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The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry

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Second paragraph of first chapter:

Why not indeed. Here's a list of the most likely possibilities:

1 Beat — Monometer
He bangs
The drum.

2 Beats — Dimeter
His drumming noise
Awakes the boys.

3 Beats — Trimeter
His drumming makes a noise.
And wakes the sleeping boys.

4 Beats — Tetrameter
He bangs the drum and makes a noise,
It shakes the roof and wakes the boys.

5 Beats — Pentameter
He bangs the drum and makes a dreadful noise,
It shakes the roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

6 Beats – Hexameter
He bangs the drum and makes the most appalling noise,
It shakes the very roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

7 Beats — Heptameter
He bangs the wretched drum and makes the most appalling noise,
Its racket shakes the very roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

8 Beats — Octameter
He starts to bang the wretched drum and make the most appalling noise,
Its dreadful racket shakes the very roof and wakes the sleeping boys.

An enjoyable book by Stephen Fry about how poetry works and how to write it. There are a lot of exercises inviting the reader to try their own; I did about half of them and then ran out of energy. I'm not as much into poetry as some people, but this was a nice re-introduction to enjoying it. You can get it here.

This was my top unread non-fiction book. Next on that pile is Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop.

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December 2006 books and 2006 books roundup

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My final Crisis Group publication was a briefing on Kosovo. In my four years and eight months there, I had overseen the publication of 46 reports, 16 briefings and ten op-eds (in the last case, just counting those published under my own name; I was ghost-writer for a few more). Meanwhile I chose my new office, a serviced arrangement on Rond Point Schuman. In Belgium the big news was a hoax TV news programme announcing that Flanders had unilaterally declared independence. Gerald Ford died just after Christmas.

Anne's sister joined us again for Christmas, which was just as well when one of the household had to be taken to casualty on Christmas Day itself (naming no names). The kids enjoyed themselves, though B's behaviour was getting more and more difficult to manage:

I don't appear to have travelled this month. My overnights tally for the year was 25 places in 18 countries.

Thanks to my sudden conversion to commuting by train, I read 20 books in December 2006:

Non-fiction 8 (2006 total 70)
This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, by Swanee Hunt
The Great English Pilgrimage, by Christopher Donaldson
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown (did not finish)
The Elusive Quest: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, by Norman Porter
Ockham's Razor: A Search for Wonder In An Age of Doubt, by Wade Rowland
Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson
An Intimate History of Humanity, by Theodore Zeldin (did not finish)
Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, by Marina Warner

Non-genre 7 (2006 total 35)
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink
White Eagles over Serbia, by Lawrence Durrell
The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
Perfume, by Patrick Süskind
Crooked Little Heart, by Anne Lamott
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming

SF (non-Who) 3 (2006 total 68)
Thunderbird Falls, by C.E. Murphy
Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett
Unfinished Tales, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Doctor Who 2 (2006 total 28)
Timewyrm: Apocalypse, by Nigel Robinson
Timewyrm: Revelation, by Paul Cornell

Comics 0 (2006 total 6)

7,400 pages (YTD 61,600)
4/20 (34/207) by women
None (8/207) by PoC

For once I'm going to highlight one book I liked and two I didn't, rather than the other way around. Norman Porter's exploration of how to achieve reconciliation in Northern Ireland is very good and a partial recantation of his earlier views; you can get it here. I could not finish either Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee or Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity. You can get them here and here.


2006 books roundup

This was the first year that I did a proper book roundup at the time. Reformatting that post to my current system:

Non-fiction 70 (34% – highest of any year I have on record)
Best of 2006: Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea; The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper
The one you haven't heard of: Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, by David Feige
Worst of 2006: An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004, by Claire Palley

SF 68 (33% – same as last year, about average)
Best of 2006 (not including rereads): The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn; Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
The one you haven't heard of: Impossible Stories, by Zoran Živković
Worst of 2006: Galactic Patrol, by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Non-genre 35 (17% – about average)
Best of 2006:  The Warden's Niece by Gillian Avery; The File on H, by Ismail Kadarë.
The one you haven't heard of: A Game With Sharpened Knives, by Neil Belton
Worst of 2006: Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

Doctor Who 28 (14% – same as last year; this number got bigger in between)
Best of 2006: Evolution, by John Peel; Doctor Who – The Rescue, by Ian Marter
Worst of 2006: (The Companions of) Doctor Who – Harry Sullivan's War, by Ian Marter

Comics 6 (3% – lowest of any year I have on record)
Best of 2005: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
Worst of 2006: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes (second year in a row that one of his books occupied this spot)

Book of the year 2006: Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea

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The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham & the Rise of Espionage in Elizabethan England, John Cooper

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

It had all looked so different earlier that same summer. The signing of the treaty of Blois was commemorated in a group portrait of the English royal family now known as the Allegory of the Tudor Succession. According to its inscription, the painting was presented by Queen Elizabeth to Francis Walsingham as a 'mark of her people's and her own content'. The artist didn't sign his name but was probably Lucas de Heere, a Flemish Protestant who fled to England with his family in the 1560s. He later acted as an envoy between Walsingham and William of Orange. Like so many images of the time, the Allegory was intended to be decoded as well as admired. The setting is a throne room in one of the royal palaces. Henry VIII presides under the Tudor coat of arms, surrounded by his three children. Edward VI kneels beside his father, accepting the sword of justice, but it is Elizabeth who dominates the foreground of the painting. She is pictured entering the chamber hand in hand with Peace, a goddess with an olive branch. Weapons are trampled and burst into flames, while Plenty follows behind with her cornucopia. To the rear of the royal dais stand Queen Mary and Philip of Spain attended by Mars, god of war.

My Tudor research is somewhat on hold at the moment, but I'm keeping my interest ticking over, and this rose to the top of one of my piles (books acquired in 2015; next is Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones). It's an interesting survey of Walsingham's career, starting with how his views of Catholicism vs Protestantism were hardened by the experience of being the English ambassador in France at the time of the St Bartholomew's Eve Massacre (see also Christopher Marlowe, and Doctor Who). And in particular, Cooper conveys very effectively the fragility of the Elizabethan regime as directly experienced by those who were running it. One of the biggest mental adjustments I've had to make as I get into the period is to realise that the people living through it had no idea that Elizabeth would live to 1603 – crowned heads were tumbling at the drop of a hat across Europe, and the heir to Elizabeth's throne was literally imprisoned in England and actively plotting against her. It's also clearly and sympathetically put that Walsingham and Cecil were more hardline in their religion than the queen was; and they saw their job as preserving the realm even against her whims if the latter should be potentially destructive. Ireland doesn't loom as large here as I had expected it might; perhaps the informal demarcation of responsibilities between Walsingham and Cecil left it more in the latter's domain. But there is lots of useful stuff, helping me to form a better picture of the complex environment of the time. You can get it here. (The American edition has a different title, The Queen's Spymaster.)

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Local Hero, by David Benedictus

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

'What are you thinking about?' he asked Danny. What the hell did the guy think about?

Back in the olden days, there were no DVD players or streaming services, and if you saw a film or some TV that you liked, the only way to experience again at a time and place of your own convenience was to read the novelisation. And if you loved the film Local Hero, as I do, you had to buy this slim book by David Benedictus from Bill Forsyth's original screenplay.

I can't pretend that it's great literature. The book inevitably misses the superb visuals and the soundscape provided by Dire Straits, and the performances of the good members of the cast, including a young Peter Capaldi. (On the other hand, Peter Riegert's boredom in the supposedly central role is less painfully obvious on the page than on the screen.) And as I said, it's short and easily digestible. You can get it here.

This was the shortest book acquired in 2013 on my unread shelf. Next (if I can find it) is Exiled to Nowhere: Burma's Rohingya, by Greg Constantine.

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I went to church this morning

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I went to church this morning, for the first time in several years; you may remember I reported from the churchyard in the first of my lockdown videos, and now that the lockdown is easing, I wanted to see how the community is putting itself back together.

Well, it's still not religion as we knew it before. No hymn singing allowed by the congregation, just a cantor intoning from the back; no communion for anyone except the priest; only every third seat in every second row was available to sit in.

But it was still an important celebration. The service was centred around the Paschal candle which should normally have been lit at Easter, two months ago. The gospel was Matthew 10:26-33, whose tagline is "Be not afraid". And the first time that the congregation as a whole spoke was to jointly profess the Creed – one of the special Belgian ones:

Ik geloof in God, die liefde is
en ons de wereld schenkt.
Ik geloof ook dat God ons roept en zendt
om van deze wereld een thuis te maken:
een wereld zonder honger,
zonder oorlog, zonder haat,
een wereld vol goedheid,
rechtvaardigheid en vrede.

Ik geloof in Jezus Christus,
die geroepen en gezonden
werd om lief en leed met ons te delen
om, geborgen in Gods liefde,
zich te geven aan de mensen.
Ik geloof ook dat de Heer ons roept en zendt
om lief en leed te delen in liefde met elkaar.

Ik geloof dat de Heer zijn Geest van liefde
schenkt aan alle mensen.
Ik geloof ook dat de Heer ons roept en zendt
om van zijn blijde boodschap te getuigen
in woord en daad;
opdat alle mensen van de wereld
broers en zusters zouden worden
in de kerk van zijn liefde,
op weg naar zijn rijk van vrede
en vriendschap voor altijd.
Amen.

 . I believe in God, who is love
and gives us the world.
I also believe that God calls and sends us
to make this world a home:
a world without hunger,
without war, without hate,
a world full of goodness,
justice and peace.

I believe in Jesus Christ,
who was called and sent
to share our joys and sorrows
to give himself to the people,
hidden in God's love.
I also believe that the Lord calls and sends us
to share love and sorrow in love with one another.

I believe that the Lord gives His Spirit of love
to all people.
I also believe that the Lord calls and sends us
to bear wtiness to his joyful message
in word and deed;
that all the people of the world
might become brothers and sisters
in the church of his love,
towards his kingdom of peace
and friendship forever.
Amen.

I’m not sure that I will go back very often. But it was important to go today.

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The Beiderbecke Affair

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The Beiderbecke Affair is the story of two middle-aged teachers in love, in Leeds, at the height of Thatcherism. If you don't know it, just go and get hold of it somehow. It will be five well-spent hours of your time. At present all six episodes are available on Dailymotion:

I fell in love with it at first sight when it was first shown in 1985, the combination of quirky humour, lovng detailed camera work, and upbeat jazz. Here's the first scene after the credits, which introduces us to James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as the protagonists, and Dudley Sutton as their colleague.

There is a plot, as it turns out, but it's kind of marginal to the experience of watching Jill and Trevor exploring their world and their affection for each other, and the beautiful sequences of them and other people simply walking or driving around Leeds to the soundtrack composed by Frank Ricotti. The script is crackling, the actors are electric and the whole thing is a delight.

I was very glad to discover that the show is deemed culturally significant enough to have the British Film Institute publish a book about it, by Bill Gallagher who has also written four Doctor Who audios for Big Finish (all of which I enjoyed). The second paragraph of the book's third chapter (quoting Alan Plater) is:

I said, 'What about Jimmy Bolam?' I'd known Jimmy a long time, socially, and we had worked together in radio. So then we had Jimmy and we got Barbara Flynn. We didn't continue with Bridget Turner because I think there was a feeling that we wanted to go for a new team throughout, and try a new character. I think we've been kind of vindicated in that.

It's a lovely detailed analysis, including the fascinating information that the show was originally intended to continue the story of an earlier Plater series, Get Lost!, but had to be reimagined when Alun Armstrong was no loner available. Somehow it all came together.

I do have to note that there isn't a single non-white speaking part, and very few non-speaking parts either. Leeds is not the most diverse of British cities, but it's not completely white either, nor was it in 1985.

It was funny to come to this at the same time as reading Charles Stross's The Nightmare Stacks, also set in Leeds but from a very different angle.

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Who was both oldest former US President and oldest former Vice-President, but not at the same time?

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Last week I posed a wee question on social media: Who was both the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, but not at the same time?

Lots of people scratched their heads over this, which was gratifying, and the answer is admittedly a bit obscure.

Below is the full list of people who were the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, at all times since the terms of the first holders of both offices ended on 4 March 1797. I have put in bold the cases where a President or Veep who was older than all their living predecessors (if any) left office at the end of their term. In all other cases, the distinction is transmitted through mortality.

You'll see that since 1797, there have been five intervals when there were no living former Presidents, and two when there were no living former Vice-Presidents. There were no living ex-Presidents 1) between the death of Washington and the end of John Adams' term; 2) between the death of Andrew Johnson and the end of Grant's term; 3) between the death of Cleveland and the end of Theodore Roosevelt's term; 4) between the death of Coolidge and the end of Hoover's term; and 5) between the death of Lyndon Johnson and Nixon's resignation.

More obscurely, there were no living Vice-Presidents between 1) the death of Hannibal Hamlin and the end of Levi P. Morton's term, and 2) between the death of Levi P. Morton and the end of Thomas R. Marshall's term.

John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and the elder George Bush were all both the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, at the same time. (In all cases except Nixon, they held both distinctions at the time of their deaths.)

John Quincy Adams, William Howard Taft and Charles G.Dawes all appear twice in their respective columns, having been succeeded in their offices by older men who they then outlived.

The otherwise rather obscure Levi P. Morton outlived six younger successors as Vice-President. I think that is a record.

And the answer to the question, "Who was both the oldest former President of the United States, and the oldest former Vice-President, but not at the same time?"

It's Calvin Coolidge.

He was elected Vice-President on the same ticket as Warren Harding in 1920, and took office in 1921. When Harding died in 1923, Coolidge became president and the only other living former vice-president was his immediate predecessor Thomas R. Marshall, who was older than him. Marshall died in 1925, making Coolidge not just the oldest living former vice-president but the only one. Coolidge's own vice-president, Charles G. Dawes, was older than him, so when their term ended in 1929, Dawes took over the mantle of oldest former Vice-President from him.

At that point the only living former presidents were Coolidge himself and William Howard Taft. When Taft died in 1930, Coolidge became the oldest former president until his own death in 1933, after which there were no living former presidents until Herbert Hoover's term ended two months later. (Hoover lived another thirty years.)

If you spot any mistakes below, please yell.

Oldest Living
Ex-President
Date range
Oldest Living
Ex-Vice President
Date range
George Washington 4 March 1797 – 14 December 1799 . John Adams 4 March 1797 – 4 July 1826
No living ex-Presidents 14 December 1799 – 4 March 1801 .
John Adams 4 March 1801 – 4 July 1826 .
James Madison 4 July 1826 – 28 June 1836 . Aaron Burr 4 July 1826 – 14 September 1836
John Quincy Adams 28 June 1836 – 4 March 1837 .
. John C. Calhoun September 14, 1836 – 4 March 1841
Andrew Jackson 4 March 1837 – 8 June 1845 .
. Richard Mentor Johnson 4 March 1841 – 19 November 1850
John Quincy Adams 8 June 1845 – 23 February 1848 .
Martin Van Buren 23 February 1848 – 24 July 1862 .
. Martin Van Buren 19 November 1850 – 24 July 1862
James Buchanan 24 July 1862 – 1 June 1868 . George Dallas 24 July 1862 – 31 December 1864
. Millard Fillmore 31 December 1864 – 8 March 1874
Millard Fillmore 1 June 1868 – 8 March 1874 .
Andrew Johnson . 8 March 1874 – 31 July 1875
No living ex-Presidents 31 July 1875 – 4 March 1877 . Hannibal Hamlin 31 July 1875 – 4 July 1891
Ulysses S. Grant 4 March 1877 – 23 July 1885 .
Rutherford B. Hayes 23 July 1885 – 17 January 1893 .
. No living ex-Veeps 4 July 1891 – 4 March 1893
Grover Cleveland 17 January 1893 – 4 March 1893 .
Benjamin Harrison 4 March 1893 – 13 March 1901 . Levi P. Morton 4 March 1893 – 16 May 1920
Grover Cleveland 13 March 1901 – 24 June 1908 .
No living ex-Presidents 24 June 1908 – 4 March 1909 .
Theodore Roosevelt 4 March 1909 – 4 March 1913 .
William Howard Taft 4 March 1913 ​– 4 March 1921 .
. No living ex-Veeps 16 May 1920 – 4 March 1921
Woodrow Wilson 4 March 1921 – 3 February 1924 . Thomas R. Marshall 4 March 1921 – 1 June 1925
William Howard Taft 3 February 1924 – 8 March 1930 .
. Calvin Coolidge 1 June 1925 – 4 March 1929
. Charles G. Dawes 4 March 1929 ​– 4 March 1933
Calvin Coolidge 8 March 1930 – 5 January 1933 .
No living ex-Presidents 5 January 1933 – 4 March 1933 .
Herbert Hoover 4 March 1933 – 20 October 1964 . Charles Curtis 4 March 1933 – 8 February 1936
. Charles G. Dawes 8 February 1936 – 23 April 1951
. John Nance Garner 23 April 1951 – 7 November 1967
Harry S. Truman 20 October 1964 – 26 December 1972 .
. Harry S. Truman 7 November 1967 – 26 December 1972
Lyndon B. Johnson . 26 December 1972 – 22 January 1973
No living ex-Presidents 22 January 1973 – 9 August 1974 . Hubert Humphrey 22 January 1973 – 20 January 1977
Richard Nixon 9 August 1974 – 20 January 1989 .
. Nelson Rockefeller 20 January 1977 – 26 January 1979
. Richard Nixon 26 January 1979 – 22 April 1994
Ronald Reagan 20 January 1989 – 5 June 2004 .
. Gerald Ford 22 April 1994 – 26 December 2006
Gerald Ford 5 June 2004 – 26 December 2006 .
George H. W. Bush . 26 December 2006 – 30 November 2018
Jimmy Carter Since 30 November 2018 . Walter Mondale Since 30 November 2018
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Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist – Goodreads/LibraryThing stats

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The Clarke Award shortlist is out. Although (as I well know) it's a juried award, the leader on this table has won the award four years out of the last six. (2019, 2017, 2015 and 2014, but not 2018 or 2016.)

Goodreads LibraryThing
owners av rating owners av rating
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine 52359 4.17 564 4.11
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders 41307 3.56 481 3.77
The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell 24802 3.76 227 3.61
The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley 19034 3.97 265 3.86
The Last Astronaut, David Wellington 6044 3.6 72 3.63
Cage of Souls, Adrian Tchaikovsky 5761 4.12 64 4

A clear leader in all four columns… (Also my personal favourite, of the three I have read.)

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Thursday reading

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Current
The Complete Secret Army: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Classic TV Drama Series by Andy Priestner
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
The Wicked + The Divine vol 4: Rising Action, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov
Dreaming In Smoke, by Tricia Sullivan

Last books finished
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry
Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter
Heaven's War by David S Goyer and Michael Cassutt (did not finish)
The Ghost of Lily Painter by Caitlin Davies
Laatste schooldag, by Jan Siebelink (did not finish)
From A Clear Blue Sky, by Timothy Knatchbull

Next books
De dag waarop de bus zonder haar vertrok, by Beka
The Overstory, by Richard Powers

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November 2006 books

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As previously mentioned, we started the month with a half-term break at my sister's in Burgundy. Cluny is a remarkable town with a ruined abbey which dominates the urban landscape.

I moved my personal website to http://www.nicholaswhyte.info – I should start updating it a bit more often… I also visited London for orientation with the new job, and drove to the depths of the Ardennes for my last Crisis Group retreat. We got reports out on Serbia, Kosovo and Georgia, as my time with the organisation wound down.

The month ended dramatically. I had a work trip to Berlin which included, rather unusually, a meeting in the Defence Ministry (normally I end up farther east, between the Bundestag/Kanzleramt and foreign ministry). On my way out I asked the silver-haired colonel who I was meeting about the building's history. He told me that it had originally been the headquarters of the German Navy from 1911, and was then the territorial army headquarters; and then became the centre of resistance to Hitler within the armed forces, in particular under Claus von Stauffenberg. "So after 20 July 1944, von Stauffenberg was shot in one of the courtyards," indicating which one with a nod.

That wasn't the really dramatic part. The really dramatic part was after I landed back in Brussels on an early morning flight and started driving the family car to the office. As I went through the Montgomery tunnel, I felt a sudden KCHUNK, and the car coasted to a halt on the uphill stretch. Phone calls to Touring, long wait while traffic pooled around me in one of the prime choke-points of Brussels suburbia, finally the Touring guy arrived and towed me to a nearby layby, more long wait while he fiddled with the distributor cap before shaking his head in bafflement and calling a pickup truck, more long wait for the pickup truck, which then couldn't find the garage, probably because its driver was too busy talking to his girlfriend on his mobile phone to look for it properly, and eventually walked from the garage to my office with all my luggage from Berlin. The garage looked at the car for a few days and then confirmed that fixing it would cost more than we had paid for it, so since then I have largely commuted to Brussels by public transport.

In my office, my Macedonian intern E was doing handover to her successor, Belgian S. E now works for the European Commission, a few blocks from my current workplace, at least in normal times. S now lives in Geneva, where he married a Quebecoise; their children's French must be very interesting to hear. Here's a picture of the three of us at a conference in the European Parliament where I was speaking that week, E on the left, S on the right and me sitting down. (And a bearded chap, who I don't recognise, talking to us.)

I managed to read 27 books in November 2006, more than half of which were short Doctor Who books, mostly by Ian Marter.

November 2006 books

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 62)
The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper
A Bachelor's London: Memories of the Day before Yesterday, 1889-1914, by Frederic Whyte
An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004, by Claire Palley (did not finish)
Disaccord on Cyprus: The UN Plan and after, by Clement Dodd
Everything is about Cyprus, by Hasan Erçakica
Skeletons on the Zahara, by Dean King
Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War, by Tony Hodges
Endgame in the Western Sahara, by Toby Shelley
Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate, by Erik Jensen

SF 3 (YTD 65)
Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

Doctor Who 14 (YTD 26)
The Clockwise Man, by Justin Richards
The Monsters Inside, by Stephen Cole
Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – Earthshock, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Dominators, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Invasion, by Ian Marter
Harry Sullivan's War, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Rescue, by Ian Marter
Evolution, by John Peel
The Stealers of Dreams, by Steve Lyons

Comics 1 (2006 total 6)
Preacher: Until the End of the World, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

6,000 pages (YTD 54,200)
1/27 (YTD 30/187) by a woman
None (YTD 8/187) by PoC

Robert Cooper's The Breaking of Nations was the best of these; you can get it here. Close behind is Skeletons on the Zahara, a tale of shipwrecked sailors sold into slavery; you can get it here. Claire Palley's book on Cyprus is awful, but you can get it here. (I didn't pay for it – a friend had been gifted a copy and passed it on to me.)


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Ninety days on from lockdown

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Lockdown is not quite over yet, but we are a lot closer to normal now. I have been keeping an anxious eye on the daily numbers of COVID-19 cases in hospital, those in ICUs and fatalities, and all are now down to pre-lockdown levels. The Belgian government has stopped its daily press conferences and will do a weekly update instead. We are lucky – the numbers are now grimly rising in Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, India and Pakistan (and Iran seems to be having a second wave) – not to mention the continuing horror in the United States.

The restaurants opened a week ago and I went for lunch with a colleague:

The Belgian prime minister bilingually posted about her own meal with her (Australian) husband. (More than one of my colleagues looked at the tweet and said they knew the restaurant – I have eaten there too, but only outside which is why I didn’t recognise it!)

Back on 7 April I did a videoblog about our village, ending with the hope that I would sometime soon be able to enjoy a beer at the nearest pub:

Well, last night was the night it happened at last:

(Note very young fellow customer in the background.)

Friday will be B’s birthday, and we will go and see her for the first time since the lockdown. U will have to wait a bit longer, unfortunately, given her needs and the logistics of continuing restrictions. But the trajectory is upwards.

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Laatste Schooldag, by Jan Siebelink

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Another lovely sunny weekend day of reading in the garden, another book that I've given up on. I did get as far as the third in this collection of short stories, but none of the first three really engaged me so I'm leaving the rest. The second paragraph of the third story, "Een evenwichtig bestaan" ("A balanced existence"), is:

Een jaar geleden solliciteerde Ernst Greve, net afgestudeerd aan de universiteit van Leiden, naar de betrekking van docent Nederlands aan het Willem de Zwijger College te E. A year ago, Ernst Greve, just graduated from the University of Leiden, applied for the position of Dutch teacher at William the Silent College in E.

The stories are all set among the staff of William the Silent College in a medium-size Dutch town identified only as E. I think they may have been meant to be comedies of manners, but I did not get the humour, and I expected more recurring characters in a series of stories set in what isn't such a big school. You can get it here. Siebelink is quite a well-known Dutch writer – his best known book, Knielen op een bed violen (Kneeling on a Bed of Violets) has been translated into English – but I think I'll give it a miss.

This was top of my unread books acquired in 2013, and the non-genre fiction book that had lingered longest on my unread shelves. Next on the first of those piles is Tim Dolin's biography of George Eliot, next on the second is The Inside of the Cup by the other Winston Churchill – but the latter will have to wait until I have finished all the books I acquired in 2013. (Which I'm getting through pretty briskly.)

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Heaven’s War, by David S. Goyer and Michael Cassutt

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For once, I'm not citing the second paragraph of the third chapter, because I did not get that far. It turns out to be the second book in a series where I have not read the first, and the action is so tightly connected to the previous volume that I could not make head nor tail of it, and gave up after only 16 pages. For what it's worth, the characters seemed to me to be behaving very oddly, but I was not interested enough to keep reading and find out why.

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October 2006 books

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The major personal developments for me in October 2006 were breaking the news of my imminent job change to colleagues and friends, and also finding a daycare place for B, whose behaviour was becoming too difficult for her special school to cope with. We had some diversion also at work when it was rumoured that we might get the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. (We didn't.) My foreign trips were a rather weird one-day trip to Ankara, Turkey, (the only time I have been there); a much less weird conference in Chişinău, Moldova; and a half-term visit to my sister in Burgundy at the end of the month, taking in the Eiffel Tower en route (inspired by Barnaby Bear). Here's the view from the top (well, as far as we could get), with F (aged 7) practicing to be a teenager.

Sadly this was also the month that we lost David Stewart, of Irish sf fandom.

As well as enjoying I, Claudius and the first episodes of Torchwood, I did read a few books.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 53)
Confessions, by St Augustine
Charlotte Brontë's Promised Land, by Eric Ruijssenaars
A Wayfarer in Sweden, by Frederic Whyte

Non-genre 4 (YTD 28)
Villette, by Charlotte Brontë
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
The File on H, by Ismail Kadarë
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

SF 8 (YTD 62)
The Syſtem of the World, by Neal Stephenſon
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
Star Songs of an Old Primate, by James Tiptree Jr
Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny
The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny
Sign of the Unicorn, by Roger Zelazny
The Hand of Oberon, by Roger Zelazny
The Courts of Chaos, by Roger Zelazny

Doctor Who 1 (YTD 12)
The Scales of Injustice, by Gary Russell

5,100 pages (YTD 48,200)
4/16 (YTD 29/160) by women
1/16 (YTD 8/160) by PoC

My own all-time favourite of my reviews was my write-up of The Syſtem of the World, by Neal Stephenſon.

The best book of the month was Ismail Kadarë's Albanian tale The File on H, which you can get here (I enjoyed it a lot more than the most recent book I read by the same author). And the first Chronicles of Amber remain a guilty pleasure; you can get them in a single volume here. I thought The Lovely Bones was an awful book, but you can get it here if you want.

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The Imperial enclave at Ormendaal

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We're no longer locked down as firmly as we were, but I'm still making occasional videos about our area. Here, I go in search of a lost enclave of Imperial territory, just across the Dyle from our village. And I meet some cows.

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