January 2015 books

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.

Two trips to London and one to Bulgaria this month. This was also the month that Ulster University appointed me to a Visiting Professorship, which I still hold. And Croatia elected a new president.

This was also the month that I was inspired to start my series of posts on the best known books set in each European country, according to Goodreads and LibraryThing, starting with England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

I read 29 books that month. Few of them got blogged at the time, because of various reasons.

Non-fiction: 7
Circe's Cup, by Clare Carroll
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin
Een geschiedenis van België voor intelligente kinderen (en hun ouders), by Benno Barnard and Geert van Istendael
Getting the Buggers to Behave, by Sue Cowley
Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults, by Ambrose Bierce
The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided The Battle Of Waterloo, by Brendan Simms
The Flag Dispute: Anatomy of a Protest by Paul Nolan, Dominic Bryan, Clare Dwyer, Katy Hayward, Katy Radford & Peter Shirlow

Circe's Cup Mary Wollstonecraft Turner's Taoisigh geschiedenis van België Getting the Buggers to Behave Write It Right Longest Afternoon Flag Dispute

Fiction (non-sf): 1
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

SF (non-Who): 15 (all Clarke submissions)
Afterparty, by Daryl Gregory
Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie
Meatspace, by Nikesh Shukla
The Rhesus Chart, by Charles Stross
God's Dog, by Diego Marani
Cibola Burn, by James S.A. Corey
Fontoon, by John Schoneboom – did not finish
Bowl of Heaven, by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven
Sand, by Hugh Howey
Black Moon, by Kenneth Calhoun
TimeStorm, by Steve Harrison
Infidel, by Kameron Hurley
The Country of Ice Cream Star, by Sandra Newman
Future Perfect, by Katrina Mountfort
Tigerman, by Nick Harkaway

Doctor Who, etc: 3
The Ultimate Treasure, by Christopher Bulis
The Domino Effect, by David Bishop
Oh No It Isn't!, by Paul Cornell

The Ultimate TreasureThe Domino Effect

Comics and cartoons: 3
Turner's Taoisigh, by Martin Turner
Are You My Mother?, by Alison Bechdel
The Blood of Azrael, by Scott Gray, Michael Collins, Adrian Salmon and David A. Roach

Are You My Mother Blood of Azrael

~8,500 pages
10/29 by women (Carroll, Tomalin, Cowley, Dwyer/Hayward/Radford, Leckie, Hurley, Newman, Mountfort, Bechdel)
1/29 by PoC (Shukla)

Best book this month, and eventually the best book of the year other than the Clarke Award list, was Claire Tomalin's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which you can get here, closely follwoed by Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword, which you can get here, and Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, which you can get here.

A couple of turkeys from the Clarke submissions, though, Diego Marani's God's Dog, which you can get here, and John Schoneboom's Fontoon, which you can get here.

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