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.
I started the month in Helsinki, filming the Hugo ballot announcement, which was a thing of beauty, sadly now lost from the internets. I was one of a crew of four who spent the whole day running around the city, finishing in the cemetery.
I also went to Eastercon, where I was caught on a panel with Dave McCarty talking about Hugo administration.
And the month finished with my 50th birthday.
I had a great party on the day itself in Brussels:
And another in Loughbrickland on the last day of the month, jointly with my aunt, who turned 60 the same week.
Starting to get back into my groove, I read 15 books that month.
Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 12)
Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg by Robert Silverberg and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
The View from the Cheap Seats, by Neil Gaiman
Words are My Matter, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Fiction (non-sf): 1 (YTD 5)
The Habit of Loving by Doris Lessing
sf (non-Who): 8 (YTD 26)
A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
Pounded In The Butt By My Second Hugo Award Nomination, by Chuck Tingle
The Arrival of Missives, by Aliya Whiteley
Daughter of Eden, by Chris Beckett
Europe in Winter, by Dave Hutchinson
Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
Death’s End, by Cixin Liu
Doctor Who, etc: 2 (YTD 10)
The Cabinet of Light, by Daniel O’Mahony
The Gods of the Underworld, by Stephen Cole
Comics: 2 (YTD 6)
The Vision vol 1: Little Worse Than A Man, by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta
Lars (Anders vol 1), by Kristof Spaey
4,500 pages (YTD 14,600)
5/15 (YTD 20/60) by women (Le Guin, Lessing, Chambers, Whitely, Palmer)
2/15 (YTD 5/60) by PoC (Lee, Liu)
Of these, I enjoyed Words are my Matter the most (and was delighted when it won the Hugo in Helsinki) and Too Like the Lightning least. You can get them here and here.