I totally failed to note in the previous month the hiring of my first intern in the new job. J was an intelligent young woman who had tried various career options which didn't work out, and was prepared to give working in international politics a fling. I'm glad to say that she caught the bug and is now a British diplomat. It also turned out that her elder brother was friends with their neighbour Rebecca Nation, the daughter of Terry Nation who wrote a lovely book for her, and J had played with real Daleks as a child. (For certain values of "real".)

This month I went to the Political Studies Association conference in Bath to do a panel debate on Europe, and travelled back to London talking to the journalist Tim Sebastian, which was fun.

In family news, my brother and his wife welcomed their new daughter. Also I turned 40, but I don't seem to have done much in the way of celebration; B's behaviour at home was getting very difficult, and we just didn't have the energy.

I read 21 books in April 2007.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 24)
In Search of the Dark Ages, by Michael Wood
Field of Bones: An Irish Division in Gallipoli, by Philip Orr
After Dinner Speaking, by Fawcett Boom
A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
800 Years of Women's Letters, edited by Olga Kenyon (did not finish)

Non-genre 2 (YTD 8)
The Way By Swann's, by Marcel Proust
The Search For Roots: a personal anthology, compiled by Primo Levi

sf 9 (YTD 26)
The Book of Imaginary Beings, compiled by Jorge Luis Borges
Temeraire, by Naomi Novik
Glasshouse, by Charles Stross
Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
Blindsight, by Peter Watts
Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn
Narn i Chîn Húrin: the Tale of the Children of Húrin, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Blindness, by José Saramago
The Way to Babylon, by Paul Kearney

Comics 3 (YTD 9)
The Last Temptation, by Neil Gaiman
Alias vol. 1, by Brian Michael Bendis
Alias vol 2: Come Home, by Brian Michael Bendis

Doctor Who 2 (YTD 13)
Made of Steel, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters, by Terrance Dicks

5,900 pages (YTD 24,700)
2/21 by women (YTD 19/80)
none by PoC (YTD 2/80)

Best of the month: Tolkien's Children of Húrin, which you can get here, and Saramago's Blindness, which you can get here. Worst by far: Fawcett Boom's pointless guide to After Dinner Speaking, which you can get here.