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.
A decent amount of travel this month, with ten days in Northern Ireland including a family gathering.
I also had a work trip to Belgrade, and finished the month at Worldcon in Chicago having spent a few days first at my brother’s near Boston where I did some further research:
A lot of Worldcon-related drama happened in August, but I’ll save recounting it to my September write-up.
I read 25 books that month:
Non-fiction 8 (YTD 70)
Lenin the Dictator, by Victor Sebestyen
Manifesto, by Bernardine Evaristo
The Life of Col. Samuel M. Wickersham, ed. Edward Wickersham Hoffman
The Curse of Fenric, by Una McCormack
The Time Warrior, by Matthew Kilburn
That Damn’d Thing Called “Honour”: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860, by James Kelly
The Kosovo Indictment, by Michael O’Reilly
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich
Non-genre 2 (YTD 13)
Alaska Sampler 2014: Ten Authors from the Great Land, eds Deb Vanasse and David Marusek
The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
SF 9 (YTD 69)
Swordheart, by T. Kingfisher
The Initiate, by Louise Cooper
Sprawl, ed. Cat Sparks
The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter
Roger Zelazny’s Chaos and Amber, by John Betancourt
The Harp and the Blade, by John Myers Myers
“Tangents”, by Greg Bear
The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett
The Carhullan Army, by Sarah Hall
Doctor Who 5 (YTD 23)
Dalek Combat Training Manual, by Richard Atkinson and Mike Tucker
The Lost Skin, by Andy Frankham-Allen
Scary Monsters, by Simon A. Forward
Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs
Doctor Who and the Time Warrior, by Terrance Dicks
Comics 1 (YTD 13)
Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor: Operation Volcano, by Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel
6,100 pages (YTD 49,800)
9/25 (YTD 78/192) by non-male writers (Evaristo, McCormack, Alexievich, Vanasse, Howard, “Kingfisher”, Cooper, Sparks, Hall)
1/25 (YTD 25/192) by a non-white writer (Evaristo)
I enjoyed revisiting The Light Fantastic, which you can get here, and reading Bernardine Evaristo’s Manifesto, which you can get here, T. Kingfisher’s Swordheart, which you can get here, and the Dalek Combat Manual, which you can get here. I’ll draw a veil over those I liked less.