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 a lot of fun travel in that month. It started with a trip to Northern Ireland for the 2016 Assembly election, which was actually not all that exciting as only seven seats out of 108 changed hands; we did not know what was about to hit us. (Funny to come back to this memory after last week.)
Though the studio experience had its dramatic moments.
Anne, F and I had a lovely cultural trip to the Netherlands for her birthday, including the Escher museum in The Hague.
And I also visited Georgia for a Liberal International conference, with country excursions.
Back home, I managed to persuade B to come out for a walk in the centre of her town.
I read 23 books that month.
Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 17)
How Loud Can You Burp?, by Glenn Murphy
A History of Anthropology, by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sievert Nielsen
Not the Chilcot Report, by Peter Oborne
Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 9)
Lila, by Marilynne Robinson
The Quarry, by Iain Banks
Walking on Glass, aby Iain Banks
Cyprus Avenue, by David Ireland (theatre script)
Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones
SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 37)
Banewreaker, by Jacqueline Carey
George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt, by Lucy Hawking
George and the Big Bang, by Lucy Hawking
Godslayer, by Jacqueline Carey
The Ragged Astronauts, by Bob Shaw
Quantico by Greg Bear
The Last Man, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 19)
Short Trips: Monsters, ed. Ian Farrington
Heritage, by Dale Smith
Where Angels Fear, by Rebecca Levene and Simon Winstone
Lethbridge-Stewart: Mutually Assured Domination, by Nick Walters
Comics: 4 (YTD 13)
Bételgeuse v.4: Les Cavernes, by Leo
Adolf, An Exile In Japan, by Osamu Tezuka
De maagd en de neger, by Judith Vanistendael
Chroniques de Fin de Siècle 3: Chooz, by Santi-Bucquoy
6,300 pages (YTD 26,400 pages)
8/23 (YTD 39/97) by women (Robinson, Carey x2, Hawking x2, Shelley, Levene, Vanistendael)
1/23 (YTD 9/97) by PoC (Tezuka)
The best of these was a reread, Walking on Glass by Iain Banks, which you can get here; followed by Mister Pip, which you can get here. The worst were Santi-Bucquoy’s disappointing Chooz, which you can get here, and Shaw’s Ragged Astronauts, which you can get here.