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 had three trips outside Brussels this month, the first to Zagreb for a conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of their EU membership:
The middle of the month saw B’s birthday:
I then had a business trip to Paris, and a combined business / Clarke tip to London, taking the day in between to catch up with my cousin in Dover.
We ended the month with a work outing swinging from trees in Wavre, which I had done a couple of times before. My actual swinging was not so effective but I am good at waiting for my turn on an elevated platform.
Non-fiction 8 (YTD 40)
A Brief History of Stonehenge, by Aubrey Burl
Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern, by Mary Beard
The Shape of Irish History, by A.T.Q. Stewart
The Robots of Death, by Fiona Moore
City of Soldiers, by Kate Fearon
The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, by Philip Bates
Franco-Irish Relations, 1500-1610: Politics, Migration and Trade, by Mary Ann Lyons
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, by Jessica Bruder 
Non-genre 3 (YTD 7)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
The Rebecca Rioter, by Amy Dillwyn
Chloe Arguelle, by Amy Dillwyn
SF 10 (YTD 110)
The Revolution Trade, by Charles Stross
Plutoshine, by Lucy Kissick
Metronome, by Tom Watson
Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman
The Red Scholar’s Wake, by Aliette de Bodard
The Anomaly, by Hervé le Tellier
World’s Fair 1992, by Robert Silverberg
“Bears Discover Fire”, by Terry Bisson
Aurora: Beyond Equality, eds Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan Anderson
The Hemingway Hoax, by Joe Haldeman
Doctor Who 3 (YTD 19)
K9 Megabytes, by Bob Baker
Doctor Who and the Robots of Death, by Terrance Dicks
Corpse Marker, by Chris Boucher
Comics 1 (YTD 10)
The Endless Song, by Nick Abadzis et al
7,200 pages (YTD 46,900)
12/26 (YTD 78/191) by non-male writers (Beard, Moore, Fearon, Lyons, Bruder, Zevin, Dillwyn x2, Kissick, de Bodard, McIntyre / Anderson, Endless Song illustrators)
2/26 (YTD 28/191) by a non-white writer (Zevin, de Bodard)
I really liked all five of the Clarke shortlistees that I reread this month – Plutoshine, by Lucy Kissick (get it here); Metronome, by Tom Watson (get it here); Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman (get it here); The Red Scholar’s Wake, by Aliette de Bodard (get it here); and The Anomaly, by Hervé le Tellier (get it here).
I also really liked Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, which was a Clarke submission but not actually sf (get it here); and Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder, on which the Oscar-winning film was based (get it here).
However you can skip World’s Fair 1992, by Robert Silverberg. (Or get it here.)