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 biggest professional development of the month was that I got entangled with the politics of Georgia (the real one, not the U.S. state of the same name) which took me to Strasbourg on my one trip of the month (just a few weeks after my last time there). I also got involved with a couple of online slapfights, one on Liz Bourke's infamous review, the other on replacing a British MEP who had resigned. The former is still a relevant debate, I think.

We also entertained the deputy foreign minister of Moldova for dinner. But dear god, my camera back then was pretty awful.

I read 30 books that month.

Non-fiction 11
The History of Christianity, ed. Tim Dowley
Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia, by Ben Judah, Jana Kobzova and Nicu Popescu
Pawns of Peace: Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, 1997-2009, by Gunnar Sørbø, Jonathan Goodhand, Bart Klem, Ada Elisabeth Nissen and Hilde Selbervik
One Planet, by Nicholas Hulot
How The States Got Their Shapes, by Mark Stein
Making Ireland British 1580-1650, by Nicholas Canny
The Treason and Trial of Sir John Perrot, by Roger Turvey
Why Can't Elephants Jump?, ed. Mick O'Hare
Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach
Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf
Indian Summer, by Alex von Tunzelmann

Fiction (non-sf) 2
Scotch on the Rocks, by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë

SF (non-Who) 7
The Sharing Knife: Horizon, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Tales from Ancient Egypt, by Joyce Tildesley
Out of Nowhere, by Gerald Whelan
The Other City, by Michal Ajvaz
Only You Can Save Mankind, by Terry Pratchett
Slow River, by Nicola Griffith
Conrad's Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones

Doctor Who etc 8
[1st Doctor] Doctor Who: The Daleks (script), by Terry Nation
[11th Doctor] Doctor Who: The Brilliant Book 2012, ed. Clayton Hickman
[7th Doctor] All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane
[SJA] [audiobook] Children of Steel, by Martin Day
[8th Doctor] The Blue Angel, by Paul Magrs and Jeremy Hoad
[SJA] [audiobook] Judgement Day, by Scott Gray
[Torchwood] Skypoint, by Phil Ford
[11th Doctor] [audiobook] The Art of Death, by James Goss

Comics 2
At The Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft, adapted by I.N.J. Culbard
The Unwritten vol 3: Dead Man's Knock, by Mike Carey

~8,500 pages
10/30 by women (Kobzova, Nissen/Seibervik, Roach, Wolf, von Tunzelmann, Brontë, Bujold, Tildesley, Griffith, Jones)
0/30 by PoC (as far as I know)

Some very good books this month. The best, rather to my surprise, was The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë, which I had not read before. You can get it here. Honorable mentions also to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation analysis of the failure of the Sri Lanka peacekeeping mission, which you can get here, and on a different note Andy Lane's great Doctor Who novel All-Consuming Fire, which you can get here. Wooden spoon to The Other City, by Michal Ajvaz, which you can get here.