June 2018 books

Blogging still a bit slow, after a couple of weekends away; look forward to catching up this weekend.

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.

Work trips to Dubrovnik, London, Paris, Berlin and Skopje this month. My Dubrovnik conference was enlivened by a Game of Thrones location walk:

Closer to home, I took B out to her neighbourhood just before her birthday:

On the last day of the month, an interesting conversation at the post office:

https://twitter.com/nwbrux/status/1013002972618510336

A nostalgic group shot from the Skopje trip (actually taken by T on the left):

Non-fiction: 2 (YTD 27)
Virgins, Weeders and Queens, by Twigs Way
Brexit and the Future of Ireland: Uniting Ireland & Its People in Peace & Prosperity, by Senator Mark Daly

Fiction non-sf): 2 (YTD 16)
Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett
Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasi
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Theatre: 2 (YTD 3)
Everybody Comes to Rick’s, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
Le Mariage de Figaro, by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

sf (non-Who): 12 (YTD 61)
The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi
Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee
Penric’s Fox, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Stories of the Raksura vol. 2, by Martha Wells
Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty
Introduction to the Stormlight Archive for Hugo Voters, by Brandon Sanderson
The Art of Starving, by Sam J. Miller
Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, by James Finn Garner
Moominvalley in November, by Tove Jansson
Heroine Complex, by Sarah Kuhn

Doctor Who, etc: 1 (YTD 18)
Old Friends, by Jonathan Clements, Marc Platt and Pete Kempshall

Comics: 1 (YTD 16)
Rose de Paris, by Gilles Schlesser and Eric Puech

~6,200 pages (YTD ~39,200)
9/20 (YTD 62/141) by non-male writers (Way, Dunnett, Selasi, Alison, Bujold, Wells, Lafferty, Jansson, Kuhn)
3/20 (YTD 18/141) by PoC (Selasi, Lee, Kuhn)
0/20 (YTD 6/141) reread

I gave no less than five of these top ranking for the month:

  • Virgins, Weeders and Queens, by my old friend Twigs Way – get it here;
  • Penric’s Fox, by Lois McMaster Bujold – get it here;
  • Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett – get it here;
  • Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty – get it here; and
  • City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett – get it here.

On the other hand I was thoroughly unimpressed by Senator Mark Daly’s report on Brexit and the Future of Ireland.