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.

After the previous month’s exciting travels, I went nowhere more exotic than Geneva, where the most exciting thing that happened was that I left a valuable item on the train fomr the airport and had to chase it all the way to Berne. My trip to Geneva was the same day as the Halle train crash in which 19 people died; I was already in mid-air when it happened, and am not usually on that side of Brussels anyway, but a surprising number of people pinged me to see if I was OK (and of course I did not see any messages until I landed, which did not help). Edited to add: checking my records, I find that I was in Portugal the first weekend of the month as well.

More cheerfully, here is F helping U to dress up. (Somewhat overcorrected for red-eye in the original shot.)

I read 18 books in February 2010, exactly 11 years ago.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 12)
War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan, by Francis M. Deng
Da Nije Bilo Oluje / Who Saved Bosnia, by Vitomir Miles Raguž
The Nature of the Universe / De Natura Rerum, by Titus Lucretius Carus
A Short History of Fantasy, by Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James

Non-genre 2 (YTD 9)
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

SF 8 (YTD 18)
Kushiel's Scion, by Jacqueline Carey
Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts
Ark, by Stephen Baxter
The City & The City, by China Miéville
The Push, by Dave Hutchinson
Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones
The Magicians of Caprona, by Diana Wynne Jones
Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 9, 10 including comics)
Prisoner of the Daleks, by Trevor Baxendale
Cat's Cradle: Warhead, by Andrew Cartmel
The Bodysnatchers, by Mark Morris
The Pirate Loop, by Simon Guerrier

Page count ~6,000 (YTD ~14,400)
6/18 (YTD 11/48) by women (Carey, Austen, DWJ x 2, Le Guin, Mendlesohn)
1/18 (YTD 5/49) by PoC (Deng)

Best of the month were the two that got my vote in the BSFA Awards for Best Novel – Lavinia, which you can get here – and Best Short Fiction – The Push, which you can get here. Neither won. None of the others was awful, but Baxter’s Ark maybe was the least overwhelming, especially since I hadn’t (and still haven’t) read the first in the series. You can get it here.