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.

I started the month with a Bulgarian TV interview about Brexit, which had just happened:

With no idea of what was to come, I did a lot of travelling in February 2020; a work trip to the FAO headquarters in Rome, right beside the Circus Maximus;

with a statue sculpted by Gina Lollobrigida, who died last month:

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I had my last transatlantic flight for two years to Gallifrey One in Los Angeles:

Gallifrey One, first day

Gallifrey One, day two

Gallifrey One, day three

And went to another convention the next weekend in Brussels, where I slightly crossed the streams by going as a Ghostbuster but getting Doctor Who photos with Paul McGann, Alex Kingston and the Paternoster Gang:

And finally a trip to England at the end of the month, finishing at a friend’s birthday party. Little did I realise, as I fell asleep in Cambridge on 29 February, that it would be almost five months until I next left Belgium.

I read 20 books that month.

Non-fiction: 6 (YTD 12)
The Idea of Justice, by Amartya Sen
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant – (did not finish)
A Popular History of Ireland, by Thomas D’Arcy McGee – (did not finish)
H.G. Wells: A Literary Life, by Adam Roberts
J.R.R. Tolkien’s inspiration for Lúthien: the “gallant” Edith Bratt, by Nancy Bunting and Seamus Hamill-Keays

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 5)
A Killing Winter, by Tom Callaghan
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

sf (non-Who): 8 (YTD 25)
Shadow Over Mars, by Leigh Brackett
Arc of the Dream, by A. A. Attanasio (did not finish)
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
The Aachen Memorandum, by Andrew Roberts
2020 Vision, ed. Jerry Pournelle
Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson

Doctor Who: 3 (YTD 5)
Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen, by Terrance Dicks

Comics: 1 (YTD 5)
The Wicked + The Divine vol 9: Okay, by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson & Clayton Cowles

5,800 pages (YTD 13,300)
4/20 (YTD 14/52) by women (Mendlesohn, Bunting, Brackett, Anders)
2/20 (YTD 4/52) by PoC (Sen, Thompson)

The best books of this month were all BSFA nominees, two novels and one non-fiction:

• Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky; get it here
• The Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson; get it here
• The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn; get it here

On the other hand I completely bounced off Arc of the Dream, by A.A. Attanasio, after ten pages; simply too badly written. (You can get it here.)