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.
The major event of August 2017 for me was the Helsinki Worldcon my first gig as Hugo Administrator; I wrote up my memories of it here and here. I was also sorry to hear that we had lost Brian Aldiss and Tony de Brum. I needed a lot of decompression from Worldcon, especially after missing my flight home on the last evening. Here are two lovely Hugo ceremony pictures from Wikipedia with my successive Deputy Administrators, Colette Fozard and Kathryn Duval.
I did manage to read 21 books that month.
Non-fiction: 5 (YTD 34)
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman
QI: The Book of the Dead, by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
William Cecil, Ireland and the Tudor State, by Christopher Maginn
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), by Felicia Day
The Life of the Bee, by Maurice Maeterlinck
Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 15)
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
Children are Civilians Too, by Heinrich Böll
sf (non-Who): 5 (YTD 56)
The Moon Stallion, by Brian Hayles
Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid
Pelléas and Mélisande, by Maurice Maeterlinck
The Fall of Arthur, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Blue Bird, by Maurice Maeterlinck
Doctor Who, etc: 6 (YTD 39)
Decide Your Destiny: Claws of the Macra, by Trevor Baxendale
Decide Your Destiny: Judoon Monsoon, by Oli Smith
Decide Your Destiny: Empire of the Wolf, by Neil Corry
Short Trips: Transmissions, ed. Richard Salter
A Life of Surprises, ed. Paul Cornell
The Shining Man, by Cavan Scott
Comics: 3 (YTD 17)
Aliénor: La Légende Noire, vol 1, by Arnaud Delalande and Simona Mogavino, art by Carlos Gomez
Aliénor: La Légende Noire, vol 2, by Arnaud Delalande and Simona Mogavino, art by Carlos Gomez
Moomin: The Complete Comic Strip vol. 7, by Lars Jansson
4,500 pages (YTD 40,400)
4/21 (YTD 47/163) by women (Day, Stockett, Mogavino x2)
1/21 (YTD 15/163) by PoC (Hamid)
The two best of these, by a long way, were Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, which you can get here, and Heinrich Böll’s Children are Civilians Too, which you can get here. The QI Book of the Dead did not do much for me, but you can get it here.