Non-fiction: 1 (YTD 32)
A History of the World in Twelve Maps, by Jerry Brotton

Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 25)
Brother and Sister, by Joanna Trollope
Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
Nemesis, by Philip Roth
The Dinner, by Herman Koch

sf (non-Who): 5 (YTD 72)
The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4, ed. Mahvesh Murad
One Does Not Simply Walk into Tudor, by Ivery Kirk and Luna Teague
Cauldron, by Jack McDevitt
Unquenchable Fire, by Rachel Pollack
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 33)
Short Trips: A Day In The Life, ed. Ian Farrington
Independence Day, by Peter Darville-Evans
Return to the Fractured Planet, by Dave Stone
In The Blood, by Jenny Colgan

Comics: 3 (YTD 22)
Paper Girls, by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
Prisoners of Time, by Scott and David Tipton
Toch Een Geluk, by Barbara Stok

6,200 pages (YTD 53,100 pages)
6/18 (YTD 57/183) by women (Trollope, Murad, Kirk/Teague, Pollack, Colgan, Stok)
2/18 (YTD 12/183) by PoC (Murad, Chiang)

Reread: 1 (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), YTD 14

Reading now
Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in honour of Jack Vance, eds. George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
Winter Song, by Colin Harvey
SPQR, by Mary Beard

Coming soon (perhaps):
AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers, ed. Nnedi Okorafor
Kings of the North, by Cecelia Holland
Angels & Visitations: A Miscellany, by Neil Gaiman
Tolstoy, by Henri Troyat
Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past, by Paul Cartledge
De Mexicaan met twee hoofden, by Joann Sfar
Last Exit to Babylon – Volume 4: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny
V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore
The Star Rover, by Jack London
The Colour Of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
Lavondyss, by Robert Holdstock
Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch
The Innocent Man, by John Grisham
Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, by David Kynaston
Warriors, ed. George R. R. Martin
The Parrot's Theorem, by Denis Guedj
Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy
Short Trips: The Solar System, ed. Gary Russell
Companion Piece, by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker
The Joy Device, by Justin Richards

‘Silence is not a strategy’ think tank warns on Brexit

Indeed. (And it would be nice to hear opposition parties point this out too.)
(tags: ukpolitics eu brexit )

Maltese Phrases You Just Can’t Translate

Actually, you can, but they are very funny.
(tags: malta )

Roller Coasters Could Help People Pass Kidney Stones

The headline says it all.
(tags: health )

A settlement to Cypriot dispute ‘closer than ever before, but there’s still a way to go’

Here’s hoping.
(tags: cyprus )

Brexit Britain: The poor man of Western Europe?

Pesky facts.
(tags: ukpolitics economics brexit eu )

Klopt de uitleg van Bart De Wever?

Not entirely.
(tags: Belgium )

Second paragraph of third chapter, plus ensuing dialogue:

It would be a gloomy secret night. After early nightfall the yellow lamps would light up, here and there, the squalid quarter of the brothels. He would follow a devious course up and down the streets, circling always nearer and nearer in a tremor of fear and joy, until his feet led him suddenly round a dark corner. The whores would be just coming out of their houses making ready for the night, yawning lazily after their sleep and settling the hairpins in their clusters of hair. He would pass by them calmly waiting for a sudden movement of his own will or a sudden call to his sin-loving soul from their soft perfumed flesh. Yet as he prowled in quest of that call, his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note keenly all that wounded or shamed them; his eyes, a ring of porter froth on a clothless table or a photograph of two soldiers standing to attention or a gaudy playbill; his ears, the drawling jargon of greeting:
—Hello, Bertie, any good in your mind?
—Is that you, pigeon?
—Number ten. Fresh Nelly is waiting on you.
—Good night, husband! Coming in to have a short time?

Ireland has changed a lot since Joyce was a lad – indeed, it’s changed a lot since I was a lad. I found myself re-reading this on a recent trip which included 24 hours in Dublin, where due to having a bad back I limited myself to the space between Pearse Street and St Stephen’s Green, cutting several times through Trinity which Stephen Daedalus sees as “set heavily in the city’s ignorance like a dull stone set in a cumbrous ring”, and mused on how on the one hand Trinity is now much better integrated with its city surroundings than it was back in Joyce’s day, and how on the other Dublin has raised its intellectual and cultural game even in my lifetime, as modernity hit Ireland with a thump. I guess the turning point was somewhere in the late 1980s, with the failure of the first divorce referendum and the success of the Eighth Amendment proving in fact to be the last gasp of the old order, defeated electorally in 1990 by Mary Robinson and morally in 1992 by Bishop Casey (who of course turned out merely to be the tip of the iceberg of ecclesiastical scandal and disgrace); last year’s equal marriage referendum demonstrated how far Ireland has now come.

I was brought up in Catholic Belfast, my education still tinged with a lot of the dogmatic approach that Joyce experienced (though my school was run by nuns, which I think already made a difference), so A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I first read it as a teenager was a hostile mapping of a close but unfamiliar corner of my own world. (Except that there were no prostitutes in my world, as far as I knew.) Many in the post-Vatican II church attempted to get away from the rhetoric of hellfire and mortal sin, but it was always there under the surface, tied in with the practices around confession and indulgences, and buttressing social conservatism generally. The weakest bit of Portrait for me is the lengthy sermon on hell in Chapter 3, but I suppose the point is well made.

What I missed on first reading, and see now, is that Joyce is also writing about the cultural constraints of the Ireland he grew up in – largely self-imposed, rather than engineered by British rule. It’s not only the constraints of dogmatic religion; it’s the difficulty in thinking outside the box. Joyce seems to me to have a deep distrust of narrow Irish nationalism – the most unpleasant character in Ulysses by far is the Citizen,based on Gaelic League founder Michael Cusack; the dinner time debate about Parnell turns surprisingly nasty. A lot of his contemporaries saw the revival of Irish cultural identity as an emancipatory moment; Joyce seems to see it as a blind alley, when there is a wider more interesting world out there, which is what he eventually chooses.

And of course the writing style of the book is very engaging (apart from having too much hellfire, and not really enough about girls, though again I suppose that’s part of the point). We may sometimes wonder just where the boundary between Joyce and Daedalus is, but we have a good idea of where Daedalus is coming from and why, and eventually of where he wants to go. It’s also mercifully short; I don’t think I will ever try the original 913-page manuscript of Stephen Hero…

This was the most popular book on my shelves that I had not already reviewed on-line. Next in that list is The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett.

Where will the out-of-control Chinese space station land?

Oops.
(tags: space )

Were There Irish Slaves in Early America?

No.
(tags: history ireland usa )

Current
The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke
Unquenchable Fire, by Rachel Pollack

Last books finished
In The Blood, by Jenny Colgan
A History of the World in Twelve Maps, by Jerry Brotton

Last week’s audios
Aquitaine, by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris

Next books
Nemesis, by Philip Roth
The Dinner, by Herman Koch
Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in honour of Jack Vance, by George R. R. Martin

Books acquired in last week
Toch Een Geluk, by Barbara Stok

An ode to the night train

How the EU has unintentionally killed romance.
(tags: travel rail eu )

The Real Power of Putin by Benjamin Nathans

Fascinating on the leader and his country.
(tags: russia )

The Eruditorum Press Doctor Who Poll

Vote! Vote! Vote!
(tags: doctorwho )

Second frame of third chapter (“In With the Tide”, art by Mike Collins):

One of the 50th anniversary publications that I had missed, this is a great romp of a plot line across the timestreams of the first eleven Doctors, with due homage to the characterisations and in particular bringing back a slightly forgotten but entirely appropriate character to ask what the role of the Doctor’s companions actually is. These multi-Doctor adventures (of which there are now quite a number in different media) are always a bit dangerous to do, but the format of giving each Doctor an adventure for their own voice to be heard before bringing them together at the end works very well. The Tiptons obviously get it.

Rather bravely IDW have used different artists for each episode (full list: Simon Fraser, Lee Sullivan, Mike Collins, Gary Erskine, Philip Bond, John Ridgway, Kev Hopgood, Roger Langridge, David Messina, Elena Casagrande, Matthew Dow Smith and Kelly Yates). Even more remarkably – I thought he had completely disappeared – several of the covers were drawn by Dave Sim, of Cerebus fame; and they are good pieces too, including the cover for the book as a whole. (I see Sim is reviving Cerebus for a short run; one shudders in anticipation.) I wan’t completely convinced by Philip Bond’s art for the Fifth Doctor (and especially Adric), and several of the others struggled with the companions. But I particularly liked the Sarah Jane Smith / Liz Shaw matchup by Mike Collins above, and Matthew Dow Smith is great drawing his near namesake. Generally very good fun.

Why You Can’t Trust Yourself

Very good psychological exploration of motivation.
(tags: psychology )

Some thoughts on my suspension

Roz Kaveney and the Labour Party.
(tags: ukpolitics )

Internet Trolling as a hybrid warfare tool

The five trolls you meet online in Latvia.
(tags: russia internet )

4 maps that will change how you see migration in Europe

Pesky facts.
(tags: migration eu )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Hutch.” Ed Jesperson, up front. A medical researcher. “My understanding is that we know where the omega clouds come from. Is that right?”

There was a time when each year’s Jack McDevitt book appeared on that year’s Nebula shortlist, and just as reliably failed to win (with one exception). This one was beaten by Powers, which I felt was a rather minor Le Guin. Cauldron turns out to be the last in a series none of the rest of which I have read, which maybe accounts for a somewhat elegiac tone. I thought it was competent enough hard sf; in a relatively near future earth, a new space drive is discovered and our protagonists set off on a quest to solve a cosmic mystery, stopping off at several planets along the way (rather brave to make the non-human civilisation a bit dull). If you want a bit more spice in your genre (and I usually do) this doesn’t really push the boundaries – what’s really striking is how little difference there is between McDevitt’s imagined future human society a couple of centuries hence, and the year 2000 – and there were at least three better books on the Nebula shortlist that year. (Little Brother, Brasyl, and Making Money.)

This was my top unread book acquired in 2010. Next on that pile is The Star Rover, by Jack London.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Look, I’m sorry to simply drop it on you like that,” Bernice Summerfield was saying, a little more back-pedal hurriedly than I think she’d meant, “but you had to know. I mean, psychologically speaking, it’s the best way to -”

Getting towards the end of the first run of Bernice Summerfield novels; this one is told from the point of view of an agent who doesn’t realise his own nature, investigating a murder which in fact he may have committed himself, and becoming entangled with the attempts of the seriously ill Bernice Summerfield to protect the planet Dellah from encountering yet more calamity. I see fan opinion is divided on whether this is a work of genius or utterly awful; I liked the interesting situation of the protagonist, but got a bit lost with some of the rest of the plot.

Next in this series: The Joy Device, by Justin Richards.

“Alexander Hamilton” in ASL

Chills down the spine…
(tags: hamilton disability )

UKIP’s MP Is Arguing With Scientists About What Causes Tides And People Are Taking The Piss

And rightly so.
(tags: brexit astronomy )

Terence Crutcher’s Family Seeks Criminal Charges: ‘His Life Mattered’

Another one.
(tags: race uspolitics )

Police In North Carolina Fatally Shoot Man Witnesses Say Was Disabled, Unarmed

And another.
(tags: uspolitics race )

Second sentence of third chapter:

Of course, she couldn’t allow herself to get carried away with emotion. Tawny had a lead foot wired directly to her amygdala, but she had to be careful these days. No taking chances with even a speeding ticket anymore, not since she quit contracting with DARPA. She missed her sporty MacLaren F1, but it, along with the Victorian manor she’d been converting into a kind of Batcave, and all her social media accounts, had been sacrificed on the altar of anonymity once she made that first discovery with the virtual photons. Avoiding attention from the government was a top priority now—she’d almost canceled her plans for this reunion at the last minute, then thought better of it. Secrecy was a top priority, not the top priority. This reunion might be her last good chance to reconnect with Beth. And if the NSA already had informants at her old sorority house, the game was pretty much over anyway.

I picked this up after reading about the great time the authors had at this year’s Worldcon, and because I tend to have a weird enjoyment of time-travel romances and also have a minor fascination with the Tudor period. Though this isn’t exactly a romance, more comic erotica; our heroines, historian Beth and scientist Tawny, decide that they have had enough of their boring twenty-first century thirty-something lives and go back in time to the court of King Henry VIII in order to shag him, with frankly hilarious consequences. I found this really funny and enjoyable – my favourite chapter title is Chapter Ten, “In Which Beth Explains The Retrospectively Obvious Hazard Of Substituting TV Dramas For Research”, but there also a handy index of erotic scenes at the beginning for those misguided readers who want to skip the bits in between the sex. The authors obviously had a great time writing it, and I was very entertained which is the main point.

Notes from Holland

The architecture of Amsterdam. (I’m going this weekend.)
(tags: architecture netherlands )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

And besides, he was no longer a cop.

Latest in the post-retirement stories of John Rebus, Edinburgh detective – this time combining his old gangland foes with new rivals, and an ancient political sex scandal (borrowed from the real-life Kincora scandal in Belfast) combined with the legacy of more recent conflicts, mixed up with colleagues of dubious loyalty, and of course death. I felt that the internal police wiring didn’t quite link up here, but the rest of it made a lot of sense and the resolution was very satisfying.

This was the top non-sf fiction book left on the list recommended by you guys last year. Next on that list is Kings of the North, by Cecilia Holland.

Will This Be a Four-Party Election?

Probably not, but this is a good historical perspective.
(tags: uspolitics history )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

He kept his head lowered at first, and saw little apart from the soldiers' boots. Under the dust and dried mud they still shone like polished jet. He could see the muzzles of the soldiers' long guns.

A story about the Doctor and Ace visiting twin planets and freeing the population of one of them enslaved by the other. All fairly standard, though there is some gruesome offstage violence, torture and sexual assault. Ace gets to have a little fun but both she and the Doctor are thinly drawn. I see other reviewers on the net complaining that this was a disaster; not really fair, it's just a little below average.

Coming to the end of the Seventh Doctor spinoff literature: next and penultimate is the Telos novella Companion Piece, by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker.

Solitude, Space Junk and Sea Monsters: the Eerieness of Point Nemo

Wow.
(tags: maps space eldritchhorrorsfrombeforethedawnoftime )

Current
The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke
In The Blood, by Jenny Colgan
A History of the World in Twelve Maps, by Jerry Brotton

Last books finished
Return to the Fractured Planet, by Dave Stone
Cauldron, by Jack McDevitt
Prisoners of Time, by Scott and David Tipton
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

Next books
Unquenchable Fire, by Rachel Pollack
Nemesis, by Philip Roth
The Dinner, by Herman Koch

Books acquired in last week
Woman on the edge of Time, by Marge Piercy
In The Blood, by Jenny Colgan
Franco-Irish Relations, 1500-1610, by Mary-Ann Lyons

How Vestager took a bite out of Apple

Long, good reportage by @politicoryan.
(tags: eu economics )

Lower part of first page of third chapter:

I've been very much enjoying Saga, also by Vaughan but with a different artist; not quite sure where I picked up the fact that this might be worth reading, but I got it when in Portland and read it a week or so ago. The setting is small-town America in a fully detailed 1988, with four twelve-year-olds diverted from their early morning newspaper delivery run to deal with – time travellers? aliens? both? The period detail for 1988 is well realised, and it's also clear in a Buffy-like way that the sfnal goings-on are far from the only problems in the protagonists' lives. Chiang captures personality and horror equally well; I do still miss Fiona Staples' art from Saga, but this will do for now.

This was both the top unread comic and the top unread book by a PoC (Chiang) on my unread shelves. The next in the former list is V for Vendetta, recently acquired but never read; the next in the latter is the AfroSF anthology edited by Ivor Hartmann.

Jean-Claude Juncker’s State of the Union: What’s Shaping the EU’s Future?

@emmabrux on Juncker.
(tags: eu )

Scientists reveal most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever created

Who’s a pretty boy then?
(tags: fossils )

When a Crackpot Runs for President

Kristof on the role of the media.
(tags: media uspolitics )

DUP Invited In For Talks With Tories Amid Rumours Of Backroom Deal Over Grammar Schools And Boundary Changes

Ahhh, Tory integrity.
(tags: northernireland ukpolitics )

Brexit Aftermath: The Challenges and Opportunities

@sirgrahamwatson’s take.
(tags: ukpolitics eu brexit )

Second paragraph of third story (“Undercurrents”, by Gary Merchant):

He [Jamie] looked up though half-closed eyes. ‘Zoe? What’s the matter? It’s the middle of the night.’

Another in the generally good series of anthologies by Big Finish, this one leaning a lot more on Big Finish’s own continuity and thus a bit less on TV Who (though Nev Fountain’s “The Five O’Clock Shadow” bridges the TV and comics versions of the First Doctor, with the Cushing Doctor Who thrown in as well). I did not really understand what the theme was here, except perhaps that all the stories take place at different times of day, and the last one appeared to loop back to the first. The two that really stood out for me were Richard Salter’s “Waiting for Jeremy”, where the First Doctor demonstrates to Steven that rewriting time is not straightforward or even desirable, and the romp “Morphology” by Phil Pascoe, in the Third Doctor and Jo, along with a UNIT soldier called Osgood, become entangled in a situation where all vowels except ‘o’ are removed from the universe. (Pascoe’s only other Who writing credit is the similarly linguistic early Big Finish audio …ish.)

Next in this sequence: Short Trips: The Solar System, edited by Gary Russell.

Family court judgement written so that the children involved can understand it

Heart-rending.
(tags: law children )

Second speech of third episode:

Rembrandt: “Vessels of the stars. Not my usual line of work, but she was willing to pay and I was unwilling to starve.”

I listened to this for the first time back in March, on a day when other matters broke my concentration, so returned to it with the intention of taking careful notes. But you know, I was just enjoying it too much. It’s a Fifth Doctor adventure, set immediately after Arc of Infinity (which ends with the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa still in Amsterdam); the two plot lines concern the team’s discovery of a Rijksmuseum display of some eerily accurate spaceship blueprints drawn by none other than Rembrandt van Rijn, and Tegan’s ex-boyfriend (from the months between Time Flight and Arc of Infinity – what, you thought she sat around in Heathrow?) who turns up and attempts to win her heart back. Of course the Doctor goes back to Rembrandt’s time to investigate; of course the two plot-lines turn out to be inextricably entangled.

The alien behind it all is played by Elizabeth Morton, who you can see in the middle of this picture between her husband and a starstruck fan (picture taken by John O’Halloran at the pre-Hugo reception in 2014, where said husband was up as director and writer of one of the Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form finalists; shortly after this picture was taken, her phone rang, and it was their son-in-law who had got lost looking for the reception, so I went and escorted him and his wife into the building).

Janet Fielding is especially on form here, Tegan having been given a good bit of back-story and some excellent lines; but everyone is good, including particularly guest star Richard James as Rembrandt (hadn’t heard of him before; IMDB says he has had supporting roles in various kids’ prgrammes which I have not seen). Jonathan Morris when on form is excellent, and he’s on form here; it may also be worth noting that this is the first Big Finish audio directed by Jamie Anderson, the son of Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds.

Anyway, well worth a second listen.

xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

*gulp*
(tags: climatechange )

The Custodian of Forgotten Books

About a guy who I knew through livejournal!
(tags: Books reading )

Zero chance EU citizens in UK will keep same rights post-Brexit, says expert

And vice versa.
(tags: brexit ukpolitics eu )

My grandfather Roald Dahl, the magician

On his centenary.
(tags: writing sf family )

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Ralph thought of all those weekends spent cajoling David to help him in the garden.

A novel about grownup siblings who have always known that they were adopted, and decide to find out about their birth parents, upending existing relationships with their adopted family and their spouses. I don’t have personal experience of adoption myself, and I wonder whether Trollope really does either; the plot had no surprises and I didn’t feel that the characters’ reactions to their new self-knowledge rose much above cliche.

It’s a long time since I read any Joanna Trollope, and in fact it looks like I haven’t read any of her novels since I started bookblogging in 2003. My memory is that they were mostly better than this.

This was the most popular book by a woman on my unread shelves. I’ve now acquired Mary Beard’s SPQR which is next on that particular list.

Constituency shake-up looks set to boost SF: expert

My interview in the Newsletter
(tags: Northernireland )

Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt

*shiver*
(tags: History canada )

Brexit negotiation details will be kept secret from Parliament, David Davis says

Taking back control!
(tags: brexit ukpolitics eu )

Confessions of a presidential speechwriter

European rather than American. But funny.
(tags: eu )