October 2015 books

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 started the month in Windsor at a work retreat, and had another trip to London within the week, followed by a family trip to Luxembourg and another work trip to Geneva. The best photograph I took all month was actually of the Dijlepark in Leuven at twilight on the 31st.

With lots of daytime travel I read only 15 books that month.

Non-fiction: 5 (YTD 43)
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 6: Peter Davison and Colin Baker, by Elizabeth Sandifer
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us: Or Why You Have No Idea How Your Mind Works, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to “Faerie”, by Verlyn Flieger
A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571-1641, by Jon G. Crawford
Family Britain, 1951-1957, by David Kynaston
TARDIS Eruditorum 6 Invisible Gorilla Question of Time Star Chamber Court Family Britain

Fiction (non-sf): 1 (YTD 32)
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
Les Mis

SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 96)
Jacaranda, by Cherie Priest
Forsaken, by Kelley Armstrong (did not finish)
Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds
The Arabian Nights, ed. Muhsin Mahdi, tr. Hussein Haddawy
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
Slan, by A.E. van Vogt
Jacaranda Forsaken Galactic North Arabian Nights Dark Tower Slan

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 35)
Business Unusual, by Gary Russell
The Deadstone Memorial, by Trevor Baxendale
Walking to Babylon by Kate Orman
Business Unusual Deadstone Memorial Walking to Babylon

~6,400 pages (YTD 64,000)
4/15 by women (YTD 68/228) – Flieger, Priest, Armstrong, Orman
1/15 by PoC (YTD 15/228) – Mahdi/Haddawy

The best of these was of course Les Misérables, which you can get here; the best new reads were The Invisible Gorilla, which you can get here, and Family Britain, 1951-1957, which you can get here.

I bounced off Kelley Armstrong’s Forsaken, but you can get it here.