In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
We started August 2006, 20 years ago this month, in Northern Ireland as usual, and I attended MeCon 9 in Belfast where the guests included Ian McDonald, Hal Duncan, Ken MacLeod, Leah Moore, and John Reppion. I thought I had pictures from it, but in fact they seem to be from the following year, and I’m not in anyone else’s that I can find. I remember having a lot of fun.
We also had a family excursion to the Legananny Dolmen and the Finnis Souterrain:
A mid-holiday work trip to London was unexpectedly extended by a day when I arrived at Heathrow to get a morning flight back to Belfast, and found myself in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 airport plot. I got the train to Liverpool and the overnight ferry, arriving not quite 24 hours after originally planned.
We published a report on Moldova mid-month (must have been just before I got back, in fact), and I ended the month in Budapest speaking at a conference in the rather splendid parliament building there.
I read 25 books that month – I think a record since I started keeping count. (Exceeded a few times since.)
Non-fiction 9 (YTD 43)
Lost Railways of Co. Down and Co. Armagh, by Stephen Johnson
Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who, by James Chapman
Doctor Who, by Kim Newman
Salonica: City of Ghosts – Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower
The Independent Irish Party 1850-9, by J.H. Whyte
Sixteenth Century Ireland, by Colm Lennon
H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, by Michel Houellebecq
A Rulebook for Arguments, by Anthony Weston
Critical Reasoning: An Introduction, by Anne Thomson
Non-genre 4 (YTD 16)
Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
The Warden’s Niece, by Gillian Avery
The Brightfount Diaries, by Brian Aldiss
SF 7 (YTD 49)
The Healer’s War, by Elizabeth Anne Scarborough
The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn
Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick
October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle
Southern Fire, by Juliet McKenna
Year’s Best SF 11, ed. David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Winter Moon, by Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee and C.E. Murphy
Doctor Who 3 (YTD 10)
Short Trips: Companions, ed. Jacqueline Rayner
Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors, ed. John Binns
The Empire of Glass, by Andy Lane
Comics 2 (YTD 4)
Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes
Preacher: Gone to Texas, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
6,400 pages (YTD 36,200)
6/25 by women (YTD 20/122)
None by PoC (YTD 5/122)
Best of these, and the one which still sticks with me, is The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn; you can get it here. I also gave The Healer’s War, by Elizabeth Anne Scarborough, an enthusiastic write-up, but can’t remember as much about it. You can get it here. I found Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller, thoroughly unpleasant, but you can get it here.
