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.
This was another month when I did not leave Belgium, though such months are again becoming increasingly rare. I compensated with a couple more trips to see Hansche stuccos:
And I brought B to meet with her secret boyfriend, a statue of the late King Baudouin.
I had planned to travel to Belfast to give a lecture at the end of the month, but pressure of work in Brussels compelled me to do it virtually. Here is the preview interview I gave with Alan Meban.
The big excitement at home was the installation of a bee hotel at the end of our drive.
I mourned Erhard Busek, and did the last of my ten-day plague posts as life returned to normal.
And this humble blog moved from Livejournal to WordPress; probably not before time.
We were also busily working on the 2023 Hugo Awards, my sixth time of overseeing the process, so I read only 15 books (and was still getting to grips with WordPress).
Non-fiction 5 (YTD 21)
The Twinkling of an Eye, by Brian Aldiss
The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe in Contemporary Culture, by Mark Bould
Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades, by Anna McFarlane
Elles font l’abstraction/Women in Abstraction, by Christine Macel and Laure Chavelot
Nine Lives, by Aimen Dean
SF 6 (YTD 21)
The Green Man’s Challenge, by Juliet McKenna
Skyward Inn, by Aliya Whiteley
Light Chaser, by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell
The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao
Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Doctor Who 3 (YTD 11)
The Unofficial Doctor Who Annual 1972, ed. Mark Worgan
A Very Private Haunting, by Sharon Bidwell
Human Nature, by Paul Cornell
Comics 1 (YTD 3)
Snotgirl Volume 1: Green Hair Don’t Care, by Brian Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung
4,300 pages (YTD 16,600)
7/15 (YTD 21/63) not by men (McFarlane, Macel/Chavelot, McKenna, Whiteley, Zhao, Bidwell, Hung)
3/15 (YTD 10/63) by PoC (Dean, Zhao, Lee O’Malley/Hung)
Greatly enjoyed rereading Brian Aldiss’ autobiography The Twinkling of an Eye, which you can get here; greatly enjoyed first acquaintance with The Space Machine, which you can get here, and volume 1 of Snotgirl, which you can get here. I will draw a veil over the ones I didn’t like so much.