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 month of the 2017 UK general election, where I provided BBC commentary again. The election of course left Theresa May dependent on the DUP for her parliamentary majority.

I also had two work trips to London, one of which had sidebars to Coventry for a client meeting and Canterbury for a conference – where I also caught up with my oldest first cousin, R.

I read 27 books that month.

Non-fiction: 9 (YTD 25)
Belgian solutions 1, by David Helbich
The Case for Impeachment, by Allan J. Lichtman
Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America, by Donald J. Trump
The Broken Road, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, by Artemis Cooper
Europe In The Sixteenth Century by H. G. Koenigsberger and George L. Mosse
Walking the Woods and the Water, by Nick Hunt
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity, by Yuval Noah Harari
In Xanadu, by William Dalrymple

sf (non-Who): 10 (YTD 50)
The Voyage of the Argo: The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus, translated by David R. Slavitt
Warriors ed. George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
Authority, by Jeff VanderMeer
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling
Acceptance, by Jeff VenderMeer
Dune, by Frank Herbert
De piraten van de Zilveren Kattenklauw by “Geronimo Stilton” [Elisabetta Dami]
HWJN by Ibraheem Abbas
A Woman of the Iron People, by Eleanor Arnason

Doctor Who, etc: 5 (YTD 18)
Short Trips: Defining Patterns, ed. Ian Farrington
The Infernal Nexus, by Dave Stone
Joyride, by Guy Adams
The Stone House, by A.K. Benedict
What She Does Next Will Astound You, by James Goss

Comics: 3 (YTD 12)
Professor Bell 1: De Mexicaan met twee hoofden by Joann Sfar
Professor Bell 2: De Poppen van Jerusalem by Joann Sfar
Marzi: A memoir, by Marzena Sowa

7,300 pages (YTD 30,400)
6/27 (YTD 38/115) by women (Cooper, Rowling, “Stilton”, Arnason, Benedict, Sowa)
1/27 (YTD 13/115) by PoC (Abbas)

Great to reread In Xanadu, which you can get here, and to read for the first time both A Woman of the Iron People, which you can get here, and Artemis Cooper’s bio of Patrick Leigh Fermour, which you can get here. Donald Trump’s Great Again is as awful as I expected, but you can get it here.