This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging at the end of October 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.
Only a few more of these posts to go; I’ll need to find another topic for regular non-book-blogging, but it’s been fun.
Quite a lot of travel this month, starting with a work trip to Geneva along with my colleague R:
Then Eastercon in Birmingham with Anne, Cambridge for a couple of days, and the a WorldCon planning meeting in Glasgow. I have not mentioned it previously, but on the last night of Eastercon I was struck by a bad IBS attack, I think triggered by the very creamy risotto that I had for dinner at Zizzi, and was incapacitated for the whole of the Monday. The rest of the week was fine, though, with a glimpse of the elusive planet Mercury as I cross Clare Bridge in Cambridge:
And a great picture of the Armadillo that I’m very pleased with.
In Brussels the following weekend, the normally closed Pavilion of the Human Passions was opened up for a couple of days:
I also attended a conference at the Economy Ministry in Paris.
And Anne and I finished the month elsewhere in France, but more on that anon.
My most significant blog post was on a 1933 aeroplane bombing, but I also read 32 books, many of them at the tail end of the Clarke submissions pile and which I therefore didn’t persevere with I felt that they were not science fiction, or just not very good.
Non-fiction 5 (YTD 27)
The Cyprus Crisis and the Cold War, by Makarios Drousiotis
My Family And Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell
The Silurians, by Robert Smith?
When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation, by Paula Fredriksen
The Underwater Menace, by James Cooray Smith
SF 23 (YTD 87)
Scary Monsters, by Michelle de Kretser
Galactic Girl, by Fiona Richmond
Stars and Bones, by Gareth L. Powell
City of Last Chances, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (did not finish)
The Shadow Glass, by Josh Winning (did not finish)
Redwood and Wildfire, by Andrea Hairston
The Ends, by James Smythe
The Coral Bones, by E.J. Swift
The Mars Migration, by Wayne M. Bailey (did not finish)
New Brighton, by Helen Trevorrow (did not finish)
Beyond the Burn Line, by Paul McAuley
The Last Storm, by Tim Lebbon
The Quickening, by Talulah Riley (did not finish)
Hangdog Souls, by Marc Joan (did not finish)
A Fractured Infinity, by Nathan Tavares (did not finish)
Equinox, by David Towsey (did not finish)
Outcast, by Louise Carey (did not finish)
Stringers, by Chris Panatier (did not finish)
The Thousand Earths, by Stephen Baxter
36 Streets, by T.R. Napper (did not finish)
HellSans, by Ever Dundas (did not finish)
A Sh*tload of Crazy Powers, by Jackson Ford (did not finish)
Plutoshine, by Lucy Kissick
Doctor Who 3 (YTD 13)
Erasing Sherlock, by Kelly Hale
Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke
Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace, by Nigel Robinson
Comics 1 (YTD 8)
The Weeping Angels of Mons, by Robbie Morrison, Daniel Indro and Eleonora Carlini
6,500 pages (YTD 32,700)
11/32 (YTD 57/142) by non-male writers (Fredriksen, de Kretser, Richmond, Hairston, Swift, Trevorrow, Riley, Carey, Hale, Dundas, χ4)
2/32 (YTD 23/142) by a non-white writer (de Kretser, Hairston)
In among the less impressive Clarke submissions were two of the six excellent books that we ended up shortlisting, The Coral Bones by E.J. Swift, which you can get here, and Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick, which you can get here. I also particularly enjoyed Makarios Drousiotis’ book on Cyprus, which you can get here. I’ll draw a veil over the less good…