February 2005 was rather a busy month. The Macedonian government held a major reception in Brussels on Valentine's day, which I attended with family in tow, and then referenced in a briefing on the country published a few days later. I went to Geneva to give a lecture, and ended the month in Belgrade, but also had a couple of trips to London – on one of which I attended Picocon at Imperial College, bonding with a lot of newish friends in sf fandom; and using another for an initial conversation with my future employer, who I had met in Kosovo the previous year. It would be another year and a half before the conversation turned into something more concrete.

Books I read in February 2005:

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 6)
Blowing My Cover: My Life As A CIA Spy, and other misadventures, by Lindsay Moran
Theft of A Nation: Romania since Communism, by Tom Gallagher
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution, by David Hannay

SF 10 (YTD 15)
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
The Ethos Effect, by L.E. Modesitt Jr
Heartfire, by Orson Scott Card
His Majesty's Starship, by Ben Jeapes
We/Мы, by Yevgeny Zamyatin/Евгений Иванович Замятин
Manna from Heaven, by Roger Zelazny
Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov
Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
ThiGMOO, by Eugene Byrne
Stamping Butterflies, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

4,800 pages (TYD 8,200)
1/13 (YTD 3/22) by women
none by PoC

Best book of the month was Zamyatin's dystopian We, a fore-runner to 1984 and Brave New Worldyou can get it here. Second best probably Cloud Atlasyou can get it here. Deeply unimpressed by Lindsay Moran's take on Macedonia. You can get that here.