I don’t think I have ever seen the planet Mercury. (It is said that Copernicus never saw it either, in the 70 years of his life, but this is disputed.) We in the northern hemisphere have a good chance of catching it in the next week or so: it is very close to Venus (which is much brighter and easier to spot) and sets about an hour after the sun, and should be visible enough even without binoculars. If you have an unimpeded view of the southwestern horizon, have a look for it from about 40 minutes after sunset.

This is the year that we will get our first ever close looks at Ceres and Pluto

The traditional poll of books I read this year; any inconsistency in numbers with this post is just creative ambiguity. If you like you can advise me what to read in 2015 as well.

I read 291 books this year, the most since 2011, with a total pagecount of ~97,100, which is way above previouis tallies ( ~68,000 in 2013, ~77,800 in 2012, ~88,200 in 2011). Partly this was the accelerating incentive of the Arthur C. Clarke Award; I read 58 works either which have been submitted or in a couple of cases which I thought might be submitted (and still might be).

Diversity: 81 (28%) by women, compared to 71 (30%) in 2013, 65 (25%) in 2012, 22% in 2011, 23% in 2010, 20% in 2009, 12% in 2008. Highest number recorded to date.
21 (7%) by PoC this year, compared with 11 (5%) in 2013, 12 (5%) in 2012, 5% in 2011, 9% in 2010, 5% in 2009, 2% in 2008. Boosted by Clarke submissions.

Most books by a single author:
Justin Richards (4), and one other who gets to 4 by counting Clarke submissions.
Non-fiction

Best in category: Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell. Really fantastic writing.
Runner-up: Other People's Countries: A Journey into Memory, by Patrick McGuinness – still not sure who recommended this to me, but it was a good call.
The one you won't have heard of: Legacy: A story of racism and the Northern Ireland Troubles by Jayne Olorunda

Non-sfnal fiction

Best in category: The Waves, by Virginia Woolf – NB SPOILERS in my write-up.
Runner-up: The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
The one you won't have heard of: Battle for Bittora, by Anuja Chauhan

Non-Whovian sff

(for convenience, this year’s total includes a couple of Clarke submissions that I don’t really think are sf.)

Best in category: The Ocean At The End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
Runner-up: Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
The one you won't have heard of: The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.

Doctor Who fiction

Best in category: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller, by Joanne Harris – short but punchy.
Runner-up: Damaged Goods, by Russell T. Davis – excellent, unexpecetd foreshadowing of New Who.
The one you won't have heard of: The Cybermen Monster File, by Gavin Collinson and Joseph Lidster – a nifty ebook about your second favourite monsters.

Extra – Who non-fiction: Adventures with the Wife in Space: Living With Doctor Who, by Neil Perryman – a lovely confessional account of life as a Who fan and blogger
Extra – Who comics: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell – loved it.

Comics

Best in category: Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot
Runner-up: Sugar Skull, by Charles Burns
The one you won't have heard of: Brussel in beeldekes: Manneken Pis en andere sjarels, ed. Marc Verhaegen

Worst book of the year: with some competition from others in the same series, the 1986 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Doctor Who story by William Emms, Mission to Venus, is so poor that I would gently suggest to even the most dedicated Who completist than they can safely give it a miss.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 48)
Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time, by Stephen Baxter
ℶ1
101 Ways to Win an Election, by Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield

Fiction (non-sf) 0 (YTD 41)

SF (non-Who) 14 (YTD 124)
ω2
α3
β3
The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung
γ3
δ3
ε3 (did not finish)
ζ3
η3
θ3
I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert A. Heinlein (did not finish)
ι3
κ3
λ3

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 59)
Fear of the Dark, by Trevor Baxendale
The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin
Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham

Comics 1 (YTD 19)
Sterrenrood, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Peter De Gucht]

~7,000 pages (2014 total ~97,100)

6/21 (2014 total 81/291) by women (γ3, ε3, ζ3, η3, θ3, ι3)

3/21 (2014 total 19/291) by PoC (Chan, γ3, ζ3)

Reread: 2/21, The Dying Days and I Will Fear No Evil (YTD 12/291)

Reading now:
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin

Coming Next lists will be revised depending on the output of this poll.

I've found doing these posts a useful self-discipline over the course of the year, but I am actually going to switch to Thursday for next year – simply so that I can have the satisfaction of doing a final weekly roundup again on 31 December.

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin

Last books finished
I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert A. Heinlein (gave up halfway through)
Sterrenrood, by "Willy Vandersteen" [Peter De Gucht]
ι3
κ3
Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham
λ3

Last week's audios
Welcome to Night Vale eps 37-42

Next books
Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards
Mating, by Norman Rush

Books acquired in last week (a good Christmas haul)
Three Daves, by Nicki Elson
Lila, by Marilynne Robinson
Turner's Taoisigh, by Martyn Turner
The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, ed Alex Dally MacFarlane
The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose, by Alice Munro
Een geschiedenis van België voor intelligente kinderen (en hun ouders), by Geert van Istendael
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Claire Tomalin
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, by Alice Munro
The Official Doctor Who Annual 2015
Doctor Who: The Blood of Azrael, by Scott Gray
Listen to the Moon, by Michael Morpurgo
Sterrenrood, by Willy Vandersteen
The Angel Maker, by Stefan Brijs
Two Brothers, by Ben Elton
Romeinse sporen: het relaas van de Romeinen in de Benelux met 309 vindplaatsen om te bezoeken, by Herman Clerinx
First Generation, by Mary Tamm
Robert Holmes: a Life in Words, by Richard Molesworth
Anno Dracula – Dracula Cha Cha Cha, by Kim Newman

Once again, I found your votes very helpful in leading me to interesting reading in 2014, and I would once again very much appreciate your advice on what books to read next, by filling in this poll. This is not the complete contents of my unread shelf; I’ve stripped out all books by white men which I acquired before this year. The books are listed in each category by descending popularity on LibraryThing.

I believe that even if you don’t have a Livejournal account, you can sign in with your Twitter or Facebook credentials. Individual recommendations, pro and anti – preferably of books actually on the lists – are very welcome in comments.

NB that the question for the non-fiction books is different from the questions for the other two categories.

Thanks again!

• History of Ceres
  
  How we came to know of the first dwarf planet
  (tags: astronomy asteroids )
• The Discovery of Ceres: How Gauss found it
  
  Omitted by my previous link, a fascinating bit of maths history.
  (tags: astronomy asteroids )

• A Visit to the European Parliament Leaves Many Amazed
  
  @gksteinhauser and @FMR_Brussels nail it.
  (tags: eu )
• UK under David Cameron no longer at heart of EU, says José Manuel Barroso
  
  True enough; of course, neither is Barroso any more!
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Good News You May Have Missed in 2014
  
  @BillGates hopes to cheer us up.
  (tags: development )
• New Translations of Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’
  
  Masha Gessen compares and contrasts. *Spoilers for AK!*
  (tags: languages: russian )
• The Translation Police arrest Anna Karenina
  
  A response to Masha Gessen.
  (tags: languages: russian )

There have been a couple of algorithms going around which purport to tell you what your most successful posts on Facebookwere this year. I'm not wildly convinced by any of them, and have resorted to hand-counting the stats for each entry. If I have counted right, my most "liked" Facebook post of the last year was the one in which I announced my change of job on 21 October:

Some way behind were my posts on becoming a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award:

And the picture of our family taken on Christmas day last year:

In terms of shares, I had quite unlooked-for viral success with this picture which was picked up by more than 400 people (that is, directly from me; many more will have saved it locally and passed it on):

Followed some way behind by this, snagged from a cousin (and presumably including shares from her and her source too):

And this, which I still find terribly pleasing:

The top two posts for comments were the new job and the family picture. In third place was this bit of 1990s nostalgia, which it seems I can’t embed because it is sharing someone else’s photo. (And also includes a Minister of the Crown.)

I’m going to watch the celebrity version now.

As noted last year, Livejournal continues to subside as a medium of communication. Certainly I am consciously new using it as an archive first, and active platform for dialogue very much second. I am still way behind on book reviews, mainly because I am spending spare moments reading through the submissions for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, but partly also because little U has developed a passion for the home computer and it is a little heart-breaking to boot her off it for Daddy’s Turn.

Last year, 23 posts got 10 or more comments; this year it was only 18, and I’m not terribly proud of the Hugo snark ones which are the majority from the first half of 2014. The full list is:

31 December 2013: What should I read in 2014? – 28 comments
19 April 2014: Hugos and Retro Hugos: GoodReads / LibraryThing stats – 13 comments
21 April: “Opera Vita Aeterna”, by Vox Day: Latin lessons – 10 comments
6 May: Question inspired by Larry Correia’s Warbound [How do you pronounce “hypothesis”?] – 11 comments
10 May: Science fiction and fantasy set in Ireland [Why are people linking to something I wrote years ago?] – 12 comments
27 May: May Books 7) Parasite, by “Mira Grant” – 10 comments
28 May: Best Novel 2014 Hugos [my votes] – 15 comments
13 June: Test your browser’s alphabet recognition – 19 comments
29 June: Dialect quiz – 13 comments
1 July: Dialect answers – 16 comments
2 July: “Mars is the eighth and latest republic to be attached to the Soviet Union” [quibble with a John Wyndham story] – 11 comments
30 July: There are less than 34 hours left to vote for the Hugos. This is how some people are voting. – 11 comments
22 August: The three coolest things that happened to me at Worldcon – 14 comments
4 September: The mysterious world of selleckchem.com – 10 comments
22 September: The by-election in the House of Lords – 18 comments
23 September: [locked post about meeting a politician] – 12 comments
9 November: Poppies, St Paul’s and Pepys – 17 comments
6 December: Richard III’s mtDNA and and Y chromosomes – 11 comments
15 December: UK coalition reality check [re Northern Ireland parties in the next parliament] – 13 comments

I suspect that next year’s list (if I do one) will be thinner again. Compare the equivalent entries for 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005.

Since my last roundup on 23 December last year, I appear to have perpetrated 3,337 tweets and gained 769 followers, leaping from 1,625 to 2,394 (of which 250 were gained in the last two weeks of May, during my appearances on BBC Northern Ireland's election broadcasts).

My most retweeted was this, which I'm sorry to say some people took seriously:

Why I'm against immigration http://t.co/0TjvxVS8O2 …because Britain is full. A must-read piece.

— Nicholas Whyte (@nwbrux) January 2, 2014

It was retweeted by 53 people, including comedian Mitch Benn who doesn't actually follow me.

Second most retweeted was this at 46, which also got the most replies (17):

Justly forgotten, I suspect: Jon Pertwee sings songs for vulgar boatmen.

— Nicholas Whyte (@nwbrux) November 3, 2014

Er, yes.

The immigration post also scored the second highest number of potential impressions (ie adding up all the followers of everyone who retweeeted it) at 85,341. The winner of that category, however, was this tweet of a Slate article which was in turn picked up by Slate's own twitter feed of more than 1.2 million followers:

Casual sexism: When a shirt is more than a shirt. http://t.co/SFiShm5kiS Yet another good piece about the #shirtstorm, by @BadAstronomer

— Nicholas Whyte (@nwbrux) November 18, 2014

I use CrowdBooster to measure these, by the way; it's not expensive and provides me plenty of amusement and enlightenment.

• Confessions of a white Oxbridge male
  
  An English perspective.
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• James Nicoll reviews Imperial Earth
  
  (tags: )
• How the Union was almost lost: The inside story of the Scottish independence campaign’s last 100 days
  
  In fairness to &telegraph, this is the sort of piece they do well. (Unionist side only, though.)
  (tags: scotland )
• Song of Saruman
  
  More than meets the eye.
  (tags: tolkien )

The overnights meme:

List the places where you spent a night away from home this year, marking places where you spent two or more non-consecutive nights with an asterisk.

*London, England
Nicosia (north), TRNC
Glasgow, Scotland
*Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Belfast, Norn Iron
Lys, Burgundy
*Kidderminster, England
Loughbrickland, Norn Iron
Budapest, Hungary
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Florence, Italy
Budva, Montenegro
Tirana, Albania
Brussels, Belgium
Mamer, Luxembourg

15 different places. With day-trips and transits, also 15 countries (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus [both parts], France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, UK), up from last year’s 9.

This is the first calendar year since 2001 that I have not been to the USA.

Previous years: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006.

• The Blue Coup in New York City
  
  Harsh. Fair?
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Good Morning leaflets from the era of telegrams
  
  Those were the days!
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• Worse than a Defeat
  
  Britain’s most recent military campaigns.
  (tags: ukpolitics Afghanistan iraq )
• Gamergate and Harassment: Learning Lessons Over Time
  
  But it’s all about ethics in journalism, really really.
  (tags: internet games )

• Fairytale of New York: the story behind the Pogues’ classic Christmas anthem
  
  How a classic was made.
  (tags: Music )
• Last Christmas
  
  Phil Sandifer’s review
  (tags: doctorwho )
• RFE/RL’s Baku Bureau Raided By Prosecutor’s Office
  
  Freedom of the media, Azerbaijan-style!
  (tags: azerbaijan )

• Buzz Aldrin: The Dark Side of the Moon
  
  A compelling piece.
  (tags: space )

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham

Last books finished
The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin
η3
Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, by Anna Whitelock
θ3

Last week’s audios
Welcome to Night Vale eps 23-36

Next books
Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards
Mating, by Norman Rush

Books acquired in last week
The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov
Crashland, by Sean Williams
I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert A. Heinlein

• 8 pronunciation errors that made the English language what it is today
  
  Old news, but fun.
  (tags: linguistics )
• The baby from Teletubbies
  
  Now 19 and at university.
  (tags: tv )

A kind correspondent has thoughtfully sent me his new e-book about the placenames of Antarctica, and had even authorised me to send it on to interested readers. It is, hoever, in Bulgarian, which I fear may limit its appeal. Do shout if you want a copy.

• The Time Scales – Big Finish, Doctor Who Ratings and Reviews
  
  I did not know about this brilliant site.
  (tags: doctorwho )
• Civil Litigation Review of 2014
  
  Law nerdery from the UK.
  (tags: law )

• The Europe Dilemma
  
  Very interesting review by @JeremyCliffe of Roger Liddle book.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Theresa May plans to ‘send home foreign graduates’ met with anger
  
  Expel educated immigrants! You know it makes sense!
  (tags: ukpolitics migration )
• Jane Bown: a life in photography – in pictures
  
  Superb.
  (tags: photos deaths )
• remembering
  
  Lockerbie, 26 years on
  (tags: death )

• How not to apply for a job in development
  
  Ow ow ow!
  (tags: careersadvice )

Jeepers, how did this happen? I last did a bookblogging update four weeks ago, and since then have been travelling a lot and also read about a dozen Arthur C.Clarke Award nominees. (One of which, in full disclosure, I gave up half way through.) But I’m still five bloggable books behind for November, and the same (so far) for December. Here is the first step in fixing the backlog.

I liked Beach Music, much more than I liked Conroy’s best-known work The Prince of Tides, but I felt it was not quite the sum of its parts. The parts are all pretty good, so this is not damning with faint praise: the experience of Catholics and Jews, both minority groups in of course rather different ways, in South Carolina in the period of the Vietnam War, with flashbacks to the lived experience of the Holocaust and also a narrative in the 1980s. The core pillar is the slow death of the narrator’s mother; the descriptions of people and places – particularly Rome, which is beautifully conveyed – are all pretty compelling.

I was driven by my frustration that the book didn’t quite add up for me to look at Conroy’s Wikipedia entry, and an now wondering if Beach Music is a partial response to his own earlier work, The Great Santini, about an abusive military father-son relationship. That is also one of the subplots of Beach Music, and clearly one that the author himself is pretty invested in; is the later novel perhaps Conroy’s version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? I am sufficiently interested that I may well get the earlier book to make my own judgement.

So I was in the local supermarket and spotted some crocodile fillets on the meat shelves, and thought, why not? I remember eating crocodile precisely once before in my life, in of all places Varaždin in October 1998 (a wedding anniversary excursion, which is why the month sticks in my memory). I thought then that it was a bit like chicken but more fishy. So, could I rise to the challenge myself?

Extensive research on the internet, as far as I could do that standing in the doorway of the supermarket, suggested that the easiest thing to do is to chop it up, marinade it in lemon juice and minced garlic for an hour and then then fry it, so that’s what I did. I added some soy sauce at the end because I was a bit worried that it needed a bit of extra oomph, and rather unadventurously accompanied it with rice, beans and carrots.

Reviews were fine. Young F said that he thought it was a bit like chicken and a bit like fish, which is basically what I thought before he was born, and given the relative taxonomic places of birds, crocodiles and fish it seems a bit right. Fortunately he likes both chicken and fish, so this was a positive reaction. I think less soy sauce and more lemon would have worked better. But it was tasty enough and gives the impression of being nutritious.

I won’t buy it every week – or indeed every month – but I will definitely try it again, perhaps with more forward planning next time.

• 10 diktats from Brussels that are ruining life in Britain
  
  Of course, all were approved by governments and elected MEPs!
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )

Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin
Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, by Anna Whitelock
η3

Last books finished
δ3
ε3 (did not finish)
ζ3

Last week’s audios
Welcome to Night Vale eps 20-22

Next books
Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards
Infinity Race, by Simon Messingham

Books acquired in last week
Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal, by William H. Keith, Jr

• Twitterstorm ahead – EU VAT Action Tuesday 16th December
  
  Taking online action to save microbusinesses.
  (tags: eu twitter )
• Gagauz, the Turkic-Speaking Minority of Moldova
  
  @LangsoftheWorld reports.
  (tags: linguistics languages moldova )
• Britain on the brink: the real story of the Scottish referendum
  
  Excellent Guardian reporting.
  (tags: scotland )

• The Posters that Warned against the Horrors of a World with Women’s Rights
  
  Don’t let women vote! It will only encourage them!
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality politics )
• Imprisoned with the Pharaohs (1924)
  
  By Harry Houdini [ghost-written by H.P. Lovecraft].
  (tags: sf )
• Is the EU about to ban double-slot toasters?
  
  No.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics italy )

Andrew Rawnsley has written a piece about the influence of Northern Irish political parties after May’s Westminster election.

The Nigel we need to talk about is Nigel Dodds. Mark the name. For within a few months, he is the Nigel who could be an absolutely pivotal player in the politics of our country. It is not impossible that he could even get to choose who becomes our next prime minister.

It is a salutary reminder that Norn Iron remains part of the UK system, but I think he exaggerates the chances of Nigel Dodds playing kingmaker (not least because Nigel is himself at risk in North Belfast, though I expect he will win). The DUP’s price will be modest:

…it’s not places in the Cabinet that we would seek. We ask for nothing for ourselves. We want outcomes that would benefit all of our people. We are not seeking to be part of any Government coalition, but, with an open mind, we are willing to sustain in office, a Government that offers policies and programmes that are in the best interests of Northern Ireland in particular, and the United Kingdom as a whole.

That looks like cash to me, rather than any DUP-friendly constitutional tweaks (over which both Dublin and the Shinners would expect to wield a veto).

In any case, this is all pretty improbable. The chance of the extra 6-10 DUP members (let alone five or six Shinners) holding the crucial votes is not high, as Martin Baxter has so ably mapped out. Even his statistics disregard the fact that the SDLP, likely to retain at least 2 of their current 3 seats, take the Labour Whip, which narrows the zone of DUP relevance still further. Added to that, a Labour deal with the DUP which has the side effect of annoying the SDLP may turn out not to be worth it.

Rawnsley also raises the prospect, excitedly pursued by Brian Walker on Slugger O’Toole, that the five or so Sinn Féin MPs might take their seats in hope of picking up some coalition crumbs. This is vanishingly unlikely. I am sure that it is likely in the medium term that the Shinners will end abstentionism at Westminster, rather more likely than a united Ireland is to come about. But it seems improbable that the price they would demand would be easier for a minority government to pay than any conceivable price demanded by the DUP. The calculation is clear: buy off 8-ish DUP votes, and the Shinners stay away. Buy the support of 5-ish Shinners and the DUP (and maybe also the SDLP) move to the opposite column, for a net loss of at least 3.

Moving farther northeast, I do find it interesting that the current Tory proposals for Scotland are much more generous than the Labour equivalents. Of course the SNP must say “no deals with the Tories” for now; but if Cameron is smart (and I know that reasonable people disagree on that point), he will be preparing an offer that the SNP cannot refuse on 8 May, of radical constitutional reform in return for confidence and supply (like the DUP, the SNP have no interest in sitting in the UK cabinet). I am sure that Cameron at least has read Douglas Hurd’s 1970 novel dealing with precisely this scenario…

• Obama Sells Out U.S. Diplomats
  
  It goes way deeper than political ambassadors.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer, Project Apollo
  
  Coined term “software engineering”. Moon landings ran her code.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality space )
• Bob Purdie: 1940-2014
  
  I met him only once, in 1994(?) in Glasgow; a great personality.
  (tags: northernireland scotland )
• The Brief and Silly History of #Metalgate
  
  The #GamerGate paradigm.
  (tags: internet )
• Wikipedia: a rancorous, sexist mess.
  
  Can it be fixed?
  (tags: wikipedia )
• Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society
  
  Modelling diversity.
  (tags: race politics )