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 is the twelfth last of these posts; the last will be the October 2023 update.

My only trip outside Belgium in November 2022 was a work outing to London, which I have not otherwise recorded, but I had two interesting day trips; one with F to the sculptures at Borgloon:

And one with U to the Picasso exhibition in Brussels.

At work, I was honoured to greet a courageous woman:

I read 32 books that month.

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 92)
The First World War Diary of Noël Drury, 6th Royal Dublin Fusiliers: Gallipoli, Salonika, The Middle East and the Western Front, ed. Richard Grayson
An Eloquent Soldier: The Peninsular War Journals of Lieutenant Charles Crowe of the Inniskillings, 1812-14, ed. Gareth Glover
Rauf Denktaş, a Private Portrait, by Yvonne Çerkez
Moon Boots and Dinner Suits, by Jon Pertwee
The Caucasus: an Introduction, by Thomas de Waal
The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, by John Toon
The Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Jonathan Morris
Faith in Politics, by John Bruton
The Road To Kosovo: A Balkan Diary, by Greg Campbell

Non-genre 1 (YTD 15)
Disobedience, by Naomi Alderman

Poetry 1 (YTD 2)
Death of a Naturalist, by Seamus Heaney

SF 16 (YTD 105)
The End of the Day, by Claire North
The Harem of Aman Akbar, by Elizabeth Scarborough
Hyperspace Demons, by Jonathan Moeller
The Men, by Sandra Newman
The World We Make, by N. K. Jemisin
To Rule in Amber, by John Betancourt
The Flight of the Aphrodite, by S J Morden
August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, by Alex White (did not finish)
Momenticon, by Andrew Caldecott (did not finish)
Azura Ghost, by Essa Hansen (did not finish)
Prophets of the Red Night, by Sophie McKeand (did not finish)
Mickey⁷, by Edward Ashton
Revelations of the Dead-alive aka London and Its Eccentricities in the Year 2023, by John Banim
Deep Dive, by Ron Walters
The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 31)
The Danger Men, by Nick Walter
Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Terrance Dicks
Dr Who: Dalek Invasion Earth 2150AD, by “Alan Smithee”

Comics 2 (YTD 18)
Doctormania, by Cavan Scott et al
The Clockwise War, by Scott Gray

7,400 pages (YTD 69,400)
9/32 (YTD 100/268) by non-male writers (Çerkez, Alderman, North, Scarborough, Newman, Jemisin, White, Hansen, McKeand)
2/32 (YTD 35/268) by a non-white writer (Jemisin, Hansen)

Four books that I really enjoyed this month:

• Death of a Naturalist, the classic poetry collection by Seamus Heaney; you can get it here.
• The Caucasus: An Introduction, by Tom de Waal, unfortunately out of date since the recent war but fantastic to understand the region; you can get it here.
• Disobedience, by Naomi Alderman, a gripping study of an isolated culture in London. You can get it here.
• The Flight of the Aphrodite, a hard sf Clarke submission that really grabbed me; you can get it here.

Several of the other Clarke submissions this month were frankly unreadable; specifically Momenticon, Azura Ghost and Prophets of the Red Night. You can get them here, here and here.