February 2020 Books

Non-fiction: 6 (YTD 12)
The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant – (did not finish)
A Popular History of Ireland, by Thomas D'Arcy McGee – (did not finish)
H.G. Wells: A Literary Life, by Adam Roberts
J.R.R. Tolkien's inspiration for Lúthien: the “gallant” Edith Bratt, by Nancy Bunting and Seamus Hamill-Keays (strictly a scholarly article rather than a book, but it’s 195 pages so I am tallying it here.)
B004UJ260O.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 5)
A Killing Winter, by Tom Callaghan
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

sf (non-Who): 8 (YTD 25)
Shadow Over Mars, by Leigh Brackett
Arc of the Dream, by A. A. Attanasio (did not finish)
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
The Aachen Memorandum, by Andrew Roberts
2020 Vision, ed. Jerry Pournelle
Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson

Doctor Who: 3 (YTD 5)
Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen, by Terrance Dicks

Comics: 1 (YTD 5)
The Wicked + The Divine vol 9: Okay, by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson & Clayton Cowles

5,800 pages (YTD 13,300)
4/20 (YTD 14/52) by women (Mendlesohn, Bunting, Brackett, Anders)
2/20 (YTD 4/52) by PoC (Sen, Thompson)
4/20 rereads (YTD 9/52) – Oliver Twist, three Doctor Who books.

Reading now
The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of Scandinavia’s Utopia, by Michael Booth
Small Island, by Andrea Levy
The Golden Fleece, by Robert Graves

Coming soon (perhaps)
Babayaga, by Toby Barlow
Red Notice, by Bill Browder
Strategic Europe, ed. Jan Techau
Excession, by Iain M. Banks
Prophet of Bones, by Ted Kosmatka
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson
The Moomins and the Great Flood, by Tove Jansson
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
The First Men in the Moon, by H. G. Wells
Wiske, by Willy Vandersteen
Peanuts: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
Sleepers of Mars, by John Wyndham
The European Parliament, by Francis Jacobs, Richard Corbett and Michael Shackleton
Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime 1: Breaking the Strain, by Paul Preuss
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

May 2005 books

May 2005 was a massively busy month. Most notably from the family point of view, we mounted a massive expedition with little F and littler U to Washington, New York and Boston, seeing spaceships and whales, for my brother's wedding in Massachusetts.

I went almost directly from the wedding to the first ever meeting of NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, held in Åre, Sweden, where I spoke on a panel of people with Wikipedia pages: James Elles (then an MEP), Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (then foreign minister and subsequently president of Croatia), Pierre Lellouche (then a French MP), Dimitrij Rupel (the foreign minister of Slovenia), Nick Burns (newly appointed Under Secretary of State), and Kastriot Islami (then foreign minister of Albania).

The British election took place earlier that month on 5 May, the only Westminster election this century for which I did not do broadcasting coverage (I have been on BBC TV for the four since 2010, and was on RTE radio for the 2001 vote). I did manage to win a modest £30 – I advised an online betting company that they had underestimated the swing from the SDLP to SF, and they gave me a free wager in recompense, which I used to profit from the lower than expected seat total for Labour. (Which netted me far less than they gained from my advice, of course.)

The EU was thrown into disarray by the rejection of the proposed Constitutional Treaty by the French people in a referendum on the 29th, by 55% to 45%. See June for more details…

On a sadder note, my uncle Alastair Downie died around the time of the British election – so far (touch wood) the only one of my uncles to have left us. He was 88, and the widower of my father's only sibling, my aunt Ursula, who had died aged only 59 in 1998.

SF 5 (YTD 32)
The Dancers At The End Of Time, by Michael Moorcock
No Enemy But Time, by Michael Bishop
Iron Council, by China Miéville
The Algebraist, by Iain M. Banks
Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross

Comics 1 (YTD 4)
David Boring, by Daniel Clowes

2,600 pages (YTD 20,300)
None by women (YTD 14/56)
None by PoC

I enjoyed all of the above, none outstandingly more than the others.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

A Killing Winter, by Tom Callaghan

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I pulled the window open and checked that the half-litre I had left out on the sill was still there. I could have kept it in the freezer of my fridge but there's something pleasing about the thought of vodka chilled by the elements rather than electricity. Not that I drink any more, not since Chinara died. I fished out a tumbler from the chaos of the sink, rinsed it, poured a good-sized shot. I stared at the glass for a long time, remembering the days when I drank, the reason why I stopped. A sort of penance, I suppose. Then I tipped it down the sink, rinsed the glass once more, took three steps to the bedroom and lay down.

I have no idea how this ended up on my Amazon wish list; I guess I saw a review somewhere and decided that it looked interesting, and then bought it in my splurge of using a Christmas Amazon voucher to sweep a number of the cheapest books on the list.

It's a detective novel set in Kyrgyzstan, mostly in the capital, Bishkek, but with excursions to Osh, the second city, and to the Chinese border. The narrator, Inspector Akyl Borobaev, has recently lost his wife to cancer, and is brought in to solve the gruesome murder of the daughter of the Minister for State Security. There is a lot of very good circumstantial detail of the human and physical geography of Kyrgyzstan, a country of which I know very little, and the various characters (all deeply unpleasant, apart from a glamorous Uzbek security agent) are very vividly depicted. I was less convinced by the revelation of the villain's identity; I did not quite get the means or motivation. Still, an interesting change. Apparently the first of a series, though not sure how energetically I will seek out the rest. You can get it here.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Wednesday reading

This is the last Wednesday roundup for a few years; because of the leap year I’m moving to Thursdays from next week.

Current
The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of Scandinavia’s Utopia, by Michael Booth
Small Island, by Andrea Levy
The Golden Fleece, by Robert Graves

Last books finished
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson
The Wicked + The Divine vol 9: Okay, by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson & Clayton Cowles

Next books
Babayaga, by Toby Barlow
Red Notice, by Bill Browder

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Ashoka argued against intolerance and in favour of he understanding that even when one social or religious sect of people find themselves opposed to other ones, ‘other sects should be duly honoured in every way on all occasions’. Among the reasons he gave for this behavioural advice was the broadly epistemic one that ‘the sects of other people all deserve reverence for one reason or another’. But he went on to say: ‘he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his own sect’.1 Ashoka was clearly pointing to the fact that intolerance of other people’s beliefs and religions does not help to generate confidence in the magnanimity of one’s own tradition. So there is a claim here that the lack of smartness in not knowing what may inflict ‘the severest injury’ on one’s own sect – the very sect that one is trying to promote – may be stupid and counter-productive. That kind of behaviour would be, on this analysis, both ‘not good’ and ‘not smart’.
1 Italics added. These statements of Ashoka occur in Edict XII (on ‘Toleration’) at Erragudi; I am using here the translation presented by Vincent A. Smith in Asoka: The Buddhist Emperor of India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), pp. 170–71, except for some very minor emendations based on the original Sanskrit text).

Another in a series of philosophical works that I have been reading recently. I've never been hugely attracted to philosophy, not even political philosophy, and this book reminded me why not; the essential argument is that justice and fairness are crucially intertwined concepts, which I accept without feeling strongly about; and it is largely in reaction to Rawls' classic work, which I have not read and am not really persuaded to read.

There are some interesting insights. For Sen, "democracy" is not just about voting, but about having a plural political system where governments are under scrutiny (see my recent posts about Season 12 of Doctor Who). This also means that we should not get too hung up on developing perfect institutions, as the process is more important than the form of government.

Two bits did grab me. Chapter 7, "Position, Relevance and Illusion", starts with King Lear and ends with the Good Samaritan, and insists that to get a better understanding of justice (or indeed anything at all) we need to look beyond our social and cultural comfort zone and bring in insights from viewpoints that we do not ourselves know. It brief and well argued.

And the final four chapters, on Public Reasoning and Democracy, really spoke to me – a challenge to put principles into practice (including a nice section on "Wrath and Reasoning", why anger is an important part of discussions of rights), with plenty of references to India and the Middle East, and the failings of the so-called West.

So I got more out of it than I thought I would get from the opening chapters – a case where it was very much worth reading to the end. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white author. Next on that pile (and on several others) is Small Island by Andrea Levy.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Nebula finalists: Goodreads/LibraryThing stats

Forgot to do this when they were announced last week.

Best Novel

Goodreads LibraryThing
owners av rating owners av rating
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow 127373 4.13 561 4.17
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir 67339 4.26 460 4.24
Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia 78899 3.9 340 3.96
A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine 41164 4.19 370 4.13
A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker 4814 4.16 63 4.28
Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon 230 3.98 8 4.5

This is the ninth year that I have been tracking these figures. Last year's winner was third out of five on this ranking. The top ranked novel on this system won the Best Novel Nebulas for 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014. The 2013 winner (Ancillary Justice) was fourth of eight. The 2012 winner was second of six. So was the 2011 winner. So in the last eight years, the top-ranked novel on this ranking has won half the time, and the second-ranked half of the rest of the time.

Best Novella (using the numbers for the Exhalation collection for the Ted Chiang story, though it is not quite the same):

Goodreads LibraryThing
owners av rating owners av rating
“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Ted Chiang 86928 4.31 595 4.24
This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone 78068 4.04 442 3.85
The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes 42888 3.81 191 3.88
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark 7201 4.09 152 4.11
Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water, Vylar Kaftan 1318 3.43 34 3.83
Catfish Lullaby, A.C. Wise 143 4.25 3 4.5

Last year was the first time I tracked this category, and the second-ranked story won.

I find it notable that Marque of Caine and Catfish Lullaby reached the final ballot with low public exposure; both have single-figure readerships on LibraryThing, but they are clearly enthusiastic.

Andre Norton Award:

Goodreads LibraryThing
owners av rating owners av rating
Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee 24344 3.82 253 3.77
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, Carlos Hernandez 7132 4.2 119 4.16
Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer 1881 4.16 68 4.54
Cog, Greg van Eekhout 1985 4.15 26 4.63
Riverland, Fran Wilde 1261 4.06 26 4.4
Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, Henry Lien 248 4.16 17 4

Last year the top-ranked finalist in this category won. I failed to do the calculation for the 2017 award; for the 2016 award, the winner was fifth out of seven on this ranking.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

April 2005 books

April 2005 began for me with a job interview to run a Brussels-based thinktank (I didn't get it, and the thinktank has since folded), and also included trips to the USA (Washington and New York) and, for the first time in my life, Albania. I got a letter about Kosovo and Bosnia in European Voicebriefing on refugee rights in South Ossetia (wildly optimistic, as it now turns out) and a full report on the Sandzak, which includes my favourite footnote from my time at Crisis Group:

The Sandzak of Novi Pazar is chiefly remembered as one of the smaller pieces in the game played by the Great Powers before World War I, an obscure place which doomed those who got too closely involved with it.1
1 See, for instance, "The Lost Sanjak", a short story by Saki (H.H. Munro) published in 1910, whose protagonist's failure to remember the location of Novibazar (Novi Pazar) proves fatal; and Thomas Pynchon's novel, Gravity's Rainbow, in which a minor character, Lord Blatherard Osmo, "occupied the Novi Pazar desk at the Foreign Office … for on this obscure sanjak had once hinged the entire fate of Europe", and similarly comes to a very sticky end.

(Lord Blatherard Osmo is eventually discovered mysteriously suffocated in a bathtub full of tapioca pudding, at the home of a Certain Viscountess, shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939.)

In the wider world, the Pope died while I was on the plane to DC, and his replacement was the infamous Cardinal Ratzinger. The runner-up in the election was the Argentinian cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio; I wonder what happened to him afterwards?

I celebrated my 38th birthday by speaking at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian Senate. Here I am with my new intern J (originally from Pittsburgh but of Ukrainian/Russian heritage) waiting in the wings:

I caught up with J last year in Kosovo, where she is now based

But it's not all about me; I used the new camera to get some pictures of the children as well – B aged 7, F aged 5 and U aged 2.



Anne and I had a rare romantic break to the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Hoge Veluwe near Apeldoorn in the Netherlands; you can cycle through and experience the art. Anne was enjoying it more than her expression here suggests (sun in her eyes).

On the last day of the month, B made her First Communion as arranged by the school and local church, which I found a kind and compassionate ceremony which of course meant little to her but is an important assurance us that our daughter is a full member of God’s family, entitled to eat at His table (as I wrote at the time; not sure I’d put it that way now). I got a couple of decent pictures of the family.


Despite the transatlantic travel, I read only 13 books this month, and three of them were very short guides preparing for the May 2005 odyssey.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 19)
Investing in Prevention: An International Strategy to Manage Risks of Instability and Improve Crisis Reponse, by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit
Collision Course: NATO, Russia and Kosovo, by John Norris

SF 7 (YTD 27)
Broken Angels, by Richard Morgan
The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber
The Snow Queen, by Joan D Vinge
Cities in Flight, by James Blish (I would now count this as four books, but I tallied it as only one in 2005)
Reach for Tomorrow, by Arthur C. Clarke
Banner of Souls, by Liz Williams
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and other stories, by Roger Zelazny

Comics 1 (YTD 3)
Nu We Hier Toch Zijn, by Barbara Stok

3,900 pages (YTD 17,700)
6/13 by women (YTD 14/50) by women
None by PoC

These are all good books. If I had to pick a top four, they would be the two short story collections by favourite authors – you can get the Clarke here and the Zelazny here – Barbara Stok's graphic reflections on life, which you can get here, and my then colleague John Norris's first person account of resolving the Kosovo crisis in 1999, which you can get here.