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.
We started our holiday with a Doctor Who event in Slough, attended by no fewer than twelve Doctor Who companions. (This was also where filming took place for The Five-ish Doctors Reboot.)
Left to right: Bernice Summerfield (Lisa Bowerman), Ace (Sophie Aldred), Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan (Janet Fielding), Leela (Louise Jameson), Romana II (Lalla Ward), K9 (John Leeson), Victoria (the late Deborah Watling), Susan (Carole Ann Ford), Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and Polly (Anneke Wills).
We saw lots of old friends while in Northern Ireland, but I don't seem to have taken photos or kept much of a record. (I was very stressed.) I also noted that Seamus Heaney died at the end of the month.
I read 31 books that month.
Non-fiction 9 (YTD 31)
Proportional Representation in Ireland, by James Creed Meredith
The Monsters and the Critics, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson
The History of The Hobbit, vol 1: Mr Baggins, by John D. Rateliff
The Best of Tardis Eruditorum, by Philip Sandifer
Eleanor, Countess of Desmond, by Anne Chambers
Tell My Horse, by Zora Neale Hurston
Rebus's Scotland: A Personal Journey, by Ian Rankin
In Loco Parentis, by Ken Riley
Fiction (non-sf) 7 (YTD 30)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
Standing In Another Man's Grave, by Ian Rankin
Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie
Resistance, by Anita Shreve
The Mysterious Affair At Styles, by Agatha Christie
The A.B.C. Murders, by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie
SF (non-Who) 7 (YTD 46)
Kraken, by China Miéville
The Gods of Pegāna, by Lord Dunsany
Shakespeare's Planet, by Clifford D. Simak
Far North, by Sara Maitland
Far North, by Marcel Theroux
The Tunnel at the End of the Light, by Stefan Petrucha
The Crown of Dalemark, by Diana Wynne Jones
Doctor Who 5 (YTD 42, 52 counting non-fiction and comics)
The Wages of Sin, by David A. McIntee
Shakedown, by Terrance Dicks
Eater of Wasps, by Trevor Baxendale
The Dalek Generation, by Nicholas Briggs
Spore, by Alex Scarrow
Comics 3 (YTD 22)
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, by Hergé
The Dalek Project, by Justin Richards, ill. Mike Collins
Luther Arkwright, by Bryan Talbot
~7,600 pages (YTD 44,700)
11/31 (YTD 49/172) by women (Winterson, Chambers, Shreve, Maitland, Jones, 6x Christie)
1/31 (YTD 8/172) by PoC (Hurston)
The best of these were The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie (a re-read), which you can get here, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson, which you can get here, and Tell My Horse, by Zora Neale Hurston, which you can get here. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, by Hergé, is just as bad as you have heard, but you can get it here. I also bounced off The Tunnel at the End of the Light, by Stefan Petrucha, which you can get here.
One thought on “August 2013 books”