the impact that the Doctor and Rose make on the rest of their lives, which doesn’t often feature in what we see once the TARDIS departs. There is one chunk of narrative told from the Doctor’s own point of view about three quarters of the way through, and it’s not clear how that gets into the book, but I think most readers will swallow it anyway. The original story is good, and the novelisation is good too.
I don’t think I had realised that Jones was the author of one of my favourite Bernice Sumnmerfield novels, Beyond the Sun, and of the New Adventures novel Bad Therapy which I also enjoyed. He also wrote the “Dead Man Walking” episode of Torchwood. One to keep an eye on.
Current The Listeners, by James Gunn Last Exit, by Max Gladstone The Compleat Angler, by Isaak Walton Racebook, by Tochi Onyebuchi
Last books finished Sleeping Murder, by Agatha Christie The Time of Angels, by Jenny Colgan Red Rabbit, by Alex Grecian Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor Doctor Who: The Invasion, by Ian Marter Making Peace in Northern Ireland, by Charles B. Strozier Tuki: Fight for Fire, by Jeff Smith The Invasion, by Stephen Hatcher
Next books Blake’s Seven: Scorpio Attack, by Trevor Hoyle Dead Lions, by Mick Herron
Second paragraph of third essay (“Ethnic Prejudices and Discrimination: The Case of Kosovo”, by Lazar Nikolić):
Prejudice, as indeed discrimination itself, produces changes which can be analyzed on several levels. In this work practical consequences of different forms of stereotyping are analyzed: firstly, at the micro level (the level of the individual as actor in everyday life); secondly, at the middle level (the level of social institutions and group memberships) and thirdly, at the macro level (the level of society). All these levels include different examples of relationships, actions and ways of thinking between Albanians and Serbs in individual, group and community settings. Examples that follow specify different strategies of selfperception and its interpretation, perception of the ‘other’ and perception of relationships.
A collection of academic essays on Kosovo published in 2003, so before the final status process had started, though after it was already clear which way such a process would go. To be honest, I was surprised at the poor quality of some of the pieces; presumably (though I don’t think this is made clear) they are submissions to a conference. The last three however, looking at the effects of the Kosovo situation on Albania by Aldo Bumci, (North) Macedonia by Goran Janev and Serbia by Florian Bieber, are very good state-of-the-nations pieces which stand the test of time; Serbia perhaps has changed most since then, but not really because of Kosovo. You can get Understanding the War in Kosovo here (at a price).
This was the second last of the books about Kosovo on my shelves acquired in 2023. However I’m not going to bother writing up the last of them (Blood Libel, by Bardhyl Mahmuti) so my 2023 books list will end with a couple of Doctor Who comics.
Second paragraph of third story (“And isles where good men lie…”):
Still spitting noisily, Fortune pushed himself up and walked heavily to the window. Half a million miles beyond the orbit of the Moon the ship made a minute course correction….
I never met Bob Shaw, who died aged 64 in 1996, but I am aware of him as Northern Ireland’s leading science fiction writer of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, along with James White, and he apparently had a great line in humorous convention speeches (for which he won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1979 and 1980). I have fond memories of his A Wreath of Stars, but rather bounced off both Orbitsville and The Ragged Astronauts when I tried them a few years ago.
Tomorrow Lies in Ambush is a collection of some of his short stories originally published between 1966 and 1971. The most republished of these is “The Happiest Day of Your Life”, a very short piece about a future where children receive all of their education in a single day. That could have been really poor if played for laughs, but it actually comes out very powerfully, reflecting wistfully on the importance of childhood as a part of the human experience.
Most of the stories are solid engineering sf of the type you would expect from Shaw, who was an aeronautical engineer by profession. A couple feature one of his other trademark tropes, a poisonously bad marriage between the leading characters, presumably based on a situation he had closely observed in person. It’s not ground-breaking, but it’s not bad either.
The reason I got the book, however, was to read “The Cosmic Cocktail Party”, a 1970 story involving the personalities of people who have died being preserved in a computer storage called a matrix, in which one particularly strong individual has created a colonial hunting fantasy which the other minds in the matrix are compelled to acknowledge and participate in; part of the technobabble around this involves artrons.
Doctor Who fans will immediately recognise elements of the bedrock of one of the greatest Who stories, The Deadly Assassin. To put icing on the cake, the concealed villain of the longest of the stories in the book, “The Pilot Plant”, appears to be an AI called Xoanon (though it turns out to be humanoid rather than robotic). This is also the name of the mad computer in The Face of Evil, the story after The Deadly Assassin. Going back to “The Cosmic Cocktail Party”, it also features a very minor character called Uvarov, which is not a million miles from Uvanov, the captain in The Robots of Death (the story after The Face of Evil).
Credit for pointing this out belongs entirely to Shakespeare scholar Martin Wiggins, who included it in the information in the Season 14 Blu-Ray commentary and kindly answered my questions. He has not published the link between Bob Shaw and Doctor Who anywhere else, so let the acknowledgement of his discovery now begin.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
We started August 2006, 20 years ago this month, in Northern Ireland as usual, and I attended MeCon 9 in Belfast where the guests included Ian McDonald, Hal Duncan, Ken MacLeod, Leah Moore, and John Reppion. I thought I had pictures from it, but in fact they seem to be from the following year, and I’m not in anyone else’s that I can find. I remember having a lot of fun.
We also had a family excursion to the Legananny Dolmen and the Finnis Souterrain:
A mid-holiday work trip to London was unexpectedly extended by a day when I arrived at Heathrow to get a morning flight back to Belfast, and found myself in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 airport plot. I got the train to Liverpool and the overnight ferry, arriving not quite 24 hours after originally planned.
We published a report on Moldova mid-month (must have been just before I got back, in fact), and I ended the month in Budapest speaking at a conference in the rather splendid parliament building there.
I read 25 books that month – I think a record since I started keeping count. (Exceeded a few times since.)
6,400 pages (YTD 36,200) 6/25 by women (YTD 20/122) None by PoC (YTD 5/122)
Best of these, and the one which still sticks with me, is The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn; you can get it here. I also gave The Healer’s War, by Elizabeth Anne Scarborough, an enthusiastic write-up, but can’t remember as much about it. You can get it here. I found Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller, thoroughly unpleasant, but you can get it here.
The Scent of Blood, by Andrew Lane and read by Dan Starkey, is the better of the two. It’s a vampire story set in 19th century Edinburgh; vampires of course have their own Doctor Who continuity, and Lane (whose strong point is crossovers between Who and other continuities) takes all of that on without going too far down fannish rabbit-holes, and bringing in some memorable characters. Starkey is also a very impressive and versatile voice performer. You can get The Scent of Blood here.
The Winged Coven, by Paul Magrs and read by Susan Jameson, is another in the sequence of stories about Mrs Wibbsey, the housekeeper of Nest Cottage, the Fourth Doctor’s home from home in rural England, with also an appearance from Mike Yates. There is some fun with mind swaps, but really the witches are just stupid, the Wibbsey situation is a one-joke plot device and I’m getting a bit bored with it. You can get The Winged Coven here.
Second paragraph of third chapter (O’Toole’s turn to write in favour), with embedded quotation:
What is striking about this argument from the heart of unionism is that neither [Lord] Brookeborough nor [Brian] Maginess contested the idea that it was logical to think of the island of Ireland as a single country. Brookeborough quoted with approval the words of a fellow unionist, his minister for home affairs, Walter Topping:
In circumstances other than those that exist in Ireland it would be natural to assume that an island the size of this one should be economically and politically a single entity. Much can be said for the practical advantages to be gained by the elimination of the Border; and there is also the sentimental appeal of being Irish throughout (a sentiment which the Scotsman and the Welshman proudly maintain) had the situation been different — had being Irish not been made incompatible with being at the same time British.
This, of course, raises a question that is now much more salient: what if being Irish can be made compatible with being British? What if the divide between competing mentalities and identities has become bridgeable?
This is a very interesting intellectual experiment. Two of the best known journalistic commentators each put the case for and against a United Ireland, taking turns to write from each side. What makes this really attractive is that most writing on the subject is heavily polarised to one side or the other, so to read not just a debate between two thinkers, but a debate where each writer engages with himself as well as with the other, is a refreshing change of format. I don’t know that this will change any minds, but I do know that it has already deepened the discussion.
Unionists continue to talk only to their own core voters and not to the centre ground;
Nationalists come up with a better offer than the union, especially on health services.
I stand by that analysis; in particular, I think that the Brexit situation has been contained for now, which renders the other two points moot for the time being. I agree that the direction of travel is towards a majority vote for a united Ireland in a referendum, but I think we are further away from it than Nationalists hope and Unionists fear, and I can foresee a nervous equilibrium holding for some time – as Gerry Lynch once put it, “Welcome to the Northern Ireland that won’t vote itself out of the Union but won’t give Unionism majority support.”
Two points particularly linger with me. One, which is addressed by both writers and which I have also written about before, is that a United Ireland needs to find a solution to the massive share of the public sector in the Northern economy. Will southern voters continue to effectively subsidise Northern government employee lifestyles? Nationalists need to start coming up with an honest answer to that, and we haven’t seen it yet other than hand-waving.
The other is that advocates of a United Ireland need to be honest about the real threat of Loyalist violence in opposition to it, when the time comes (again we tend to get hand-waving on this). Sam McBride makes this point in the closing pages of the book, to my surprise quoting my father on the subject: “for civil war to break out, it is not necessary for a majority of inhabitants to desire it.” He also points to the normalisation of political violence in Trump’s America as a source of infection. I don’t see this as a fatal flaw ion the Nationalist case, but I do wish I had the sense that Nationalism has thought about it seriously. Generosity on cultural issues would be helpful here.
El Salvador is on the Pacific coast of Central America, with Guatemala to the northwest, Honduras to the northeast and the ocean to the south. Like all the other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, it became independent from Spain in 1821 and independent from its neighbours in 1841. Its subsequent history was one of military coups and authoritarian governments, with heavy US interference towards the end of the 1931-79 military regime.
A bitter and brutal civil war between left-wing guerilla groups and the US-backed government ran from 1979 to 1992. Most notoriously, a government-backed death squad assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero while he was saying Mass at a hospital chapel in 1980. 75,000 people (of a population then of roughly 5 million) are reckoned to have died in the conflict. The war ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords which established a peaceful settlement that has lasted to this day.
The current government is led by President Nayib Bukele, elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2024. He has controversially cracked down on organised crime, reportedly at the expense of civil liberties, and adopted Bitcoin as legal currency. Having said that, El Salvador has the lowest income inequality of any Central American country. Its main exports are textiles, sugar and coffee.
The one personal contact I had with El Salvador was my colleague from NDI days, Gerardo Le Chevallier, who had been a negotiator for the government side in the process that led to the Chapultepec Accords. We had a couple of very collegial evenings at internal work events in 1997 and 1998. He later joined the United Nations, and was killed in the Haiti earthquake of 2010, when the entire leadership of the UN mission there was wiped out.
See here for the methodology of these posts, though NB that I am now also using numbers from StoryGraph. Books are disqualified if, as far as I can tell, less than 50% of them is set in the current boundaries of El Salvador.
Title
Author
GR raters
LT owners
SG reviews
Salvador
Joan Didion
3,961
791
704
What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
Carolyn Forché
3,516
297
623
The Country Between Us
Carolyn Forché
2,823
477
303
Archive of Unknown Universes
Ruben Reyes Jr.
2,546
83
702
The Massacre at El Mozote
Mark Danner
1,687
352
241
There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories
Ruben Reyes Jr.
1,251
91
638
One Day of Life
Manlio Argueta
1,025
421
153
Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador
Horacio Castellanos Moya
1,871
169
135
This week’s winner, Salvador by Joan Didion, is well ahead on LibraryThing and wins on Goodreads and StoryGraph too, the latter by a hair’s breadth. It was published in 1987 and adapts three essays by Didion from the New York Review of Books, her first substantial publication on foreign policy (she was already well known as a commentator on US culture).
Carolyn Forché is also American, but has written a lot about El Salvador. What You Have Heard Is True is non-fiction. The Country Between Us is poetry, and I believe the majority of it is inspired by Forché’s experiences in El Salvador.
Ruben Reyes Jr is another American writer, though his parents are from El Salvador. Archive of Unknown Universes is about two Salvadoran students at Harvard using a time machine to explore different alternate histories of the civil war. There is a Rio Grande in Heaven is a short story collection, and the majority of them appear to be set in El Salvador.
The Massacre at El Mozote is about a particularly awful incident in 1981 during the civil war, when government forces killed 811 non-combatant villagers, and also about the Reagan administration’s successful suppression of coverage of the story in the US media.
Manlio Argueta is the top writer on this week’s list who actually lives in El Salvador. One Day of Life is about one woman’s experience of state violence immediately before the war.
Horacio Castellanos Moya is also Salvadoran (though born in Honduras and having spent much of his life in exile). Revulsion is a 119 page book written as a single paragraph, about an exiled writer returning to San Salvador in the 1990s and hating the place.
Including the StoryGraph numbers meant that we gained the two books by Ruben Reyes Jr. and lost two by Sandra Benitez, The Weight of All Things and Bitter Grounds.
Benitez grew up in El Salvador but her parents were from Puerto Rico and she identified as American, as far as I know. The top woman Salvadoran writer who I found was Claudia Hernández, best known for her novel Slash and Burn (originally Roza, Tumba, Quema).
I did not have any tough disqualification choices (or rather, I hesitated with both The Country Between Us and There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, but ruled them in rather than out). Two novels that scored very well on all the systems, but are mainly set outside El Salvador, are Solito by Javier Zamora and The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende.
The Soccer War, by Ryszard Kapuściński, is a collection of articles including the title piece, which is about the 1969 war between El Salvador and Honduras sparked by a soccer match, but it is just one of a number of geographically varied essays in the book.
Apart from Gerardo, mentioned above, I have no personal connection with El Salvador, and there are no books on my own shelves about the country.
Coming next: Denmark, Singapore, Lebanon and Liberia.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
I was hugely honoured to be present at the Presidential residence in Podgorica on 13 July 2006, 20 years ago this month, the last leg of a trip that had started in Skopje and continued through Prishtina with an exciting journey through the mountains to Montenegro itself. There were perhaps 300 guests. The mood was festive, everyone shaking hands and embracing. The moment eventually came when the guards played a fanfare, and then a young man began to sing the new/old nation’s anthem, joined in the second verse by a young woman, without any other accompaniment, their voices trembling with emotion. For the first time in nine decades, Montenegro was celebrating its traditional independence day as an independent state. They didn’t drop a beat, or miss a note. It was one of the most electrifying things I have ever witnessed. I don’t have photographs, but I was given a souvenir first day cover.
The month started with a family trip to Antwerp to see the Sultan’s Elephant, an extraordinary live action steampunk show. I got a few film shots of the elephant and the little girl in action:
F celebrated his 7th birthday later in the month, and actually had a party, though my contribution was to take B on a long drive to keep her out of the way.
At the end of the month we drove as usual to Northern Ireland (Anne failing to be persuaded of the merits of Fury from the Deep), but made the tough decision to leave B in Belgium under the supervision of my mother-in-law. It actually went all right, but it was a bit sad.
I managed to read 24 books in July 2006, thanks perhaps to several long land-based trips.
The one I enjoyed most was The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson’s classic horror tale, which you can get here. There were a lot of other good ones, and I guess my favourite reread was Fahrenheit 451, which you can get here. I thoroughly bounced off Galactic Patrol, but you can get it here.
I am pleased with the outcome of the 2026 WSFS business meeting so far. I have marked up my previous post by including the results of the votes; basically everything that came to the meeting that I really wanted to get approved was passed, and the things I thought were really stupid were rejected. Octothorpe’s latest has a reflection on the first sessions, including a firm staffing recommendation to the Brisbane 2028 WorldCon bid, with which I concur.
Later today the Business Meeting will convene again to discuss what actions to take regarding the fiasco of the 2023 Hugos. These proceedings are confidential, though it is public that the Trial Committee has proposed four resolutions to the meeting. The resolutions themselves, and the reports of the Trial Committee which proposed them, and the Investigation Committee which reported last year, have not been made public, and the reports probably won’t be. (I was a member of the Investigation Committee, though not of the Trial Committee, and I also participated in the January 2024 Worldcon Intellectual Property meeting which formally censured several people for what happened at Chengdu.)
I have seen some criticism of the way in which this has been handled. However, there was not really a choice to be made. Until WSFS decides otherwise, its procedures are governed by Robert’s Rules of Order. I would like to change them to something better but we have not yet seen a proposal of what that would be. For all its many flaws, Robert’s Rules do have provision for how to conduct disciplinary procedures.
We should also bear in mind that this is not a criminal trial, but something more akin to a HR process taken by an employer, or a convention responding to a Code of Conduct violation. WSFS actually has a duty of care to those who are accused of damaging our reputation, as well as to the rest of us whose reputation has been damaged. If you think that sort of discussion should be conducted in full view of the public, I wish you luck next time you escalate a dispute with your boss and have the argument in front of your entire workplace.
That all said, the damage done to the reputation of WorldCon and the Hugos by the Chengdu fiasco was very real. The arbitrary disqualification of a large number of otherwise qualified finalists, combined with the obviously cooked voting statistics and a disrespectful and combative public posture from one of those involved, were a grave scandal. It was covered by, among many others, the New York Times, the Guardian (twice), Foreign Policy, NBC News, The Hill, Salon and Esquire. The disqualification of R.F. Kuang’s Babel even turned up as a question on the British quiz show University Challenge in December 2025.
It is not an exaggeration to describe the Chengdu Hugo affair as the worst reputational crisis to hit WorldCon in its 87 years of history, and part of dealing with that is accountability for those responsible, to set the standards of behaviour that we expect of people in senior roles in Worldcons, particularly Hugo administrators, and hold them to account. As someone who loves Worldcon and the Hugos, I am personally bitterly disappointed by the behaviour of some people who I used to respect, and I am still angry about it.
As I said above, four resolutions have been proposed by the Trial Committee for consideration at today’s meeting. The Business Meeting can accept these resolutions, reject them or water them down; it cannot increase their force. Personally I am likely to support in full the four resolutions that have been proposed, though I will listen to reasoned amendments. If anything, I wish the measures proposed had been even stronger. But we are where we are.
Update: all four resolutions were indeed passed without being watered down.
At least, there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.
Discworld’s take on the cinema industry, with awful forces trying to install film-making into the Discworld. I remembered this one less favourably than some; the satire is thickly laid on and very specific to cinema culture, which I’m not as interested in as some people. But I am pretty sure that I read it before my 2017-2023 project of watching every single Oscar-winning film in order, and now that I have done that, I found myself much more able to relax into enjoying it for what it is, a bit of fun and perhaps a return to the roots of Discworld, where the first two books were more pastiche than plot. Not sure that the wizards really work though. You can get Moving Pictures here.
This is the last in the series of Eighth Doctor Adventures that I didn’t get around to writing up when I first read them in 2014-15. Most of them were in the Sabbath arc which didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but the previous volume, Halflife, and this one both seem a bit more coherent and interesting, as perhaps the impending end of the series of books was concentrating the creativity of the authors (and editors).
The Tomorrow Windows is a picaresque novel which includes an exploding Ken Livingstone, windows which give you visions of potential futures, and lots of Douglas Adams-esque planets with humorously depicted aliens. I felt it worked well; I have complained about previous books in the sequence that the character of new-ish companion Trix is underdeveloped, but here she gets a fair bit of first-person narrative and I felt I knew her much better. None of this series is Great Literature, but this one at least is satisfactory. You can get The Tomorrow Windows here.
That finished the unblogged EDA’s, but I find I still have some Who books on the shelves acquired years ago that I have not yet written up, so I’m going to go through them in more or less continuity order. First up will be Paul McAuley’s Eye of the Tyger.
Current Red Rabbit, by Alex Grecian The Time of Angels, by Jenny Colgan Making Peace in Northern Ireland, by Charles B. Strozier Sleeping Murder, by Agatha Christie
Last books finished Théo Van Rysselberghe, ed. Paul Holberton The Eye of the Tyger, by Paul McAuley Autumn, by Ali Smith Brian W. Aldiss, by Paul Kincaid Twenty-first Century Blues, by Steve Walker (did not finish)
Next books Doctor Who: The Invasion, by Ian Marter Last Exit, by Max Gladstone TUKI: Fight for Fire, by Jeff Smith
(Published in the US as Thirteen at Dinner.) Second paragraph of third chapter:
“Well, mon ami,” he said. “What do you think of that?”
One of Christie’s classic mysteries, published and set in London in 1933. Clearly aimed at the American market, as the first victim’s wife is an American actress who has married English aristocracy.
A very well put together mystery, with the murderer turning out to be able to mastermind an impressive, but just about believable, set of deceptions. Poirot is especially well portrayed, though one feels sorry for Hastings who is patronised by him in every chapter.
It is however marred by casual, unpleasant and explicit anti-semitism.
My electronic edition spells ‘Edgware’ correctly in the main text and title page, but with an extra ‘e’ in page headers and chapter titles.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
The big family event of June 2006 was my great-aunt’s 90th birthday. Here she is with her four children (the four on the left, with her sister-in-law) and her eight nieces and nephews, including my mother. I’m glad to say that she had another 17 years ahead of her.
Two of the pictures from my own camera show the guest of honour and the youngest guest, young F, and me with my siblings.
The other family birthday that month was B’s ninth. The big present was a crocodile-shaped water sprinkler, which all three children hugely enjoyed.
Here is a rare video (well, compilation of several short videos) of the three kids together, B just 9, F about to turn 7 and U at 3½:
Apart from that, I see I went to the Tun on 1 June so must have been in London, was in Thessalonica for a meeting with the SEERC later in the month, attended a Wilton Park conference, and seem to have ended the month with a visit to Paris. At work we published a report on the Preševo Valley of Southern Serbia. My Greek intern K was replaced by Macedonian E. (He now works for the European Commission.) And I wrote what turned out to be the last of my mega-meta-reviews of that year’s Hugo finalists. (It wasn’t possible the following year, for reasons which will become clear, and by 2008 other channels had taken over.) This was also the month that I started really getting into the Big Finish Doctor Who audios.
4,700 pages (YTD 23,300) 3/16 by women (YTD 11/73) none by PoC (YTD 3/73)
The two really good ones here are Zoran Živković’s collection of short stories, which you can get here, and Emma Crewe’s anthropological stody of the House of Lords, which you can get here. I found The Triumph of the West pretty pointless, but you can get it here.
Another of the BBC’s Doctor Who audiobooks, read by Fraser Hines, with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria landing on a strange planet where memories and sensual perceptions are up for barter. It takes Victoria in particular to some surprising places, and the central concept is well developed; also Hines is a very good reader of the three main characters. You can get The Elysian Blade here.
The last time I saw that winter count, a girl and her little brother were holding it above them to try to keep the freezing rain off, and, because I was an enemy to them, the girl was holding her hand tight around a long knife, not because that could have worked against me, but because she was Pikuni, and Pikuni fight even when the fight’s over. That’s why your Great Father still hasn’t been able to stamp us all out like he wants, no matter how many soldiers he sends.
This won the Nebula earlier this year, and no doubt will show up on the Hugo long-list. I think that may make Jones the first Native American writer to win a Nebula. It’s a well assembled novel of a Native American vampire in Montana, as told to a Lutheran pastor in 1912, then unearthed by the pastor’s granddaughter a century later. The descriptions are visceral and convincing. I am still not wild about the horror elements and it is a little too gory for my own delicate tastes. But you can get The Buffalo Hunter Hunter here.
Three stories of the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors separately, laying the way for the Thirteenth Doctor series of comics from Titan. To be honest I didn’t find any of them particularly memorable, though the art is pleasing. You can get The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor here.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
A month when I visited Berlin and London for work, and I have a note that I was in Bath too, but am really not sure why. (Anne’s birthday fell in the middle of my Berlin trip, so we must have celebrated at the weekend.) I also got a really weird phone call from someone who felt it really important to tell me that “je suis” is “Jesus” with “I” in the middle. At work, I took some time off Crisis Group to do a chunky bit of consulting for my future employers Independent Diplomat. I also applied for a job with the European Commission, but it was one of those cases where they were really formalising someone’s existing job and the advertisement was not serious.
As the fine weather came in, U and F dressed up, and B climbed a tree.
The big geopolitical news was Montenegro voting for independence, and its subsequent peaceful separation from Serbia. I still feel rather proud that I helped make the argument for Montenegro as an independent state to EU policymakers long before it became fashionable.
This was also the month that I had my infamous exchange with John Scalzi over his novel Old Man’s War (see here, here, here and here). We are friends now (picture from the 2019 Hugo ceremony).
3,300 pages (YTD 18,600) 1/15 by a woman (YTD 8/57) 1/15 by PoC (YTD 3/57)
Lots of good books here, but the two I enjoyed most were both non-fiction, Moondust, about the Apollo astronoauts, which you can get here, and Echoes from the Dead Zone, a Cypriot anthropologist’s take on his island’s problems, which you can get here. On the other hand, two of these books were so awful that, unusually, I could not finish them, Ivanhoe being slightly the worse of the two. You can get it here, if you want.
