(Jetlagged bookblogging starts here)

A volume in this generally excellent ongoing series with two main plot lines: the first being the healing of Rose Red, reaching a moment of personal redemption, and the second being the epic battle between the rejuvenated Frau Totenkinder with the evil Mr Dark, which is fairly light in plot terms but has some fantastic art. But the end of the book has their heroes evacuating their last refuge on our world, setting up for the next element of the story.

There is one instalment of the story with art by Inaki Miranda, whose style is very different from Mark Buckingham’s; I wasn’t sure I liked it at first but on reflection it is OK to have some variety.

The subversive trilogy about Borribles, children who have grown pointy ears and live in a gritty subculture of London; less supernatural than Neverwhere, more urban and poorer than Bevis, but sharing some context with both of those, and apparently an inspiration to China Miéville.

The first book, The Borribles, is a direct attack on Elisabeth Beresford’s Womble novels. Fighting off incursion by the evil rat-like Rumbles, a crack team of Borribles sets off to assassinate the Rumble leadership, Vulgarian, Napoleon Boot, Chalotte, Sydney, Bingo, Stonks, Torreycanyon, and Orococco. On the way they encounter the evil Dewdrop and his son, who are a direct parody of Steptoe and Son. I remember when first reading the book being rather stunned at the bleak ending, with several of our heroes facing certain doom at the hands of the Wendles, a fascist Borrible tribe who live under Wandsworth.

In The Borribles go for Broke, our heroes challenge both the grownup police of the Special Borrible Group and the leadership of the Wendles, for a visually memorable and violent climax in a subterranean tunnel of stinking mud. And in the third book, The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis, they fight an epic battle with the Special Borrible Group and its hired auxiliary force of dwarves.

It’s subversive stuff – unapologetically violent and opposed to the social order; and extolling the virtues of loyalty to your friends rather than to those who tell you that they deserve you respect. But at the same time it’s a rather cosy anarchism; no drugs (beer is drunk by Borribles, but only in the second books and not to excess, and there are adult alcoholics), no sex, and a rather cuddly take on race. It’s also rather noticeable that Dewdrop’s son is mocked for his learning disabilities, the Rumbles for their speech defects, and the evil dwarves are just evil. So I’m afraid the trilogy didn’t quite live up to my memories of it.

Those of you whose friends use the twitter-to-LJ daily post feature will have noticed that for some reason the subject line has been coming through in Russian, as:

Мои твиты

which is Russian for "my tweets". (Transliterated, "Moi tvity", "tvit"/твит being Russian for "tweet" and "tvity"/твиты being the plural; for completeness I should note that although мои is usually transliterated "moi" it's pronounced more like "mai" or the English word "my", which conveniently is what it means.)

Some Cyrillic italic/cursive letters look rather different from normal letters, much more so than is the case with the Latin alphabet. In particular, the italic/cursive version of the letter т often looks like Latin m – т – and the italic/cursive version of и looks like Latin u – и. So the "My tweets" header ends up rather different in italics, making at least one person I read wonder if the title had actually changed between reading it on their friends list and clicking through to the individual post:

Мои твиты -> Мои твиты

This doesn't work for everyone, particularly not if your default view is a sans-serif font. On my default view it looks like this:

There are some other ones which take some getting used to – the letters г, д and п (for g, d and p) are г, д and п in italics. (That last one should look like a Latin n.)

In Serbian and Macedonian the italic/cursive versions of б, п, г, д, and т is different again, but because blog posts tend to default to the Russian-based letter forms I can only point you to the Wikipedia illustration (I can't find a way of reliably displaying the South Slavic versions here). And one practical example: when I lived in Banja Luka, the local beer was rather optimistically called Nektar:

For reasons which will be obvious, some of my international colleagues often referred to it as "Hekwap":

So I reach the last of the Rebus novels, which starts a few days before our hero is due to retire, with a dissident Russian poet found battered to death late one Edinburgh night in November 2006, followed soon after by the murder of his sound engineer friend. Rebus's impending retirement echoes the impending end to the hegemony of the Scottish Labour Party, with the SNP and possible independence looming in the wings, and the investigation takes him to investigate the intimate relations between government, opposition, bankers and Scottish oligarchs, before twisting into an unexpected but entirely satisfactory resolution.

I still have two books of Rebus short stories on the shelves, so will save a general assessment until I have read them both. But just here I want to note that Rankin's treatment of Scottish politics became much more sophisticate and convincing after 1999. The early books feature an improbable independent MP, and a fumbling exploration of the mechanisms of Scottish Office government. But with the coming of devolution, we have the first election campaign, the G8 summit and now this exploration of how government and opposition can be equally compromised. It's an interesting example of how a series of detective novels demonstrates the effect of a major constitutional reform.

Picked this University of Birmingham occasional paper from 1991 off the shelves, and digested it quickly. I am vaguely familiar with both Newman and Elgar, but I don’t actually know The Dream of Gerontius very well; clearly I should try and get into it. The paper is a bit light on Newman, setting the writing of Gerontius in sequence with Newman’s earlier work but without really explaining its importance. But it’s very good on Elgar, looking at why he chose Gerontius and also at the difficulties he had in publication and production because of the strongly Catholic subject matter – an early performance at the Worcester festival only went ahead after Newman’s text was altered on instruction from the local Anglican bishop, lest the good people of Worcester might start believing in Purgatory after listening to the piece. Anyway, I learned things from this and am also motivated to go and learn more.

This is the third volume of the authoritative New History of Ireland series, edited by T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne, first published in 1976 and updated in 1989. Given my ancestral researches, I was most interested in Chapter IV by Gerard Hayes-McCoy, on the 1571-1603 period, but realised that I have read a good half-dozen more detailed and more recent studies of Elizabethan Ireland. However, it was interesting to pull back the focus a bit and look at the transformation of the country from medieval backwater in the early 16th century to geopolitical distraction by the end of the 17th, and I came away with an improved understanding of the exceptionally complex politics of the 1640s. There are also some thematic chapters on human geography, the Irish economy, coinage, literature in Irish, English and Latin, and the Irish abroad (it was slightly spooky to read those last chapters on my commute by bus through the streets of Leuven, which of course is where a lot of the Irish scholarly and cultural action took place).

The major addition to the 1976 text is a bibliographical supplement updating the publications in the next decade or so, which includes an entertaining account of historiographical disputes by Aidan Clarke, though I think it misses the Ellis / Bradshaw controversy (funny how the memory cheats – I knew Bradshaw well at Cambridge in the late 1980s and would have been sure that the dispute with Ellis was well under way by then, but I guess not). One also misses some of the more recent trends in history – very little about women, not a lot about the life of the poor as opposed to the deeds of the rich, and Brian Ó Cuív’s chapter on Irish language is pretty polemical – but it’s serious work seriously done.

I found no references at all to my sixteenth century ancestor and namesake, but did spot a few mentions of other relatives. His grandson, also Sir Nicholas White, pops up as a leading Catholic MP in 1634, doing deals with Wentworth (later Strafford). I knew of the family connection with Sir Ignatius White, marquis d’Albeville, who was James II’s ambassador in the Hague up to 1688 (remind me, how did that work out?); I hadn’t known of a more Belgian link, in that his niece Mary Christina White helped found a Benedictine convent which became known as the Irish Dames of Ypres. I’m also struck that Peter White, schoolmaster and writer in Waterford and Kilkenny in the 1560s and 1570s; Father James White, the Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford in 1604; and slightly more distantly the Jesuit Stephen White of Clonmel (1574-1648) share the surname and roughly the location of the ancestral Whites of Knocktopher and Waterford. And of course it turns out that Sarsfield and the Duke of Berwick were 6x great uncles.

Anyway, it took me quite some time to get through this, but it was well worth it.

I am greatly admiring of the efforts of to set up a viable system for us all via either Pinboard or the new mutated Delicious, but for now I'm going to post the last week's worth of interesting links by hand. (Though with thanks to Pinboard for speeding up the process.)

How To Lead Clever People – via Peter Wicks. I don't agree with it all but most of it struck a chord.

Let Her be Eaten!: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan – Jo Walton's second review in the series.

The Adventures of Tintin – Official Trailer 2 –  Can't wait!

Rover's Eye View of Three-Year Trek on Mars – Pictures from the Red Planet. (In black and white.)

Joyce Carol Vincent: how could this young woman lie dead and undiscovered for almost three years? – Very sad story, sounds like a fascinating documentary.

Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling – Economy grows, most see no benefits.

Mutation may have led to humans' rise – What set us apart from the apes.

Hell's Kitchen: ‘A Chilling Effect on Oral History in This Country’: Q&A With ‘Belfast Project’ Director Ed Moloney – unethical behavior by journalist Ciaran Barnes and friend.

Panic of the Plutocrats – Krugman on form.

Why Should I Care About the British Fantasy Awards? – Pádraig tells us.
And the award for the stupidest committee of 2011 goes to… – Angie tells us.
The British Fantasy Society – Stramash or Stooshie? – Juliet tells us.
Statement to Members of the BFS from Graham Joyce – Moving on.

Tales from the Coffeeshop: Not too difficult to understand – The aftermath of the Mari explosion. Probably of limited interest to those not fascinated by Cyprus politics, but I do like their writing.

Listen: Hemingway’s Short, Moving Nobel Prize Speech – Extraordinary.

Writing for (y)EU | The trap falls of tweeting politics – How should the European Parliament institutionally use Twitter?

Why isn't everyone hacked every day? – Good read on the economics of cybercrime, worth getting your head around

Media Law Prof Blog: The EU, Privacy, Academic Research, and Freedom of Expression

Jason Burke on Islamic Militancy | FiveBooks | The Browser – Excellent interview on Islamic militancy from a site that always produces good stuff.

And finally:
Serbia's European Perspectives – I am speaking at LSE on Thursday evening (13 Oct). Email fosdi.belgrade@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

Thanks to Steve Green for flagging up this sensationalist Daily Telegraph story, headlined: "Children to be banned from blowing up balloons, under EU safety rules" with a summary para "Children are to be banned from taking part in traditional Christmas games, from blowing up balloons to blowing on party whistles, because of new EU safety rules that have just entered into force."

It's a lie.

Fullfact.org has done a detailed analysis of the piece here. The new EU directive applies to toy manufacturers and sellers, not users, and in any case simply repeats safety requirements that have been in force since 1988.

But it's much easier to make up stories about Eurocrats invading your Christmas party to take your children's toys away and put you in prison for letting them have balloons, than it is to report the truth. Heaven forbid that the British media coverage of the EU should actually be based on reality rather than fantasy. Luckily, with Bruno Waterfield covering Brussels for the Daily Telegraph, there is little chance of its readers' minds being polluted by actual facts.

Edited to add: according to this piece, the Mail and Express covered the story in similar vein, but I will not link to them.

Further edited to add: See also my ill-tempered twitter exchange with Bruno Waterfield, the journalist in question.

I’ve been reading the third volume of the magisterial New History of Ireland, mainly for the Tudor bits, though it goes up to 1691. The last of the chronological chapters has a certain amount about Sarsfield, James II’s dashing young general, who was created the first Earl of Lucan (the most recent Honora de Burgh, of Portumna in Mayo, whose much older half-brother Thomas was my 5x great-grandfather. Given the time that has passed, their father must by now have tens of thousands of living descendants, so I’m not particularly special in that regard; but it’s a pleasing connection of which I was previously unaware.

The second thing that I had forgotten was the local aspect to the story. Sarsfield / Lucan was fatally injured in 1693, at the Battle of Neerwinden (often referred to as the Battle of Landen so as not to be confused with the 1793 Battle of Neerwinden, though the unfortunate hamlet of Neerwinden saw most of the fighting in 1693 as well). Neerwinden is practically the next village to where B lives, and I’ve driven through it occasionally. The injured Sarsfield was taken to Huy, which is a little further away, where Honora (aged 17, with a toddler and a new baby) was able to join him before he died a few days later.

Honora and her children apparently hung around in Huy for a while, having no other option; but she was rescued from poverty by marrying the even more dashing Lambert Chaumont was actually based at St Martin’s Church in Huy until 1688. So the only answer, really, is to go and look for myself some time. I will report back when I do.

In this chapter, Timour / Tamerlane leads a Central Asian army to victory in Persia, Georgia, Tartary, Russia, India, Syria, and Anatolia, capturing the Ottoman sultan Bajazet (Bayezid I). But his conquests disintegrate when he dies, and the Ottoman Turks rebuild their realm and besiege Constantinople (on this occasion, unsuccessfully). See also reflections on war and peace, the dangers of iced water, the sultan in an iron cage, variant rules of chess, why good governance is not enough, and the Moghul Empire.

Just finished listening to the latest Big Finish audio in their Companion Chronicles series, starring Wendy Padbury as the memory-wiped Zoe, forced to recollect an adventure with the Second Doctor and Jamie in the improbable environment of Tashkent in 1919. I was really disappointed that this exotic setting ended up sounding rather like an English village instead of a Central Asian capital city; my knowledge of Uzbekistan is not huge but sufficient that I did not really feel I was being transported there. Having said that, the kick of explaining how Zoe, her memory wiped by the Time Lords, can be telling us the story in the first place is very well executed. Nice also to hear Wendy Padbury’s daughter Charlie Hayes (her father being Melvyn) though occasionally her voice sounds so similar to her mother’s as to be slightly confusing.

It was not many pages into this book before I realised it was the basis of a Monty Python sketch, and after that I began to have problems taking it seriously. Yes, it’s intensely and often beautifully written; but I kept feeling that Paul Morel, the viewpoint character who represents Lawrence himself, just needed a good slap. His relationship with his mother is too close to be healthy; he has two girlfriends and treats them both badly; and he ends up facing a lonely future (though of course it’s still rather early days as he is only in his mid-20s). I didn’t like Morel, and I didn’t much like any of the other characters (I had most sympathy for Miriam, the younger girlfriend, who dumps Morel by going away to college and a teaching career.) I guess that analysing why I didn’t like the book’s take on depression, poverty and relationships has made me think a little more about these things myself, but it was not an enjoyable read.

• Flann O’Brien’s birthday
  Centenary of the writer of The Third Policeman
  (tags: sf)
• The ‘Con’ in FantasyCon
  Steve Jones has harsh words for the British Fantasy Awards.
  (tags: sf)
• Javier Bardem: Let the People of Western Sahara Speak
  #fb
  (tags: westernsahara)
• Oscar-winner Bardem pleads W. Sahara cause at UN
  “Bardem told reporters that France, Spain and the United States were helping Morocco to block efforts to hold a self-determination referendum”
  (tags: westernsahara)
• “Bright the hawk’s flight in the empty sky”
  Jo Walton re-reads “A Wizard of Earthsea”.
  (tags: sf)
• Zero Geography: Mapping Arabic Wikipedia
  Interesting survey of knowledge production, though I would have some queries about the frame.
  (tags: maps)
• The Five Best Movies About Cutthroat Elections | Nerve.com
  (tags:)

Today is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Flann O'Brien / Myles na gCopaleen / Brian O'Nolan, unassuming civil servant by day, inhabitant of The Palace Bar (and elsewhere) in the afternoon and evening, destroyer of comfortable reality by night. 

My favourite quote from The Third Policeman:

"Now take a sheep," the Sergeant said. "What is a sheep only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling round and doing intricate convolutions inside the sheep? What else is it but that?"

"That would be bound to make the beast dizzy," I observed, "especially if the whirling was going on inside the head as well."

The Sergeant gave me a look which I am sure he himself would describe as one of non-possum and noli-me-tangere.

"That remark is what may well be called buncombe," he said sharply, "because the nerve-strings and the sheep's head itself are whirling into the same bargain and you can cancel one out against the other and there you are — like simplifying a division sum when you have fives above and below the bar."

"To say the truth I did not think of that," I said.

But apart from that his thoughts on literature were also rather profound:

A friend of mine found himself next door at dinner to a well-known savant who appears in Ulysses. (He shall be nameless, for he still lives.) My friend, making dutiful conversation, made mention of Joyce. The savant said that Ireland was under a deep obligation to the author of Joyce's Irish Names of Places. My friend lengthily explained that his reference had been to a different Joyce. The savant did not quite understand, but ultimately confessed that he had heard certain rumours about the other man. It seemed that he had written some dirty books, published in Paris.

'But you are a character in one of them,' my friend incautiously remarked.

The next two hours, to the neglect of wine and cigars, were occupied with a heated statement by the savant that he was by no means a character in fiction, he was a man, furthermore he was alive and he had published books of his own.

'How can I be a character in fict
ion,' he demanded, 'if I am here talking to you?'

That incident may be funny, too, but its curiosity is this: Joyce spent a lifetime establishing himself as a character in fiction.

I've written a few articles about him on here over the years, but see also tributes at Crooked Timber, The Atlantic, and from the Irish Times,  Fintan O'Toole, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle and Paul Muldoon, and his own critique of Patrick Kavanagh.

Having left years between reading the first two books of the Small Change trilogy, which are separated in time by just weeks, I then find on reading the third a few weeks after finishing the second that it is set almost a decade into Walton’s alternate timeline where Britain settled with Hitler in 1940 and moved sharply towards fascism. Now the two viewpoint characters are the gay secret police chief Carmichael and his unsuspecting ward Elvira, and the tangled web of coercion and lies which has sustained the British government for many years is stretching to breaking point. It’s a simpler book in plot terms – now that Carmichael has become a secret policeman rather than a detective, the plot is about conflicting state security structures rather than solving crime – but I was gripped to the end, knowing what Walton is capable of doing to her viewpoint characters and hoping that it might not happen this time. My only slight cavil is that a personality shared by our timeline demonstrates a crucial heroism at the end which I fear the real-life counterpart might not have. But I also smiled at some familiar names from fandom showing up as characters.

Really excellent stuff, and I recommend the entire trilogy – Farthing, Ha’Penny and Half a Crown – without hesitation.

• Mon, 20:32: Gibbon Chapter LXIV: Genghis Khan, and the return of the Turks http://j.mp/pWetQt
• Tue, 05:04: Three spam DMs in last few days, all from accounts of politically active women. I see a pattern…

In this chapter, the Mongols (or as Gibbon interchangeably calls them, the Moguls/Tartars) rise from Central Asia and make vast conquests to the north, south, east and west. But after the reign of Zingis/Genghis, the Turkes return as the main threat to the Byzantine empire. See also my notes on the global economic system, the Seven Churches of Asia, Gibbon repeating himself, Чингис хаан, religious toleration, Chinese etymology and the Battle of Kosovo.

• Вс, 15:26: RT @ninews: NewsLetter: MLA probed over use of voting records: A POLITICIAN is under investigation after challenging constit… http://t …
• Вс, 17:28: October Books 1) The Twilight Streets, by Gary Russell http://j.mp/oXIjcY
• Вс, 17:35: Undue Influence is a corrupt practice http://t.co/kBwGTSu5 More trouble for the UUP, hassling voters who did not vote!
• Вс, 18:03: 18th wedding annversary! #fb (@ Villa San Martino) http://t.co/kvg9BREV
• Пн, 11:43: Enjoying the sun while it lasts. (@ Square Ambiorixsquare) http://t.co/06aWBpWr

Really a rather good Torchwood novel, taking Bilis Manger from the end of the first season and Idris from the Who episode Boom Town, and also an alternate timeline which foreshadows a lot of future developments (blowing up the Hub, leaving Gwen, Rhys and their baby as the sole survivors of Torchwood). To a large extent it's a sequel to the episode End of Days, but much better. Lots of good character moments and exploration of what it means to be inside their skins. I must say that the Torchwood novels are proving generally rather a cut above the usual Who range; it's a shame that tie-in works get so little critical attention.

• Sat, 13:28: Autograph identification http://j.mp/nHTzYH
• Sat, 18:14: #DoctorWho a flashback to “Curse of Fatal Death”! #drwho
• Sun, 05:54: RT @marwilliamson: Something big is happening….http://t.co/onb2gwtz
• Sun, 06:05: It’s the Inequality, Stupid | Mother Jones http://t.co/gBqypD6H What’s wrong with the US. #fb

I'm glad to say that I possess a copy of the Other Edens anthology, edited by Christopher Evans and Robert Holdstock, which has been autographed by the cover artist and all but two of the authors.

(click to embiggen)

The authors are, in order of inclusion in the contents, Tanith Lee, Christopher Evans, M. John Harrison, Ian Watson, Brian Aldiss, Graham Charnock, Robert Holdstock, Michael Moorcock, Garry Kilworth, R. M. Lamming, David S. Garnett, David Langford, Keith Roberts, and Lisa Tuttle, and the cover art is by Jim Burns. It's pretty clear that Burns' signature is on the inside front cover, and the title page has been signed by twelve people. Most of the signatures are more or less clear enough for me to read them; two I am not sure of (though I think they are Robert Holdstock and Tanith Lee), and that means there must be two authors missing (probably Ian Watson and Keith Roberts).

Tanith Lee?

Robert Holdstock?

I guess that some of you may have books signed by the doubtful or missing authors; please enlighten me!

• Sat, 03:03: RT @karanadon: Microsoft issues fix after security tool mistakenly removes Google Chrome as malware http://t.co/3zOMWq9c
• Sat, 04:05: coffeeandink: Ereader Basics http://t.co/RSj6BukV Useful advice – wait till December!
• Sat, 04:05: nancylebov: Assassination Statistics http://t.co/to3ltFrF Interesting analysis in a 2007 study.
• Sat, 05:05: September Books http://j.mp/n95Rbq
• Sat, 09:27: September Books 19) Tragedy Day, by Gareth Roberts http://j.mp/nUPp3y
• Sat, 09:42: September Books 20) The return of the Shadow, by J.R.R. Tolkien http://j.mp/qByrGp
• Sat, 09:46: September Books 21) The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole http://j.mp/qDlZU2
• Sat, 10:01: September Books 22) Unnatural History, by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman http://j.mp/oOATsW
• Sat, 11:02: September Books 23) Federal Union Now, by Andrew Duff http://j.mp/oZ3BlG
• Sat, 11:06: September Books 24) The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson http://j.mp/opO6QB

Having hugely enjoyed the first in the series, despite the hype, I am glad to report that I thought The Girl Who Played With Fire was even better; what at first appears to be a tense but ultimately private and tragic tale of revenge for past abuse turns into a thriller with national and international complications; it's like the best of the Rebus novels, but with more attractive characters and much nastier sex. Very highly recommended; reading the first book first isn't necessary but is desirable.

Andrew Duff MEP is a fervent federalist, and published this pamphlet last month arguing for the EU – or at least those countries within it which are willing – to move to a genuine federal economic government structure to better coordinate fiscal and monetary policy in a way which the markets and voters will find credible. He also proposes a new form of associate membership for those countries (such as, probably, the UK) that might not want to participate in the new federal structures, an inevitable consequence of one of his other proposals which is that the EU Treaties ought to be easier to amend. Andrew is in the avant-garde in these discussions in most of the EU (and the British debate on this largely takes place on another planet) but his proposals are in fact entirely sensible. I’ve spent the last week in Strasbourg working on an unrelated project with Andrewdidn’t get the votes but it was worth trying.

This year’s Who has taken a lot of liberties with Amy and her personal timeine – more than I can remember being taken with any previous TV companion, apart from some of the things that happened to Sarah Jane Smith in the SJA – so it’s interesting to read an earlier example of this approach, with Sam Jones, the Doctor’s companion for most of the 22 previous EDAs, suddenly transformed into a dark-haired version of herself who never left London. Meanwhile in San Francisco the Doctor and Fitz are dealing with the mysterious Faction Paradox, helped by an enigmatic Time Lord calling himself Daniel Joyce, and trying to set things back on track. gorgeously written in places, and managed to keep me very intrigued as to how the authors could possibly resolve the story in a satisfactory way. (They did.)

Oxford World’s Classics edition, with grrr endnotes. mid-eighteenth century Gothic novel which is widely seen as one of the fore-runners of the genre. An aristocratic wedding is interrupted by ghostly apparitions which crush the intended bridegroom and ultimately reveal the true heir. I was interested to find that the morality play of marriage and inheritance rather overshadows the supernatural stuff, but I’m afraid I wasn’t really grabbed by it as a whole.

My decision to read the whole History of Middle Earth came as a result of getting a boxed set of this and the next couple of books in the series, which all deal with the writing of The Lord of the Rings, at a book fair a couple of years ago; but of course it is actually the sixth in the series, the first five dealing with what became The Silmarillion. Here we have three-ish drafts of The Lord of the Rings up to the exploration of Moria. It is striking how quickly Tolkien shifted tone from the young-reader-ish style of The Hobbit, which surivives in the very first draft of the first chapter, but really no further, to adopt a more mature voice. But it’s also interesting to see the evolution of the character who became Strider, at first a mysterious hobbit called Trotter who turns out to be a long-lost cousin of Bilbo’s called Peregrine. The names and characters of Frodo and his friends changed very substantially between rewrites (though the dialogue between them was surprisingly constant). The original Fellowship includes the four hobbits from the Shire, Troter, Gandalf and Boromir but no dwarf or elf. At one point the editor quotes his father’s marginal note “Christopher wants Odo kept” but admits that he is unable now to remember why (Odo ends up party Frodo and partly Pippin). The geography and distances between Bree and Rivendell are chopped about a bit, leaving some inconsistency in the published book. It’s a fascinating insight into how revising a text can make it stronger, and how sometimes bits in the middle come right almost immediately while you are still tinkering with the beginning.

I read this with some interest given that we had an episode by Roberts on TV last weekend, but there’s not much connection between them; this is a satire on media culture, with some particularly vicious digs at cult tv and charity fund-raising, with plot elements including an evil child genius, celebrity androids and voracious genetically engineered monsters. Points for having a gay character without making a big deal of it.

I've spent most of last week in the peculiar alternate reality that is a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, so am behind with bookblogging (and much else). But anyway, here is my roundup for September; where necessary, links will be added later.

non-fiction 6 (YTD 52)
Pirate Queen: the Life of Grace O'Malley, by Judith Cook
Stalin Ate My Homework, by Alexei Sayle
The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
British Science Fiction & Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys, edited by Paul Kincaid and Niall Harrison
Constantinople, by Philip Mansel
Federal Union Now, by Andrew Duff

fiction (non-sf) 3 (YTD 38)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot
The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson

sf (non-Who) 8 (YTD 57)
Ha'Penny, by Jo Walton
George's Secret Key to the Universe, by Lucy & Stephen Hawking
All Clear, by Connie Willis
Of Blood and Honey, by Stina Leicht
And Blue Skies From Pain, by Stina Leicht
The Sharing Knife: Passage, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole

Doctor Who / Torchwood (excluding comics) 5 (YTD 59)
Blackout, by Oli Smith
The Way Through The Woods, by Una McCormack
Storm Harvest, by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker
Tragedy Day, by Gareth Roberts
Unnatural History, by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman

Comics 2 (YTD 21)
With the Light… / 光とともに…, vol 4, by Keiko Tobe
[Doctor Who] Voyager, by Steve Parkhouse and Alan McKenzie

~8,400 pages (YTD ~66,500)
11/24 (YTD 52/227) by women (Cook, Cabot, Walton, Hawking, Willis, Leicht x 2, Bujold, McCormack, Orman, Tobe)
1/24 (YTD 12/227) by PoC (Tobe)
Owned for more than a year: 12 (George's Secret Key to the Universe, Unnatural History, Constantinople, Ha'penny, Tragedy Day, The Castle of Otranto, The Sharing Knife: Passage, The Return of the Shadow, British Science Fiction & Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys, Pirate Queen, Storm Harvest, Doctor Who – Voyager )
Reread: None (YTD 25/227)

Programmed reads: 16 books from 15 lists
a) Constantinople (non-fiction in order of entry)
b) The Hero With A Thousand Faces (non-fiction by popularity on LT)
c) British Science Fiction and Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys (non-fiction by popularity on LJ poll)
e) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire (non-genre fiction by popularity on LT)
h) George's Secret Key to the Universe (sf non-anthologies in order of entry)
i) The Castle of Otranto (sf in order of LT popularity)
j) The Sharing Knife: Passage (sf by popularity on LJ poll)
k) All Clear (Hugo/Nebula winners in sequence)
l) Tragedy Day (New Adventures in sequence)
m) Unnatural History (Eighth Doctor Adventures in sequence)
n) The Way Through The Woods (New Who books)
o) Storm Harvest (other Old Who by popularity)
p) The Return of the Shadow (History of Middle Earth in sequence)
r) Pirate Queen (Tudors and Ireland)
s) With The Light v4 (books by PoC in order of entry)

Coming next, possibly:

Torchwood: The Twilight Streets, by Gary Russell (already started)
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
A New History of Ireland, Volume III: Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691, ed by T. W. Moody
John Henry Newman, Edward Elgar and the "Dream of Gerontius", by Percy M. Young
The Borrible Trilogy, by Michael De Larrabeiti
Exit Music, by Ian Rankin
Half a Crown, by Jo Walton
Other Edens: No. 1, ed. by Christopher Evans and Robert Holdstock
White Queen, by Gwyneth Jones
Gulistān and Būstān, by Sheikh Muṣleḥ- ʾiddin Saʿdī
Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott
Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Diana Wynne Jones, by Farah Mendlesohn
Private Eye Annual 2008, by Ian Hislop
Race of a Lifetime, by Mark Halperin
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett
Doctor Who: Nuclear Time, by Oli Smith
The Devil Goblins from Neptune, by Martin Day
The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland, by Christopher Haigh
Legacy, by Gary Russell
Treason of Isengard: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Two (The History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 7), by J.R.R. Tolkien
Autumn Mist by David A. McIntee
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier