March 2011 books

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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.
I had three really nice trips in March 2011: to Geneva for one of my regular lecturing gigs at the start of the month, to Belfast for an internal BBC event in the middle, and to London for day-jub purposes at the end. The BBC event in Belfast was held at Stormont, in what had been the main dining room in the old days; despite the crapness of my camera, I got this great picture of the view down the drive while waiting for my turn to speak. (By weird coincidence, I was on the BBC talking about elections again today.)

I managed to read 31 books in the 31 days of March 2011.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 15)
International Law and the Question of Western Sahara, edited by Karin Arts and Pedro Pinto Leite
The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vols III & IV, by Edward Gibbon
The Essential Rumi
Contested Will, by James Shapiro

Fiction (non-sf) 8 (YTD 15)
The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Valley of Fear, by Arthur Conan Doyle
His Last Bow, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, by Tom Baker
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer

SF (non-Who) 7 (YTD 17)
The Fall of the House of Usher and other stories, by Edgar Allan Poe
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
Fantasy: the Best of the Year, 2007, edited by Rich Horton
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke
Miracle Visitors, by Ian Watson
The Lays of Beleriand, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Doctor Who 10 (YTD 20)
The Janus Conjunction, by Trevor Baxendale
Matrix, by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker
Doctor Who Annual 1981
The Gemini Contagion, by Jason Arnopp
Night of the Humans, by David Llewellyn
Iceberg, by David Banks
Doctor Who Annual 1982
Ghost Train, by James Goss
Beltempest, by Jim Mortimore
Deep Blue, by Mark Morris

Comics 1 (YTD 3)
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 3, by Fumi Yoshinaga

~9,400 pages (YTD 20,300)
3/31 (YTD 9/70) by women (Arts, Clarke, Yoshinaga)
2/31 (YTD 5/70) by PoC (Rumi, Yoshinaga)

The two best were volume 2 of the Penguin Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (original vols III and IV), which you can get here, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which I had not previously read in full; you can get it here. Also nice to return to The Little Prince, which you can get here. However I thoroughly bounced off Ian Watson's Miracle Visitorsyou can get it here.


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