Monthly Archives: January 2022

January Books

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28 – good start to the year.

Non-fiction 11
A Radical Romance, by Alison Light
Where Was the Room Where It Happened?: The Unofficial Hamilton – An American Musical Location Guide by BdotBarr [Bryan Barreras]
Calvin, by F. Bruce Gordon
Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, by Bruce Clark
The Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell
The Doctor – his Life and Times, by James Goss and Steve Tribe
Neither Unionist nor Nationalist: The 10th (Irish) Division in the Great War by Stephen Sandford
The God Complex, by Paul Driscoll
Why I Write, by George Orwell
Scream of the Shalka, by Jon Arnold
The Complete Debarkle, by Camestros Felapton

Non-genre 6
Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver
The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
Embers, by Sándor Márai
Million Dollar Baby, by F.X. Toole
Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

SF 7
Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters
Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets
The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
“Bloodchild”, by Octavia E. Butler
“Press Enter ◼️”, by John Varley
The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu
Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Doctor Who 3
Of the City of the Saved…, by Philip Purser-Hallard (did not finish)
The Daughters of Earth, by Sarah Groenewegen
Scream of the Shalka, by Paul Cornell

Comics 1
Carbone & Silicium, by Mathieu Bablet

7,300 pages, average length 260 pages.
Median LT ownership 120 (The Doctor – his Life and Times/Scream of the Shalka)
6/28 by women (Light, Waddell, Kingsolver, Kawakami, Butler, Groenwegen)
6/28 by PoC (Barreras, Tan, Kawakami, Liu x2, Butler)

317 books currently tagged "unread"

Coming soon (perhaps)
Scherven, by Erik De Graaf
The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake
After Atlas, by Emma Newman
Duran Duran: The Book by Neil Gaiman
84K, by Claire North
The Twinkling of an Eye, by Brian Aldiss
Lost in Translation, by Ella Frances Sanders
The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest
Nine Lives, by Aimen Dean
Air, by Geoff Ryman
Hergé, Son of Tintin, by Benoît Peeters
Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, by Mark Blake
Tower, by Nigel Jones
Flicker, by Theodore Roszak
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Mort, by Terry Pratchett
A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells
Valley of Lights, by Steve Gallagher
Hive Monkey, by Gareth L. Powell

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Embers, by Sándor Márai

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Second paragraph of third chapter (a long one, broken in two for the English translation):

Most, mikor túlesett már az első meglepetésen, egyszerre elfáradt. Az ember egy életen át készül valamire. Először megsértődik. Aztán bosszút akar. Aztán vár. Már régen várt. Már nem is tudta, mikor alakult át a sértődés és a bosszúvágy várakozássá. Az időben minden megmarad, de olyan színtelen lesz, mint azok a nagyon régi fényképek, melyeket még fémlemezre rögzítettek. A fény, az idő lemossa a lemezről a vonások éles és jellegzetes árnyalatait. Forgatni kell a képet, s a világítás bizonyos fénytörése szükséges hozzá, hogy a vak fémlemezen megismerjük azt, kinek arcvonásait egyszer magába szívta a tükörlap. Így halványodik el az időben minden emberi emlék. De egy napon fény hull valahonnan, s akkor megint látunk egy arcot. A tábornok őrzött egy fiókban ilyen régi fényképeket. Apja arcképét. Az apa testőrszázadosi egyenruhát viselt ezen a képen. Haja bodros-fürtös volt, mint egy leányé. Vállairól fehér testőrköpeny esett alá; a köpenyt gyűrűs kezével összefogta mellén. És oldalt hajtotta fejét, büszkén és sértődötten. Soha nem említette, hol sértették meg és miért. Mikor hazajött Bécsből, vadászni kezdett. Mindennap vadászott, minden évszakban; ha nem akadt vad, vagy tilalmi idő köszöntött be, a rókákra és a varjakra vadászott. Mintha meg akarna ölni valakit, s folytonosan erre a bosszúra készül. A tábornok anyja, a grófnő, kitiltotta a kastélyból a vadászokat, igen, eltiltott és eltávolított mindent, ami a vadászatra emlékeztet, a fegyvereket és a lőszertartó táskákat, a régi nyilakat, a kitömött madár- és szarvasfejeket, az agancsokat. Akkor építette a testőr a vadászlakot. Ott aztán együtt volt minden: a kandalló előtt nagy medvebőrök terültek el, s a falak mentén fehér gyapjúposztós, barna keretes falitáblákon lógtak a fegyverek. A belga, az osztrák puskák. Az angol kések és az orosz golyós fegyverek. Minden vadra. És a vadászlak közelében tartották a kutyákat, a népes falkát, a kopókat és vizslákat, s a solymász is itt lakott a három, sapkás sólyommal. A tábornok apja itt élt, a vadászházban. A kastélybeliek csak az étkezések órájában látták. A kastélyban halvány színekkel borították a falakat, világoskék, világoszöld, halványpiros francia selyemtapétákkal, melyeket arannyal csíkoztak a Párizs környéki szövőgyárakban. A grófnő személyesen válogatta minden évben a tapétákat és bútorokat a francia gyárakban és üzletekben, minden ősszel, mikor családi látogatásra hazájába utazott. Ezt az utazást nem mulasztotta el soha. Joga volt hozzá, kikötötte a házassági szerződésben ezt a jogát, mikor feleségül ment az idegen testőrhöz. Now that the first surprise had passed, he suddenly felt tired. One spends a lifetime preparing for something. First one suffers the wound. Then one plans revenge. And waits. He had been waiting a long time now. He no longer knew when it was that the wound had become a thirst for revenge, and the thirsting had turned to waiting. Time preserves everything, but as it does so, it fades things to the colorlessness of ancient photographs fixed on metal plates. Light and time erase the contours and distinctive shading of the faces. One has to angle the image this way and that until it catches the light in a particular way and one can make out the person whose features have been absorbed into the blank surface of the plate. It is the same with our memories. But then one day light strikes from a certain angle and one recaptures a face again. The General had a drawer of old photographs like that. The one of his father. Dressed in the uniform of a captain of the guards, with his hair in thick curls, like a girl. Around his shoulders, a white guard’s cape, which he held together against his chest with one hand, rings flashing. His head tilted to one side with an air of offended pride. He had never spoken of where and how he had been offended. When he returned from Vienna, he went hunting. Day after day, hunt after hunt, no matter what the time of year; if it was neither the season for red deer nor other game, he hunted foxes and crows.
     As if he were set on killing someone and was keeping himself ready at any moment to take his revenge. The Countess, the General’s mother, would not have the huntsmen in the castle, she banned and banished anything and everything associated with hunting—weapons, cartridge pouches, old arrows, stuffed birds and stags’ heads, antlers. That was when the Captain of the Guards had the hunting lodge built. It became the place for everything: great bearskins in front of the fireplace, panels framed in brown wood and draped in white felt on the walls to display weapons. Belgian and Austrian guns. English knives, Russian bullet holders. Something for every type of game. The kennels were nearby, the entire pack and the tracking dogs and the Vizslas and the falconer lived there with his three hooded falcons. Here in the hunting lodge was where the General’s father spent his time. The inhabitants of the castle saw him only at mealtimes. The castle interiors were all in pastels, the walls hung with coverings of pale blue, pale green, and soft rose striped with gold, from workshops near Paris. Every year the Countess herself would select papers and furniture from French manufacturers and shops, when she went to visit her family. She never failed to make this journey, which was guaranteed to her in her marriage contract when she accepted the hand of the foreign Officer of the Guards.

When I did my survey of books set in various European countries a few years back, this appeared to be the top book set in Hungary, at least in terms of ownership on LibraryThing and Goodreads. I was a bit dubious in that it's set in the castle belonging to a noble Hungarian family, and most such castles were in the territory lost by Hungary after the first world war – and also, Márai himself was from Košice which is now in Slovakia. But in fact I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt; Márai's relatives were the Órszag family, who did have a couple of castles which ended up on the right side of the lines drawn at the Grand Trianon.

It's quite a short book, but very dense. The central character has lost everything that he held dear; his wife died long ago, and he lost her long before that anyway; his oldest friend comes to visit, and they thrash out the details of a painful past after a long separation. It's very end-of-empire ish. I though it was well enough observed, but I don't especially sympathise with imperial nostalgia, so not hugely inclined to seek out Márai's other work. You can get it here.

The stucco ceilings of Jan-Christian Hansche, part 6: the Charles Borromeo sacristy in Antwerp

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Well, I’ve been able to change the colours of a couple of dots on my map:

I have to start by reporting a dead end, unfortunately. The Inventaris Onroerend Erfgoed had led me to believe that there might be a Hansche ceiling actually in our commune, over in Blanden. After diligent research I was able to get in touch with the owners, who however denied that there is any work by Hansche on the premises. So I’ll have to take no for an answer.

Persistence was also required for the northernmost surviving work by Hansche, on the ceiling of the sacristy of the church of St Charles Borromeo in Antwerp. The sacristy is not open to the public, but I got special permission from the man in charge, D, so Anne and I went up to Antwerp yesterday. Here are Anne and D in the sacristy itself.

The sacristy ceiling is the earliest and perhaps least developed of Hansche’s surviving work, but even so it did not disappoint. Here are two panoramas of the eastern and western panels, unfortunately missing out the middle as the floor was blocked by tables, south at the top, north at the bottom (sorry, I was not paying attention to the compass directions).

The church is a Jesuit church, and the most interesting figure on the ceiling is the Jesuit martyr St Paul Miki, at the northern end of the room, carrying with him the instruments of his martyrdom (and maybe a palm frond, indicating Japan???). The sidebar of his cross protrudes into our space.

Right beside him, one of the poles for carrying what looks like the Ark of the Covenant also sticks out into our space.

On his other side is what looks to me like a cat asleep on a drum. Anne thinks it’s obviously a sheep/lamb. I would love to know what the symbolism is here.

Most of the other ceiling panels seem to be Jesuits doing Jesuity things, three of them threatened by heavenly lightning, none quite as dramatic as the unfortunate Paul Miki.



The central monograms are beautifully worked – I don’t think I’ve seen this as much in Hansche’s later work.


Finally, as far as the ceiling goes, the two southern corner pieces depict food and drink.

But I also want to show you the ornate mouldings on the north and south walls, split in each case by a painting in the middle.


We are lucky to have this early Hansche work. The roof of most of the church was destroyed by a fire after the church was struck by lightning in 1718, and 39 ceiling pieces by Peiter Paul Rubens were lost in the blaze; but the sacristy was spared. Two of Rubens’ altarpieces still survive at ground level. It’s no exaggeration to say that he and Hansch between them put the “rock” into Baroque here.

The church as a whole is a Baroque dream:

The carved wooden side panels are also rather glorious. I will only give a couple of examples to whet your appetite. Here’s St Francis Xavier, doing Good Works.

And I’m amused and intrigued by the sassy hip-swinging androgynous supporting figures:

If you happen to be in Antwerp, it’s well worth dropping in.

I’ve managed to book a visit to the law library at Gent University on Saturday morning next weekend, to see more Hansche stucco; you are welcome to join me.

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Saturday reading

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Current
Indigo, by Clemens J. Setz

Last books finished
The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu
Scream of the Shalka, by Paul Cornell
Scream of the Shalka, by Jon Arnold
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
The Complete Debarkle, by Camestros Felapton
Million Dollar Baby, by F.X. Toole
Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

Next books
Scherven, by Erik De Graaf
The War in the Air, by H. G. Wells

Serenity

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Serenity won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, in 2006 and also the 2005 Nebula for Best Script. There was only one other finalist for the Nebula, the Battlstar Galactica episodes "Act of Contrition"/"You Can't Go Home Again"; the Hugo field was more crowded; but Serenity was well ahead at nominations and needed only one round of transfers to win the award.

I think I have seen all of the other finalists, but the fact that I'm not completely sure about any of them except Batman Begins suggests that the voters got it right. Serenity ranks a modest 20th and 24th on the two IMDB ratings systems, behind several of its rivals for the Hugo.

Colin Patrick Lynch is credited as one of the Black Room soldiers here, and was also in a bit part in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. I haven't found a decent shot of him in either role. Apart from him, none of the cast had previously appeared in Oscar, Hugo or Nebula winning films, or in Doctor Who.

I remember actually going to the cinema with Anne to see this when it came out, a rare event for us, and we loved it even though a couple of beloved characters are callously killed off. Part of the context, of course, is that Buffy, Angel and Firefly were very popular among Hugo voters (and in our household), yet two Firefly episodes bizarrely lost out to Gollum's acceptance speech for the 2004 Hugo. I think it's a genuinely good film, true to the spirit of the TV series, at the same time not too impenetrable to the newcomer. And the script really crackles.

Mal: Jayne, how many weapons you plan on bringing? You only got the two arms.
Jayne: I just get excitable as to choice- like to have my options open.
Mal: I don't plan on any shooting taking place during this job.
Jayne: Well, what you plan and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.
Mal: No grenades.
[Jayne groans]
Mal: No grenades!

Kaylee: Everything's shiny, Cap'n. Not to fret.
Mal: You told me those entry couplings would hold for another week!
Kaylee: That was six months ago, Cap'n.

Shepherd Book: I wasn't born a shepherd, Mal.
Mal: You have to tell me about that sometime.
Shepherd Book: [pause] No, I don't.

Kaylee: Goin' on a year now I ain't had nothin' twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries!
Mal: Oh, God! I can't *know* that!
Jayne: I could stand to hear a little more.

It’s not an ambitious film, just providing closure for the series, a bit of adventure against the oppressive state, some good action and credible effects. And it ticks all of those boxes. And wow, Summer Glau!

It’s a shame that Joss Whedon turns out to be a deeply problematic individual, but I think we’re still allowed to enjoy some of the stuff he produced.

Next up is Howl’s Moving Castle, which won the following year’s Nebula.

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December 2014 books and 2014 books roundup

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

In December 2014 I had two work trips to London, one of which was combined with a visit to Albania. We finished the month by visiting my cousins who had just moved to Luxembourg. F and one of the younger cousins re-enacted a photo that had been taken some years before.

I also wrote up my thoughts on Richard III's mitochondrial DNA.

I read 21 books that month.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 48)
Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time, by Stephen Baxter
Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court, by Anna Whitelock
101 Ways to Win an Election, by Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield

Fiction (non-sf) 0 (YTD 41)

SF (non-Who) 14 (YTD 124)
Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
Ultima, by Stephen Baxter
A Man Lies Dreaming, Lavie Tidhar
The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung
The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihira
The Forever Watch, Daniel Ramirez
Vicious, by V.E. Schwab (did not finish)
Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North
The Three, by Sarah Lotz
I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert A. Heinlein (did not finish)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler
The Burning Dark, by Adam Christopher
The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 59)
Fear of the Dark, by Trevor Baxendale
The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin
Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham

Comics 1 (YTD 19)
Sterrenrood, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Peter De Gucht]

~7,000 pages (2014 total ~97,100)
6/21 (2014 total 81/291) by women (Yanagihira, Schwab, Okorafor, North, Lotz, Fowler)
3/21 (2014 total 19/291) by PoC (Chan, Yanagihira, Okorafor)

The best of these was the near-future Chinese sf novel The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung, which you can get here, followed by Claire North's debut The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, another book that ended up on the Clarke shortlist, which you can get here.

On the other hand, I totally bounced off my attempted reread of I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert A. Heinlein, which you can get here, and also was very unimpressed with Vicious, by V.E. Schwab, which you can get here.

2014 Books Roundup

Total books: 291 – fifth highest of the 18 years I have been keeping track, though the next six years were lower (2021 was up again).

Total page count: ~97,100 – second highest of the 18 years I have been counting (2009 was the highest).

Diversity:
81 (28%) by women – higher than any previous year, lower percentage than most subsequent years.
19 (6%) by PoC – more than any previous year except 2010, lower percentage than than any subsequent year.

Most books by a single author:
Justin Richards (4), and Jeff VanderMeer (also 4, if we count the trilogy separately).

Non-Whovian sff

2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
114 77 108 68 80 130 124 64 62 78 73 78 54 75 68 79 76
43% 33% 41% 29% 38% 45% 43% 25% 24% 26% 26% 23% 15% 32% 33% 55% 51%

Second highest total and fourth highest percentage ever. (For convenience, this total includes a couple of Clarke submissions that I don't really think are sf.)

Top SF books of the year:
The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung (reviewget it here) – a gret near-future novel about China
Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel (get it here) – will say more next year

Honourable mentions:
The Ocean At The End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman (reviewget it here)
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie (reviewget it here)

Enjoyed rereading:
Animal Farm, by George Orwell (reviewget it here)
The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White (reviewget it here)
Inverted World, by Christopher Priest (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (reviewget it here).

The one to avoid:
Into the Fire, by Peter Liney (get it here).

Doctor Who fiction

Novels, collections of shorter fiction, etc excluding comics
2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
30 18 32 32 51 39 43 59 72 75 80 71 70 179 27 28 5 1
10% 7% 14% 12% 21% 18% 15% 20% 30% 29% 27% 26% 19% 48% 11% 14% 3% 1%
All Who books including comics and non-fiction
2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
40 25 43 42 55 42 54 68 81 75 87 78 80 180 49 32 5 1
14% 9% 18% 16% 23% 20% 19% 23% 34% 29% 29% 28% 23% 49% 21% 15% 3% 1%

Seventh highest total and percentage of the years I have been tallying, for both sets of stats.

Top Doctor Who books of the year:
Adventures with the Wife in Space: Living With Doctor Who, by Neil Perryman (reviewget it here) – lovely story of Doctor Who and a marriage
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 2005-2006, by Tat Wood (reviewget it here) – in-depth analysis of the first two years of New Who

Honourable mentions:
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller, by Joanne Harris (reviewget it here)
The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell (reviewget it here)
Damaged Goods, by Russell T. Davis (reviewyou can get an audio adaptation here)

Enjoyed rereading:
The Making of Doctor Who, by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:
The Cybermen Monster File, by Gavin Collinson and Joseph Lidster (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:
Mission to Venus, by William Emms (reviewget it here)

Non-fiction

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
53 50 49 50 57 37 47 48 46 53 69 66 88 70 78 70 42 42
18% 19% 21% 19% 24% 17% 16% 16% 19% 20% 23% 24% 26% 19% 33% 34% 29% 28%

Joint lowest percentage for any year that I've been keeping track, though five other years had lower absolute numbers.

Top non-fiction book of the year:
Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell (reviewget it here)

Honourable mention to:
Other People's Countries: A Journey into Memory, by Patrick McGuinness (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:
Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles by Jayne Olorunda (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:
Napoleon Bonaparte for Little Historians, by Bou Bounoider-Olivi  (reviewget it here)

Non-sfnal fiction

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
30 40 45 36 26 28 42 41 44 48 48 50 57 24 33 35 9 19
10% 15% 19% 14% 11% 13% 14% 14% 19% 19% 16% 18% 18% 6% 14% 17% 6% 13%

Ninth out of eighteen years percentage-wise; eighth highest raw number.

Top non-genre fiction of the year:
The Waves, by Virginia Woolf (review with spoilersget it here) – really grabbed me with its unusual narrative structure

Honourable mentions:
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene (reviewget it here)

Enjoyed rereading:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:
Battle for Bittora, by Anuja Chauhan (reviewget it here)

The one to avoid:
Vernon God Little, by D.B.C. Pierre (reviewget it here)

Comics

2021/ 2020/ 2019/ 2018/ 2017/ 2016/ 2015/ 2014/ 2013/ 2012/ 2011/ 2010/ 2009/ 2008/ 2007/ 2006/ 2005/ 2004/
48 45 31 28 29 27 18 19 30 21 27 18 28 6 20 6 8 8
16% 17% 13% 11% 12% 13% 6% 7% 13% 8% 9% 6% 8% 2% 8% 3% 6% 5%

Twelfth highest tally and percentage.

Top comic of the year:
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot (reviewget it here) – combines autobiography with the story of James Joyce's daughter Lucretia

Honourable mention:
Sugar Skull, by Charles Burns (reviewget it here)

The one you haven't heard of:
Brussel in beeldekes: Manneken Pis en andere sjarels, ed. Marc Verhaegen (reviewThe one to avoid:


Worst book of the year: with some competition from others in the same series, the 1986 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Doctor Who story by William Emms, Mission to Venus, is so poor that I would gently suggest to even the most dedicated Who completist than they can safely give it a miss.

My Book of the Year

Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell (reviewget it here) – fantastic reportage, made particularly thrilling as I walked the very streets that Orwell had written about, eight decades before

Other Books of the Year:

2003 (2 months): The Separation, by Christopher Priest.
2004: The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (reread).
– Best new read: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin
2005: The Island at the Centre of the World, by Russell Shorto
2006: Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea
2007: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
2008: The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, by Anne Frank (reread)
– Best new read: Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, by William Makepeace Thackeray
2009: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare (had seen it on stage previously)
– Best new read: Persepolis 2: the Story of a Return, by Marjane Satrapi (first volume just pipped by Samuel Pepys in 2004)
2010: The Bloody Sunday Report, by Lord Savile et al.
2011: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon (started in 2009!)
2012: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë
2013: A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
2014: See above
2015: collectively, the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, in particular the winner, Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel. However I did not actually blog about these, being one of the judges at the time.
– Best book I actually blogged about: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin
2016: Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot
2017: Common People: The History of an English Family, by Alison Light
2018: Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
2019: Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo
2020: From A Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb, by Timothy Knatchbull

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I am 20,000 days old today

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Yes, really. I sat down and did the calculation a couple of weeks ago, being vaguely aware that it was around now. And fifty-four years (fourteen of them leap years), nine months and one day takes you from 26 April 1967 to 27 January 2022. In better times, I would have planned an unbirthday party for the evening; but local conditions don’t quite allow for it at the moment. So instead, I’ve looked back through my life at thousand day intervals.

1000 days: Tuesday 20 January 1970
I was two and three quarters, living in Belfast. The Troubles were going through a deceptive lull – the first violent deaths of the year in Northern Ireland would not be until June. The Biafrans had just lost the Nigerian civil war. The first commercial Boeing 747 took off the next day.
(Between episodes 3 and 4 of Spearhead from Space.)

2000 days: Monday 16 October 1972
I was five and a half, attending primary school. The Troubles were in full flow with four people killed by the British Army that day, two IRA, two Loyalists, and Maze prison inmates starting a fire which caused serious damage. Congressman Hale Boggs died in a plane crash in Alaska (at least that’s what we think; the wreckage was never found). The first episode of Emmerdale was broadcast.

3000 days: Sunday 13 July 1975
I was eight and a quarter. I remember being at my grandparents’ in Dublin later that week, watching the Apollo-Soyuz mission; possibly we were already there on the 13th, avoiding the Twelfth. Two people were killed in the Troubles that day, a Catholic teenager shot by the Army and a loyalist killed in in an internal feud. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) process was nearing an end, with the Helsinki Accords signed on 1 August.

4000 days: Saturday 8 April 1978
I was nearly eleven, in my last year at St Anne’s primary school. The IRA kidnapped and shot a Catholic man from Twinbrook that day; his body was not found until 2014. Star Wars had just won six Oscars, to four for Annie Hall. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was released the following day.

5000 days: Friday 2 January 1981
Weirdly enough, I remember actually working out that I was 5000 days old on that day. I was thirteen, still enjoying the Christmas holidays, in the third form at Rathmore Grammar School. We were in the lull between the two hunger strikes; the IRA killed a Castlewellan man the previous day. Jimmy Carter was preparing to hand over to Ronald Reagan. Greece had just joined the EEC.
(episode 1 of Warrior’s Gate was broadcast the next day)

6000 days: Thursday 29 September 1983
I was sixteen, in Lower Sixth at Rathmore, with a long-distance girlfriend in England. The previous weekend 38 prisoners escaped from the Maze Prison, the biggest prison break in UK or Irish history. Neil Kinnock was about to be elected leader of the UK Labour Party.

7000 days: Wednesday 25 June 1986
I was nineteen, working on an archaeology site near Heilbronn in Germany, still with the same long-distance girlfriend. That evening West Germany beat France and Argentina beat Belgium in the World Cup semi-finals (Argentina won the final on Sunday). I actually remember that we had a barbecue at work the next day, lots of roast meat and beer.

8000 days: Tuesday 21 March 1989
I was 21, single, preparing nervously for finals at Cambridge, and had just been elected Deputy President of the students union for the following year. The previous day, the IRA killed two policemen in south Armagh. Serbia was about to revoke Kosovo’s autonomy, as Communism crumbled across eastern Europe.

9000 days: Monday 16 December 1991
I was 24, living in Belfast again and working as a researcher on the project that became my PhD, long-distancing with Anne, my future wife. The following day a Belfast bar manager was killed by a leading INLA man who had been thrown out of his bar. The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on Christmas Day (though functionally it had collapsed months before).

10000 days: Sunday 11 September 1994
I was 27, had been married to Anne for almost a year, in the middle of my PhD; I actually had a 10000-day party that evening, having done the calculations in advance. We were in ceasefire time, with the IRA having announced theirs two weeks before, and the Loyalists preparing for theirs a month later. I was already active in the Alliance Party as the grandly titled Director of Elections.

11000 days: Saturday 7 June 1997
I was 30, working in Bosnia, nervously ready for the arrival of B a couple of weeks later – I think we already knew by the 7th that Anne (who had stayed in Belfast) would have a Caesarian on the 19th. The Irish general election was the previous day, with Bertie Ahern placed to start his eleven-year term as Taoiseach. The IRA ceasefire was reinstated the following month.

12000 days: Friday 3 March 2000
I was 32, working at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels; we were still getting to grips with B’s disability, and F was a happy seven months old. I think this was actually the weekend that I went to Hungary to meet with the Serbian opposition. My first visit to Kosovo was later that month. The Northern Ireland Assembly had been suspended again. George W. Bush and Al Gore clinched their respective presidential nominations the following Tuesday.

13000 days: Thursday 28 November 2002
I was 35, working for the International Crisis Group, expecting U’s arrival a few weeks later. We had just published a report on [North] Macedonia and NATO. Back in Northern Ireland, the Assembly had been suspended after Stormontgate the previous month, and did not come back for years.

14000 days: Wednesday 24 August 2005
I was 38, still working for the International Crisis Group, briefly at home between our holiday in Northern Ireland (including the 2005 Glasgow Worldcon) and a particularly fun trip to [North] Macedonia which started the following day. The USA was about to be hit by Hurricane Katrina. As part of the ongoing Northern Ireland choreography, the IRA had declared a permanent end to its campaign the previous month (which had also seen the 7/7 bombings in London).

15000 days: Tuesday 20 May 2008
I was 41, working with Independent Diplomat, just back from a trip to Montenegro and Albania, and reading lots of Doctor Who books. B had moved out a few months before, and into the place where she now lives the previous month. Bertie Ahern had just stepped down as Taoiseach, followed by Brian Cowen, and Ian Paisley was about to step down as First Minister of Northern Ireland. Boris Johnson had just been elected Mayor of London.
(Between The Unicorn and the Wasp and Silence in the Library)

16000 days: Monday 14 February 2011
I was 43, still working with Independent Diplomat, probably took the evening to celebrate Valentine’s Day with Anne. In Ireland, voters were preparing to give Fianna Fail a massive kicking, and across the Arab world governments were toppling.

17000 days: Sunday 10 November 2013
I was 46, at Novacon in Nottingham with F, having a damn good time. Still working with Independent Diplomat but actively looking. Preparing for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who two weeks later…

18000 days: Saturday 6 August 2016
I was 49, on holiday in Northern Ireland from my work at APCO Worldwide, where I had been working for almost two years. I have a note that I went to Tyrella Beach and Downpatrick that day. The Rio Olympics were about to start.

19000 days: Friday 3 May 2019
It was the week after my 52nd birthday, and I spent all day in the BBC TV studio in Belfast commenting on the results of the previous day’s local council elections.

20000 days: Thursday 27 January 2022
Here we are in the plague times. I’ve had a bit of a cold all week, so didn’t have energy for much more celebration than writing this – and as you can tell, I ran out of steam towards the end!

Anyway, if I make it to the second month after my 82nd birthday, you’re all welcome to help me celebrate 30,000 days on 14 June 2049.

The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

I was the youngest child of one of the oldest families in Penang. My great-grandfather, Graham Hutton, had been a clerk in the East India Company before sailing out to the East Indies to make his fortune in 1780. He had sailed around the Spice Islands trading in pepper and spices, and came to befriend Captain Francis Light who was searching for a suitable port. He found it on an island in the Straits of Malacca, on the north-western side of the Malay Peninsula and within comfortable reach of India. The island was sparsely inhabited, thick with trees, humped with rolling hills and surrounded by long white stretches of beach. The local Malays named it after the tall areca palm trees — pinang — which grew abundantly on it.

I've always been fascinated by Penang, where my father was born in 1928 but I have never been. This was the first novel by Tan, whose second novel The Garden of Evening Mists I enjoyed a few years back. The narrator, son of a marriage between an Englishman and a Chinese woman, finds himself playing a key role in the Japanese administration of occupied Penang during the second world war, and many years later encounters the lover of his Japanese best friend and tells her his story. The cityscape is vividly realised, as are the interaction of cultures and the brutality of the Japanese regime. It gets a bit sanguinary towards the end, but this was true of that period of history in reality. I felt the prose was not as smooth as in the later book; one can feel that this is a first novel. However, well worth reading to deepen my own appreciation of my father's birthplace. You can get it here.

680 days of plague: Erlend, and pig bronchus

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A bit gloomier today than I had hoped to be. The numbers in Belgium continue to soar – more than 3% of the country’s population had a positive diagnosis last week – and there is no immediate prospect of further relaxations of the restrictions. I had been considering a work trip to the UK next week, but I’ve decided to postpone that for the time being. (Three weeks from tomorrow I’ll be heading off to the USA. I hope.)

I’ve also had a nagging sore throat since the weekend. Not bad enough to stop me working, but irritating all the same, and I worked from home today instead of from the office in Brussels as I had planned. My home COVID tests keep coming up negative, which is something at least.

And yesterday came the sad news that Erlend Watson had left us. Most people outside the Liberal Democrats will never have heard of him, but he was a well-known personality in the party, always proud of his Orkney origins and a bit larger than life. It’s years since we had met in person, but as with so many acquaintances of times past, we had re-engaged more recently on Facebook. He did not recover properly from a double lung transplant last year, and announced on December 26 that he probably had between three and six months left; in fact he did not even get a full month. We will remember him. This was his last tweet:

Is this the worst British government since Caligula? Difficult to go much further on record. The one who lost the Dogger Bank or the one during the Permian extinction? @mrjamesob

— Erlend Watson ️ (@erlendwatson) December 21, 2021

And speaking of lungs… After my visit to hospital when I had COVID in November, the Belgian medical system stored all of the tests and reports for me to look at when I felt like it. It took a while for me to feel like it, but I did have a look last week, and was a bit puzzled by a reference to “pig bronchus”, which I had never heard of. It turns out that I have not one but two connections from my windpipe to my right lung, the extra one being an offshoot from the windpipe a couple of cm above the point where it divides between left and right. This is a mutation found in, as sources rather imprecisely put it, between 0.1% and 5% of people. It’s not in any way dangerous; I got through 54 years of life without it being an issue, and most people would never know if they have it. I would post the actual scan of my torso here, but the extra bronchus is only barely visible on it, even if you know what you are looking for.

Tomorrow it will be 20,000 days since I was born. No party planned, but if I make it to six weeks past my 82nd birthday, you’re all welcome on 14 June 2049 to celebrate 30,000 days of me.

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Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece And Turkey, by Bruce Clark

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

My sister was caught when the war ended. The Turkish army came to the place where we were. In the ensuing battle my sister, a young girl, was captured. A baker from Kayak took her and adopted her. He raised her as though she were really his child.

Quite a short book (270 pages) about a big big topic: the forced exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in 1923, following on the Treaty of Lausanne which officially ended the First World War, but also put a full stop to the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-22 and notoriously stipulated that Muslims living in Greece (except Eastern Thrace) and Orthodox Christians living in Turkey (except Istanbul) would be transferred to the other country. This meant 1.2 million Christians and 400,000 Muslims, many (possibly most) of whom did not speak Greek or Turkish respectively as their first language, if at all, suddenly became citizens in lands where their ancestors had never lived; historic communities were unmixed, cultures were wiped out, and unspoken traumas endured.

Bruce Clark wrote this book at the beginning of the century when a fair number of eyewitnesses were still alive, if elderly, and prepared to talk about what had happened to them eighty years before; I shouldn't think there are many left now. So he combined historiography of the early Greek state, late Ottoman Empire and nascent Turkish Republic with powerful first-person accounts. These eyewitness stories are not only of violence and expulsion. A surprising number of his interlocutors were happy to talk about the happy times before the conflict, when villagers all lived together without fussing too much about whether they went to the mosque or the church, or indeed indivudal acts of humanity by neighbours as the situation accelerated. This nostalgia had survived eight decades of indoctrination by the Greek and Turkish states.

One fascinating (and sad) aspect is that in fact the Christians and Muslims who were displaced were a lot more diverse than the cultures into which they were then ruthlessly assimilated. I was already familiar with the Bektashi sect of Islam, which flourished in what is now Greek Macedonia and is now basically restricted to the Albanian-speaking world. I wasn't previously aware of their neighbours the Valaades, or of the crypto-Christians of Anatolia, populations whose identity depended on the mixed cultures of their environments.

All of this is set against the high politics of the negotiations between Venizelos and Kemal (not yet Atatürk), who were both very much in favour of unmixing their respective populations, but both also faced significant internal opposition – both were nominally democracies with elected parliaments, but we should always remember that even autocratic states can have vigorous internal politics. (The subtitle of the book uses the word "forged", which of course means both making and faking.) There were significant interventions in managing the displaced populations from external players as well, notably in Greece which was very dependent on external aid from the British government and from American individuals such as Henry Morgenthau.

It did make me wonder about an alternate timeline where Greece actually won the 1919-22 war. I don't think the territorial gains on the Aegean coast could have been sustainable in the long term, given Turkey's much greater population and advantage of strategic depth. The new Turkish state (Kemalism would not have survived) would have aligned firmly with the Axis in the second world war, rather than the neutrality of our timeline, and would surely have taken back all or most of the territory, with a second huge wave of human displacement.

Clark doesn't especially look at other cases of forced mass population movement – he mentions Cyprus in passing (tragic indeed, if on a smaller scale) but one could add the Partition of India, which was an order of magnitude bigger on the human scale, or the Balkans in the 1990s, or indeed the place where both Clark and I come from which saw thousands forced from their homes in 1969. It's enough to look in detail at this one particular situation. He does however assess the outcome as a success for both the Greek and Turkish states, considered in their own selfish and brutal terms; a success gained at the cost of vast human misery.

(Also, Japan participated in the Allied military occupation of Constantinople/Istanbul! I had no idea!)

A great book, very readable I think even for those who are less familiar with the history and geography of the subject. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2015. The next might be The Best of Tor 2015, but it's rather long and I may skip it.

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The Daughters of Earth, by Sarah Groenewegen

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

At four the storm abated. The clouds cleared and she stared up at the inky black. Focused on the stars and labelled several of the constellations. She saw a shooting star and wished Judith and Maude would return safely from their journey south to Manchester.

In contrast to the Faction Paradox series, which I have given up on, I am thoroughly enjoying the Lethbridge-Stewart books published by Candy Box. Here we have the Brigadier and colleagues fighting snowstorms in deepest Scotland, along with a cell of feminist activists which has in fact been taken over by alien forces. There are layers of uncertainty and deception, and a major twist in the developing plotline of the overall series. I enjoyed it a lot, as I have enjoyed the others. You can get it here.

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BSFA Short Fiction long-list

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I've definitely spent more time on this than I should, but here's how to get (most of) the 60 long-listed stories nominated for the BSFA Short Fiction Award for 2021. Yes, yes, Amazon, I know, but I get a very small bonus if you buy anything from those links. And I've changed to my own version of alphabetical order.

I've raised a couple of eligibility queries below which came up in my research. Apologies if the administartors already considered those questions. No blame also if they have not – I am very appreciative of the amount of effort that goes into administering awards like these…

My previous notes on this year's BSFA long lists:
Non-fiction
Art
Novel and YA

"The Abomination", by Nuzo Onoh The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Sep/Oct 2021
Advanced Triggernometry, by Stark Holborn £2.99 from Amazon
"The Alien Invasion", by Ely Percy Shoreline of Infinity, Nov 2021
"The Alien Stars", by Tim Pratt Title story of collection with the same name, £8.46 from Amazon
"The Andraiad", by Tim Major Interzone, #290-291, Mar/Jun 2021
"An Array of Worlds as a Rose Unfurling in Time", by Shreya Anasuya Strange Horizons, 13 Dec 2021, available here
"The Best Damned Barbershop in Hell", by Bruce Arthurs Things With Feathers: Stories of Hope, ed Juliana Rew, £7.82 from Amazon
"A Blind Eye", by M. H. Ayinde Daily Science Fiction, 28 May 2021, available here
"The Center of the Universe", by Nadia Shammas Strange Horizons, 29 Mar 2021, available here
"The Chorus", by Aliya Whiteley Out of the Darkness, ed. Dan Coxon, £8.75 from Amazon
Clockwork Sister, by M.E. Rodman
"The Constellation of Alarion", by John Houlihan Title story of collection with the same name, £7.99 from Amazon
"Dog and Pony Show", by Robert Jeschonek Clarkesworld, Dec 2021, available here
"Down and Out under the Tannhauser Gate", by David Gullen ParSec #1, Autumn 2021
"Dream Eater", by Nemma Wollenfang Things With Feathers: Stories of Hope, ed Juliana Rew, £7.82 from Amazon
"Dreamports", by Tlotlo Tsamaase Apex Magazine, 20 Dec 2021, available here
"Efficiency", by Paolo Bacigalupi Cities of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures, eds Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller, available hereavailable here.
"The Failing Name", by Eugen Bacon and Seb Doubinsky Fantasy Magazine Aug 2021, available here
"Fanfiction for a Grimdark Universe", by Vanessa Fogg Translunar Travelers' Lounge, 15 Feb 2021, available here
"The Farmers and the Farmed", by William C. Powell The Antihumanist #1
Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard £6.84 from Amazon
"First Person Singular", by Haruki Murakami Title story of collection with the same name, £8.79 from Amazon
Fish, by Ida Keogh £9.99 from Amazon
"Flight", by Innocent Chizaram Ilo Fantasy Magazine Feb 2021, available here
Flyaway, by Kathleen Jennings £11.40 from Amazon
"The Forlorn Hope", by Verity Holloway Out of the Darkness, ed. Dan Coxon, £8.75 from Amazon
The Future God of Love, by Dilman Dila £8.98 from Amazon
"The Ghosts of Trees", by Fiona Moore Shoreline of Infinity, Jun 2021
"The Graveyard", by Eleanor Arnason Uncanny Magazine Jul/Aug 2021, available here
"Her Garden, the Size of Her Palm", by Yukimi Ogawa The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 2021
"The Hungry Dark", by Simon Bestwick Out of the Darkness, ed. Dan Coxon, £8.75 from Amazon
"If The Martians Have Magic", by P. Djeli Clark Uncanny Magazine Sep/Oct 2021, available here
"Immersion", by Aliette de Bodard [seems to have been published in 2012, when it was on the BSFA shortlist, won the Nebula and Locus and second place for the Hugo] Clarkesworld Jun 2012, available here
"Just Enough Rain", by PH Lee GigaNotoSaurus, May 2021, available here
"The Lay of Lilyfinger", by G.V. Anderson Tor.com, available here
Light Chaser, by Peter F Hamilton and Gareth L Powell £8.25 from Amazon
"The Man Who Turned Into Gandhi", by Shovon Chowdhury [first published in India in 2019, but first UK publication was in 2021] New Horizons: The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, ed. Tarun K. Saint, £8.48 from Amazon
"The Mermaid Astronaut", by Yoon Ha Lee [surely 2020 publication? Hugo finalist last year] Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 27 Feb 2020, available here
"Metal Like Blood in the Dark", by T. Kingfisher [surely 2020 publication? Won Hugo last year] Uncanny Magazine Sep/Oct 2020, available here
"The Metric", by David Moles Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May/Jun 2021
The Museum [not "Musuem"] For Forgetting, by Peter M Sutton £4.63 from Amazon
O2 Arena, by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki [published in 2022 issue of Apex Magazine, though I guess it was available last year] Apex Magazine #129, Jan 2022, available here
"The Plus One", by Marie Vibbert The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/Jun 2021; available here (PDF)
Prime Meridian, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [seems to have been published in 2018] £9.29 from Amazon
"Proof, by Induction", by Jose Pablo Iriarte Uncanny Magazine May 2021, available here
"The Samundar Can be Any Color", Fatima Taqvi Flash Fiction Online, Apr 2021, available here
"Scars", by Bora Chung Cursed Bunny, £9.74 from Amazon
"Secrets of the Kath", by Fatima Taqvi Strange Horizons, 18 Jan 2021, available here
"Seven Horrors", by Fabio Fernandes Love. An Archaeology, £9.99 from Amazon
"Shutdown/Restart", by Jo Ross-Barrett [not "Ross-Battett'] Shoreline of Infinity, Oct 2021
"The Song of the Moohee", by Emmett Swan Metaphorosis Magazine, May 2021, available here
"Sorry We Missed You!", by Aun-Juli Riddle khōréō magazine #1.4
"The Tale of Jaja and Canti", by Tobi Ogundiran Lightspeed Magazine, Aug 2021, available here
"Things Can Only Get Better", by Fiona Moore Abyss & Apex, 3 Sep 2021, available here
"The Walls of Benin City", by M. H. Ayinde Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine Issue 1, 21 Dec 2021, available here
"What is Mercy?", by Amal Singh Fantasy Magazine Sep 2021, available here
"White Rose, Red Rose", by Rachel Swirsky Uncanny Magazine Nov/Dec 2021, available here
Worldshifter, by Paul Di Filippo £7.18 from Amazon
"Zeno's Paradise", by E. J. Delaney Things With Feathers: Stories of Hope, ed Juliana Rew, £7.82 from Amazon

BSFA Non-fiction long list

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OK, I've probably spent way too long on this, but here's where to get the BSFA Non-Fiction award nominees. NB that I have changed the quirky alpapetisation of the BSFA annoucnement to my own quirky alphabetisation. NB also that I link to Amazon for convenience, and because of course I get a minuscule bounty if you buy anything from tose links. I have to say that one or two of these are beyond my budget.

My other notes on this year's BSFA long lists:
Short fiction
Art
Novel and YA

"The Anthropocene in Frank Herbert's Dune Trilogy", by Tara B.M. Smith Foundation; The International Review of Science Fiction. 2021, 50 (3), 62-75
The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe in Contemporary Culture, by Mark Bould Book, £10.99 from Amazon
Blake's 7 Annual 1982, eds Grahame Robertson and Carole Ramsay Book – I nominated this, go get it here for £43.72!
Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades, by Anna McFarlane Book, £109.10 from Amazon
Debarkle, by Camestros Felapton Book available for free here
Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Colour, by Joy Sanchez-Taylor Book, £25.09 from Amazon
Extraterrestrial, by Avi Loeb Book, £8.19 from Amazon
Gendering Time, Timing Gender, by PM Biswas Book, £12.99 from Amazon
The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure, by Xavier Dolla, illus. Djibril Morissette-Phan Book, £17.99 from Amazon
The Importance of Being Interested, by Robin Ince Book, £13.34 from Amazon
"Manifestos of Futurisms", by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. 2021, 50 (2), 8-23
Octothorpe Podcast, by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty Website here
"On Writing Narratives, Questioning Standards, and Oral Traditions in Storytelling", by K. S. Villoso Online here
"Science Fiction and the Pathways out of the COVID Crisis", by Val Nolan Online here
Science Fiction in Translation, by Ian Campbell Book, £115.76 from Amazon
Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Sheryl Vint [seems to have been puiblished in 2014?] Book, £16.56 from Amazon
"Seduced, by the Ruler's Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson's Masquerade", by Sid Jain Online here
Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space, by Fred Scharmen Book, £13.29 from Amazon
"Speculative Sex: Queering Aqueous Natures and Biotechnological Futures in Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl", by Sarah Bezan Chapter from Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch, £109.10 from Amazon
Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction, by Sami Ahmed Khan Book, £52.10 from Amazon
Storylistening, by Sarah Dillon and Claire Craig Book, £29.61 from Amazon
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders Book, £9.34 from Amazon
World of Warcraft: New Flavors of Azeroth, by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel Book, £18.45 from Amazon
Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini Book, £15.99 from Amazon
"Writing the Contemporary Uncanny", by Jane Alexander Essay in The Flicker Against the Light and Writing the Contemporary Uncanny, £12.99 from Amazon

November 2014 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

With my new job, I started a fairly intense period of travel which was only really interrupted by the pandemic two years ago I went to London (twice actually):

…to a conference in Florence (actually my previous visit had been in 1991 not 1990):

…and to another in Montenegro.

We also went to a couple of museums in Belgium, and I did some cultural archaeology:

I read 26 books that month.

Non-fiction 1 (YTD 45)
TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5: Tom Baker and the Williams Years, by Philip Sandifer

Tardis Eruditorum

Fiction (non-sf) 4 (YTD 41)
Home, by Marilynne Robinson
Rules, by Cynthia Lord
Beach Music, by Pat Conroy
The Grass is Singing, by Doris May Lessing

Home Rules Beach Music The Grass is Singing

SF (non-Who) 16 (YTD 110) (most of these were Clarke submissions)
Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel
Into the Fire, by Peter Liney
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
Authority, by Jeff VanderMeer
Acceptance, by Jeff VanderMeer
War Dogs, by Greg Bear
Wolves, by Simon Ings
Memory of Water, by Emmi Itäranta
The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell
The Peripheral, by William Gibson
Sphinx: The Second Coming, by James Thornton
Consumed, by David Cronenburg
Bird Box, by Josh Malerman
Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Heart of Valour, by Tanya Huff

Shades of Milk and Honey

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 56)
Empire of Death, by David Bishop
Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt
Time Zero, by Justin Richards
The Crawling Terror, by Mike Tucker

Empire of Death Lungbarrow Time Zero Crawling Terror

Comics 1 (YTD 18)
Sugar Skull, by Charles Burns

Sugar Skull

~8,500 pages (YTD ~90,100)
7/26 (YTD 75/270) by women (Robinson, Lord, Lessing, Mandel, Itäranta, Mandel, Huff)
0/26 (YTD 16/270) by PoC

The best of these was Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel, which went on to win the Arthur C. Clarke Award and is now a TV series; you can get it here. The second best was Emmi Itäranta's Memory of Water, also a Clarke shortlistee, which you can get here. I also very much enjoyed Sugar Skull, the conclusion of Charles Burns' graphic novel trilogy; you can get it here.

On the other hand, Sphinx: The Second Coming, by James Thornton, was pretty awful; you can get it here. And Into the Fire, by Peter Liney, was probably even worse, but I only read the first fifty pages; you can get it here.

Carbone & Silicium, by Mathieu Bablet

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Second frame of third chapter:

Do you think so?

French bande dessinée given to us for Christmas by a friend. Carbone ("Carbon") and Silicium ("Silicon") are two artificial intelligences constructed in the near future, given humanoid bodies, and observing and participating in the gradual decline of humanity and the end of the world in environmental catastrophe. It's much slower paced than, say, Barbarella, but thoughtful as well as grim. As my regular reader knows, I'm not a huge fan of stories with anthropomorphic robots; however this somehow worked for me. You can get it herehere, here, here, here, here and here.

BSFA Best Art longlist

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More on the BSFA long lists: 28 works of art are listed in the Best Art category, but no links are given, so I'm supplying them here. Of the 28, 13 or 14 are book covers (in one case it isn't clear); 6 are art installations; 4 are standalone graphics; two are graphic stories, and two are short films. I have tracked down all but one of them (and am a bit surprised that I couldn't find that one in particular, for reasons noted below. Found it).

My other notes on this year's BSFA long lists:
Short fiction
Non-fiction
Novel and YA

Black Corporeal (Between This Air), by Julianknxx Short film
Brick Lane Foundation, by Abbas Zahedi Art installation
Build or Destroy, by Rashaad Newsome Short film
Cover of Danielle Lainton & Louise Coquio (eds)'s Pashtarina's Peacocks: For Storm Constantine, by Ruby Publisher's webpage
Cover of Eugen Bacon's Danged Black Thing, by Peter Lo / Kara Walker Publisher's webpage
Cover of Eugen Bacon's Saving Shadows, Elena Betti / Ian Whates Publisher's webpage
Cover of Freda Warrington and Liz Williams' Shadows on the Hillside, by Danielle Lainton [NB credited author is Storm Constantine; Warrington and Williams are contributors] Publisher's webpage
Cover of Jamie Mollart's Kings of a Dead World, by Heike Schüssler Publisher's webpage
Cover of Rian Hughes' The Back Locomotive, by Rian Hughes Publisher's webpage
Cover of Rosa Rankin-Gee's Dreamland (artist’s name not given) Publisher's webpage
Cover of Shift #3, by Mark Montague Publisher's webpage
Cover of Shift #7, by Ian D Paterson Publisher's webpage
Cover of Simon Jimenez's The Vanished Bird (2021 paperback edition), artist’s name not given Publisher's webpage
Cover of Suyi Davies Okungbowa's Son of the Storm, by Dan dos Santos / Lauren Panepinto Publisher's webpage
Cover of The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction Anthology, Maria Spada Publisher's webpage
Cover of Xueting Christine Ni (ed.)'s Sinopticon, by Bradley Sharp Publisher's webpage
Exhibition at 180 The Strand, by Ryoji Ikeda Art installation
Flyaway, by Kathleen Jennings [I guess nomination is for the cover? Though there seem to be a few internal illustrations as well.] Publisher's webpage
Late Hangout at Zuko's, by Devin Elle Kurtz [appears to be collaboration with Gustavo Silvestre] On Twitter
MILK, by STREF (Stephen White) Graphic stories. Publisher's webpage
Morando, by a'strict Art installation, video here
Narrow Escape, by Larry MacDougall Artist's webpage
Renaissance Generative Dreams: AI Cinema, by Refik Anadol Art installation
Rupture No. 1, by Heather Phillipson Art installation
Shift Pin-Up, by Warwick Fraser-Croombe [seems to be the work listed by publisher as "Shift Montage Poster" by Warwick Fraser-Coombe, not "Fraser-Croombe"] Publisher's webpage
The Scottish Green Lady (for Glasgow in 24) [actually "The Glasgow Green Woman"], by Iain Clarke On Twitter
This Is The Future, by Hito Steyerl Art installation
Viscera, by Allissa Chan Graphic story. Author's webpage

BSFA long lists, Best Novel and Best YA: Goodreads / LibraryThing stats

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My other notes on this year's BSFA long lists:
Short fiction
Non-fiction
Art

As usual, now that the BSFA long list is out, I've gone through it and counted how many people are recorded as reviewing each book on Goodreads, and owning each book on LibraryThing, and the respective ratings on each system. I have bolded the upper quartile (19 out of 74) in each column. They are ranked by the geometrical average of Goodreads reviewers and LibraryThing owners.

I'm going to call attention to a few points. First, 74 is really way too long for a long list to be useful with a deadline of a few weeks. (Previous years had 56, 46, 45, 48 and 34 books on the long list; TBH I think anything more than a couple of dozen is pushing it.). I'm aware that there is a very long tail. Quite likely (judging from what I've seen of Hugo nominations) two-thirds or more of those long-listed books have only one vote. Member participation is a great thing, but it would be good for the outputs to be a bit more useful.

Eight of the 74 books long-listed have no owners at all on LibraryThing, and seven of those have fewer than ten owners on Goodreads. Enthusiastic yet small fanbase? Or simple self-promotion?

There are no less than five books which are in the top 25% of all four columns. They are Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir; Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr; Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells; A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine; and Empire of the Vampire, by Jay Kristoff.

Last year, the shortlist consisted of the books that had been 1st, 2nd, 19th, 25th, 30th, 32nd, 40th, 48th, 54th and, er, 56th out of 56 on the equivalent table for the 2020 long list. The winner was the book that placed 2nd. In 2020, the eventual winner of the 2019 Best Novel award had placed 5th out of 4616th out of 4527th out of 4826th out of 34. So there is limited predictive value to these calculations. But I think they are a decent indicator of how well-known a particular book is among the general reading population.

In the past, I've found LibraryThing to reflect my own tastes better, and Goodreads to be more representative of the wider public. It's worth noting perhaps that Project Hail Mary, at the top of the table, has by far the highest ratio of Goodreads reviewers to LibraryThing owners of any of the books that actually has any LibraryThing owners at all – 192325 on Goodreads, 1896 on LibraryThing, over a hundred times more on the former than the latter. In the other direction, of the books with more than a handful of owners on each system, Blackthorn Winter by Liz Williams, the sequel to the book I voted for last year, has 70 on Goodreads to 24 on LibraryThing, a ratio of less than three to one.

Anyway, here's the full detail.

Goodreads LibraryThing
reviewers av rating owners av rating
Project Hail Mary [not just "Hail Mary"], by Andy Weir 192,325 4.53 1,896 4.32
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro 135,086 3.80 1,938 3.91
Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr 39,813 4.32 982 4.29
Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells 28,634 4.32 861 4.23
Bewilderment, by Richard Powers 19,472 4.03 597 3.90
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao 17,112 4.30 331 4.19
A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine 11,794 4.38 450 4.18
Empire of the Vampire, by Jay Kristoff 13,179 4.45 351 4.27
A Master of Djinn [not just "Master of Djinn"], by P. Djeli Clarke 7,841 4.16 414 4.04
Remote Control, by Nnedi Okorafor [not "Okorofor"] 9,789 3.89 323 3.94
The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo 7,744 3.62 278 3.82
The Jasmine Throne, by Tasha Suri 7,005 4.24 247 4.23
The Library of the Dead [not "Library for the Dead"], by T.L. Huchu 4,999 3.57 275 3.59
The Wisdom of Crowds, by Joe Abercrombie 10,003 4.62 132 4.34
Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson 4,160 4.00 254 3.74
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky 5,113 4.25 157 4.00
Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho 3,853 3.98 202 4.08
The Kingdoms, by Natasha Pulley 3,530 4.03 184 3.99
The Seep, by Chana Porter 3,186 3.66 172 3.83
Jade Legacy, Fonda Lee 3,364 4.74 81 4.81
All the Murmuring Bones, by A.G. Slatter 2,701 4.03 96 4.00
All Our Hidden Gifts, by Caroline O'Donoghue 2,954 3.96 80 4.26
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky 2,434 4.24 71 4.11
Son of the Storm, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa 1,191 3.72 142 3.63
The Past is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente 1,508 4.18 104 4.30
Far From the Light of Heaven, by Tade Thompson 1,346 3.66 106 3.75
Firebreak, by Nicole Kornher-Stace 1,494 3.94 90 3.88
Machinehood, by S.B. Divya 1,328 3.71 99 3.76
One Day all This Will be Yours, by Adrian Tchaikovsky 1,742 4.07 70 4.28
Gutter Child, by Jael Richardson 2,889 4.00 39 4.00
Wendy, Darling, by A. C. Wise 1,578 3.73 64 3.90
Light Chaser, by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell 1,596 3.89 49 3.50
Notes from the Burning Age, by Claire North 949 3.79 74 3.57
The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne 676 4.01 96 3.54
Perhaps the Stars, by Ada Palmer 711 4.47 89 3.63
On Fragile Waves, by E. Lily Yu 725 4.11 69 3.94
Artifact Space [not "Sapce"], by Miles Cameron 1,217 4.42 30 4.13
Catalyst Gate, by Megan O'Keefe 765 4.22 40 4.42
The Maleficent Seven, by Cameron Johnston 868 4.04 31 3.92
Skyward Inn, by Aliya Whiteley 536 3.55 47 3.40
You Sexy Thing, by Cat Rambo 414 3.83 60 3.95
Ten [not "10"] Low, by Starke Holborn 425 3.93 41 3.88
Dreamland, by Rosa Rankin-Gee 556 4.18 28 3.70
The Upper World, by Femi Fadugba 461 3.73 26 4.00
A Heart Divided, by Jin Yong 333 4.55 33 4.00
The Fallen, by Ada Hoffmann 221 3.87 31 3.64
Purgatory Mount, by Adam Roberts 184 3.59 31 3.38
The Raven [not "Raven's"] Heir, by Stephanie Burgis 225 3.97 20 3.80
Requiem Moon, by C. T. Rwizi 492 4.52 8 4.70
Anna, by Sammy HK Smith 327 4.05 12 4.13
Alien 3, by Pat Cadigan and William Gibson 226 3.71 12 3.00
The Unravelling, by Benjamin Rosenbaum 93 4.03 25 4.50
Blackthorn Winter, Liz Williams 70 4.41 24 3.73
Murder at the Mushaira, by Raza Mir 261 4.25 6 –
Cwen, by Alice Albinia 83 3.63 17 5.00
The Green Man's Challenge, by Juliet E McKenna 140 4.46 7 3.00
Plague Birds, by Jason Sanford 63 3.68 12 4.38
Galactic Hellcats, by Marie Vibbert 90 4.16 8 –
Kings of a Dead World, by Jamie Mollart 92 4.12 7 –
Three Twins at the Crater School, by Chaz Brenchley [not "Brentley"] 43 4.37 11 3.75
The Actuality, by Paul Braddon 76 4.08 4 –
Twenty-Five [not "Twenty Five"] to Life, by R.W.W. Greene 84 4.14 3 4.50
Barbarians of the Beyond, by Matthew Hughes 32 4.38 6 4.00
The Rage Room, by Lisa de Nikolits 44 3.68 2 5.00
This Is Our Undoing, by Lorraine Wilson 33 4.06 2 4.00
Four Dervishes, by Hammad Rind 4 5.00 2 –
Blood Red Sand, by Damien Larkin 27 4.85 0 –
My Brother the Messiah, by Martin Vopenka 7 3.71 0 –
Darkest, by Paul L. Arvidson 6 3.67 0 –
Gardens of Earth, by Mark Iles 3 5.00 0 –
Shadows of Darkness: Remnants of Resistance, by Jonah S. White 3 4.00 0 –
New Gods, by Robin Triggs 3 3.67 0 –
Discord's Shadow, by K. S. Dearsley 1 5.00 0 –
Fire of the Dark Triad, by Asya Semenovich 1 3.00 0 –

The BSFA is offering a YA award this year for the first time, and I've done the same exercise for the 21 books on the long list, bolding the top six in each column. Two books are in all four upper quartiles: Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao, and Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko.

Two books are also on the Best Novel long-list. Two books have no LibraryThing owners at all; both have fewer than ten on Goodreads. Again, enthusiastic yet small fanbase? Or simple self-promotion?

Goodreads LibraryThing
reviewers av rating owners av rating
The Gilded Ones, by Namina Forna 23658 4.04 559 3.93
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao 17112 4.30 331 4.19
Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko 4117 4.33 105 3.97
Victories Greater Than Death, by Charlie Jane Anders 1796 3.56 193 3.63
All Our Hidden Gifts, by Caroline O'Donoghue 2954 3.96 80 4.26
Noor, by Nnedi Okorafor 1537 3.91 107 4.06
A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger 648 4.19 57 3.00
Monsters of Rookhaven [not "Brookhaven"], by Pádraig Kenny 621 4.11 34 3.50
Stella's Stellar Hair, by Yesenia Moises 510 4.35 20 3.40
The Raven [not "Raven's"] Heir, by Stephanie Burgis 225 3.97 20 3.80
Show Us Who You Are (Knights Of), Elle McNicoll 498 4.58 9 –
The Outrage, by William Hussey 480 4.21 7 –
The False Rose, Jakob Wegelius, trans. Peter Graves 265 4.32 12 3.63
The Stuff Between the Stars: How Vera Rubin discovered
most of the Universe, Sandra Nickel, illus. Aimée Sicuro		 171 4.19 12 5.00
Utterly dark and the face of the deep, by Philip Reeve 120 4.29 4 –
The Shadows of Rookhaven, by Pádraig Kenny, 51 4.57 5 –
Skywake: Invasion, by Jamie Russell 35 3.94 4 –
The Boy with Wings, by Lenny Henry, Mark Buckingham 33 3.64 2 –
Lionheart Girl, by Yaba Badoe 35 3.60 1 –
The Planet in a Pickle Jar, by Martin Stanev 7 4.29 0 –
The Empty Orchestra, by Elizabeth Priest 1 4.00 0 –

Saturday reading

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Current
The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu
Scream of the Shalka, by Paul Cornell
Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami
Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Last books finished
The Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell
The Doctor – his Life and Times, by James Goss and Steve Tribe
The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
Neither Unionist nor Nationalist: The 10th (Irish) Division in the Great War by Stephen Sandford
“Bloodchild”, by Octavia E. Butler
The God Complex, by Paul Driscoll
Why I Write, by George Orwell
“Press Enter ◼️”, by John Varley

Next books
Indigo, by Clemens J. Setz
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

Crash

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Crash won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2005, and two others, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing, losing in another three. Three is a rather low tally of Oscars for a Best Picture winner, and three other films also won three Oscars that year, Brokeback Mountain, King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha. The Hugo and Nebula that year both went to Serenity.

As mentioned last time, IMDB counts Crash as a 2004 rather than 2005 film; users rate it 16th on one ranking and 40th on the other for that year. The other 2005 Best Picture nominees were Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck and Munichhave seen, it’s mainly sf: Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Madagascar, Serenity, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, possibly The Curse of the Were-Rabbit though I’m not sure, possibly also the Icelandic Beowulf and Grendel. Johnny Depp as Willie Wonka left the most enduring impression. Here’s a trailer for Crash with Barber’s bloody Adagio for Strings yet again:

A stellar cast, but only two of them have been in previous Oscar or Hugo winners. Michael Peña is Daniel the locksmith here (almost the only interesting character in the film) and was also (with more hair) Omar in Million Dollar Baby.

A bit more obscurely, Alexis Rhee is Kim Lee here, and twenty-two years ago in Blade Runner she was the woman on the walls.

Crash is about the intersecting lives of a bunch of people in Los Angeles, and about racism. It thinks its heart is in the right place, and the cast are all people who know (or ought to) what they are doing. It left me rather cold. I didn’t think it was completely awful, though a lot of people really do think it was completely awful, and one of the worst Best Picture winners ever, if not indeed the worst (see two such lists here and here). I’ll give you in evidence Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I don’t think there’s a single human being in Crash. Instead you have arguments and propaganda violently bumping into each other, impressed with their own quirkiness. (“Hey look, I’m a black carjacker who resents being stereotyped.”) But more than a bad film, Crash, which won an Oscar (!), is the apotheosis of a kind of unthinking, incurious, nihilistic, multiculturalism.

Clarisse Loughrey in the Independent:

The film’s treatise on modern racism avoids anything that might make its audience feel uncomfortable or, heaven forbid, complicit. Crash’s characters aren’t relatable. They’re limp puppets, posed in various moral scenarios, with all the unsubtle airs of an afternoon school special.

Sean Mulvihill:

…resoundingly ham-fisted in everything that it does, carrying its story of overt racism with all the nuance of a cheap political cartoon … Crash wallows in countless crude racial stereotypes without anything resembling social commentary – Asians are bad drivers, not all Latinos are Mexican, black people don’t like be viewed as criminals even when they are violent criminals, and the job of a police officer will make you a racist even if you start out as an idealist.

Alex Russell has devoted an entire series of blog posts to watching every Best Picture winner, and deciding if they were better or worse than Crash. Spoiler: he still thinks Crash is the worst.

The first thing you notice when you watch Crash is just how quickly it is… stupid. Calling a movie “stupid” is a simple criticism that should generally be reserved for much more base subject matter, but Crash starts off with an onslaught of some of the most asinine and insulting dialogue ever put to film. The first five minutes has dozens and dozens of slurs. You are struck, as a viewer, at how this not only isn’t the best movie of 2004, but how it barely feels like a movie at all. It feels more like a play written in a creative writing class full of teenagers.

Paul Haggis, who directed the film, is not exactly vigorous in its defence (in a 2015 interview whose original text is no longer online, but these words were widely quoted):

Was it the best film of the year? I don’t think so. … You shouldn’t ask me what the best film of the year was because I wouldn’t be voting for ‘Crash,’ only because I saw the artistry that was in the other films. … Is it a great film? I don’t know.

So that’s what other people don’t like about it. I’ll sum up what I didn’t like about it:

The music. I love a good soundtrack, and I don’t usually notice a bad soundtrack. But here the swelling of angel choirs in the background means you’re about to see something Very Significant happening on screen. It’s doing its best to make up for:

The cinematography. I’m astonished that this won an Oscar also for Best Film Editing. At several crucial moments, the camera angles are so badly chosen that it’s not at all clear what is going on. Some find that enigmatic and mysterious, but I found it incompetent.

The racism. For a movie that’s supposed to be all about consciousness-raising, there are a lot of sour notes. Most of the characters are, as noted above, complete stereotypes. Why is it the Iranian character who attempts an irrational vindictive revenge murder? Why does it come as a surprise to Thandie Newton’s character that the police sometimes do bad things to black people?

The acting. Apart from Michael Peña, what are any of them doing? Especially Sandra Bullock?

The weather. Snow? It’s symbolical.

At the same time, however ham-fisted the presentation and leaden the acting, it’s not actually boring, and I did keep watching to see how all the various different plotlines would tie up (though I sighed in disbelief when it turns out who the long-lost brother is). I am putting it four fifths of the way down my own rankings, just below Tom Jones and above The Greatest Show on Earth.

Next up is The Departed, of which I know nothing; before that, Serenity and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

My tweets

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Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Monsters and Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Planets

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Second paragraph of third story of Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters ("Beyond Lies the Wub", by Philip K. Dick):

'What's the matter?' he said. 'You're getting paid for all this.'

Second paragraph of third story of Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets ("Exile", by Edmond Hamilton):

But the four of us were all professional writers of fantastic stories, and I suppose shop talk was inevitable. Yet, we’d kept off it through dinner and the drinks afterward. Madison had outlined his hunting trip with gusto, and then Brazell started a discussion of the Dodgers’ chances. And then I had to turn the conversation to fantasy.

Two anthologies brought out during Peter Davison's time at the helm of the TARDIS, both in fact edited by Richard Evans, who has a story in each under the name Christopher George. As can be inferred from the titles, the first is more about alien species and the second more about planets, though there is plenty of thematic overlap. Both have gorgeous covers by (uncredited but obviously) Chris Foss.

But they are actually very different anthologies. Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters (1982) includes nine stories, eight of which are original and were presumably commissioned for this book (the exception is "Beyond Lies the Wub", by Philip K. Dick). But most of the other eight are by major British authors – Robert Holdstock, Dave Langford, Michael Scott Rohan, Christopher Evans and one woman, Dyan Sheldon (her first SF publication, according to ISFDB, and last for several years as well; she is better known as a YA writer). They are decent enough, but only the Garry Kilworth story has been subsequently published elsewhere. You can get it here.

Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets (1983), on the other hand, contains eight stories, only two of which are original – one by the editor, and one by Mary Gentle, who at that time was still a newcomer with just one novel, A Hawk in Silver, to her name; this seems to be her first published short fiction, but she had two more stories published in Asimov's that year (1983), and of course has never looked back. The others are all classics by the likes of Edmond Hamilton, Ray Bradbury and two by Arthur C. Clarke, "The Star" and "History Lesson". From Davison's foreword, it appears that these were very much chosen by him as personal favourites. Most of them have a grim twist at the end. It is the more solid of the two anthologies, but you are more likely to already have most of the stories in it. You can get it here.

These were the two shortest books on my shelves acquired in 2015. Next on that pile is Neil Gaiman's early book about Duran Duran.