1. What did you do in 2003 that you’d never done before?
Started a livejournal! (Twice, actually. I tried blogging in February and lost interest; this lj has now been running since May.)

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Didn’t do any this year, but I made a mid-year resolution to do six-monthly resolutions; I kept most of my July ones apart (significantly) from those to do with work.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Since our daughter’s first birthday was yesterday we just missed the boat! Two work colleagues had children, and so did my cousin Fionnuala (only aged 18 herself), and a bunch of friends.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nobody particularly close. People who I knew and liked who died in 2003 included my cousin Niall MacDermot, the Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic, my friend Padraig’s father Michael Hart, my friend Stuart’s wife Loren Butler Feffer.

5. What countries did you visit?
UK, Ireland, Italy, France, US, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Switzerland, Hungary, Macedonia, Serbia-and-Montenegro-and Kosovo (all three but count as only one country), Greece and (for the first time) Georgia and Slovakia.

6. What would you like to have in 2004 that you lacked in 2003?
More time with my family.

7. What date from 2003 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Djindjic assassination on March 12, because it happened while I was out at lunch with someone who also knew him; the day I had my toe operation and James got expelled from Serbia, both on 3 July; the Georgia revolution on November 23; the Northern Ireland elections on November 26.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting the elections site together: full data on for all post-1973 local elections, and running a successful predictions contest in the midst of all else in November.

9. What was your biggest failure?
At work, I have still not managed to get the report on Pan-Albanianism out, and here I sit procrastinating again!

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Surgery on an ingrowing toenail, which seems to have fixed it.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
The Sandman vols 6-10 arrived this morning, but I’m going to save them for Christmas; they may be rivalled by Mary Gentle’s 1610.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Certainly my wife’s. Our au pairs and other childcare helpers. Many of my work colleagues.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Several other colleagues. The voters of Northern Ireland. Kosovo politicians.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Books. Wine. Travel.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Northern Ireland elections. P-Con. The Moldovan peace treaty (which turned out to be a damp squib).

16. What songs will always remind you of 2003?
The Buffy the musical – original soundtrack album which I bought a few weeks ago and have been listening to in the car.

17. Compared to this time last year,
i. are you happier or sadder?
No big change.
ii. thinner or fatter?
A little fatter, I think.
iii. richer or poorer?
Feel somewhat poorer – due to au pair and extra mouth to feed.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Book reviews for the other website. Creative writing.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying about work.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I shall cook boar for the family (ie really Anne and the au pair, as the children won’t be likely to eat it).

22. Did you fall in love in 2003?
No.

23. How many one night stands?
None.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
University Challenge. Practically the only one I watched regularly – I’ve lost touch with the seventh series of Buffy.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

26. What was the best book you read?
Hmm. Memorable books: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson; I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Holes by Louis Sachar; Sandman vols 1-5 by Neil Gaiman; The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson; The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes. I have to say I think Sandman so far is the best, but haven’t finished it yet.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Nothing really, I’ve bought very little music this year.

28. What did you want and get?
Books. Dishwasher.

29. What did you want and not get?
DVD player.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
The only films I saw were Terminator 3, American Wedding and Tomorrow Never Dies. I marginally preferred Terminator 3.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Age 36; went shopping with Fergal.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Swimming in the sea. Missed a chance in Ireland in the summer and again in Montenegro in September.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003?
As usual – smart at work, sloppy at home.

34. What kept you sane?
Reading, cooking.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Halle Berry (see Tomorrow Never Dies)

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
European enlargement.

37. Who did you miss?
As usual, my father (who died in 1990).

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Noel Whelan.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2003
There are more important things than work.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year
“Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are” – not actually appropriate for my year, but a great lyric!

Back to the Russian translation of the Georgia report. Now, we had decided that მიხეილ სააკაშვილი, the likely next president of Georgia, should be written Mikheil Saakashvili in English. But in Russian, should it be Михеил Саакашвили, which would be an accurate transliteration, or should his first name be Михаил which is the more usual Russian spelling?

Once again, Google is my friend. Михеил Саакашвили gets only 5 hits, Михаил Саакашвили gets over 38,000. So we’ll use Михаил knowing that if we’re wrong we’re in good company.

5) Carolan’s Concerto by Caiseal Mór. At first I wondered where the fantasy element was, but after a while it became clear, and I don’t mean the Fairies…

4) After London by Richard Jeffries

I've been racing through this on my Palm (whole text is also online) leaving behind several other books I had previously started. This is often described as the first ever post-apocalyptic book, published in 1885; some unspecified disaster has overcome civilisation, much of England is flooded and has become a huge lake, and society has reverted to feudalism.

We start off with a lengthy description of the social and zoological situation; we then turn to our hero, Felix Aquila, a young nobleman whose marvellous physical characteristics are dwelt on lovingly (unlike his supposed female love interest, of whom all we are told is that she is beautiful); heruns away from home, fights in a war, discovers the poisonous ruins of London; and is adopted as their king by the shepherd tribes of the south-east in their perennial war against the gipsies/Romany.

The book ends really abruptly with Felix tramping back to his home to reclaim his love. The descriptions of the landscape, vegetation and natural world are fantastic, but there's really very little plot. Still, a classic of proto-science fiction that I can at long last cross off my list.

The State of New York, in league with Micro$oft, is suing three notorious spammers.

Excellent.

I’ve started doing something about my next career move. I’ve been working here since May last year; I’ve been in the NGO/thinktank sector working on the Balkans since January 1997. Before that I had six and a half years of “full-time” postgraduate study combined with political activism, including fighting (and losing) elections in 1990 and 1996.

I’m a bit tired of being outside the tent pissing in (to adapt President Johnson’s pithy phrase about J. Edgar Hoover). Also I don’t want to work here for the rest of my life, or even in twelve months’ time: when I joined, the job was Balkans only, now I’m getting pushed more and more into covering Russian-related stuff, which I don’t have an expertise in. And I really really don’t want to work on Chechnya, and that is inevitable if I stay.

Plan A is to aim rather high: I’d like to be one of the advisers in the “cabinet” of a European Commissioner, all of whose jobs are up for grabs next year. This will take some serious political lobbying and also some luck. I’ve started sounding out the various possibilities but basically this will be signed and sealed either between February and May, when the ten commissioners from the new member states are appointed, or six months later when the new fifteen from the current members come in; I’d prefer to stick it out here for another six months, but may not have that option.

But if all that fails I have a plan B. I’ve been hawking my CV around the various lobbying firms here in Brussels, and been getting moderately positive vibes in return; it certainly seems like a less political process where I can trade on my skills rather than my qualifications (which are in astrophysics and history, so not obviously related to a career as a Eurocrat). It would mean trading the intellectual challenge of the work I do now for greater financial reward, but I’m beginning to feel that I could bear it.

Anyway, back to the current job; finish first read of (too long) report on Transdniestria, see if I can get pan-Albanianism out the door, and do something on ceasefire monitoring before Christmas.

And at long last I have a user pic.

IMDB meme


1. Godfather, The (1972).

2. Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)

3. Godfather: Part II, The (1974)

4. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)

5. Schindler’s List (1993)

6. Citizen Kane (1941)

7. Casablanca (1942)

8. Seven Samurai (1954)

9. Star Wars (1977)

10. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

11. Memento (2000)

12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

13. Rear Window (1954)

14. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)

15. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

16. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

17. Usual Suspects, The (1995)

18. Amelie (2001)

19. Pulp Fiction (1994)

20. North by Northwest (1959)

21. Psycho (1960)

22. Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)

23. 12 Angry Men (1957)

24. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

25. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

26. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

27. Goodfellas (1990)

28. American Beauty (1999)

29. Vertigo (1958)

30. Pianist, The (2002)

31. Sunset Blvd. (1950)

32. Apocalypse Now (1979)

33. Some Like It Hot (1959)

34. Matrix, The (1999)

35. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

36. Taxi Driver (1976)

37. Third Man, The (1949)

38. Paths of Glory (1957)

39. Fight Club (1999)

40. Boot, Das (1981)

41. L.A. Confidential (1997)

42. Double Indemnity (1944)

43. Chinatown (1974)

44. Requiem for a Dream (2000)

45. Maltese Falcon, The (1941)

46. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

47. Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)

48. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001) AKA – Spirited Away

49. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

50. All About Eve (1950)

51. M (1931)

52. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

53. Raging Bull (1980)

54. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

55. Se7en (1995)

56. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)

57. Wizard of Oz, The (1939)

58. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

59. Vita e bella, La (1997) AKA: Life is Beautiful

60. American History X (1998)

61. Sting, The (1973)

62. Touch of Evil (1958)

63. Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)

64. Alien (1979)

65. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

66. Rashemon (1950)

67. Leon (1994)

68. Annie Hall (1977)

69. Great Escape, The (1963)

70. Clockwork Orange, A (1971)

71. Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)

72. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

73. Sixth Sense, The (1999)

74. Jaws (1975)

75. Amadeus (1984)

76. On the Waterfront (1954)

77. Ran (1985)

78. Braveheart (1995)

79. High Noon (1952)

80. Fargo (1996)

81. Blade Runner (1982)

82. Apartment, The (1960)

83. Aliens (1986)

84. Toy Story 2 (1999)

85. Strangers on a Train (1951)

86. Modern Times (1936)

87. Shining, The (1980)

88. Donnie Darko (2001)

89. Duck Soup (1933)

90. Princess Bride, The (1987)

91. Lola rennt (Run Lola, Run) (1998)

92. City Lights (1931)

93. General, The (1927)

94. Metropolis (1927)

95. Searchers, The (1956)

96. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

97. Notorious (1946)

98. Manhattan (1979)

99. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

100. Graduate, The (1967)

I’ve picked this up from both and , which is appropriate because they both fall very much into the category of people I hardly know at all: I added because I had quoted one of her reviews, and because she sent me a note about Ray Bradbury’s stories set in Ireland.

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. Some of you I hardly know at all. Perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you read my blog and I thank you.

Tell me something you think I don’t already know. I’m curious.

Three things about me:

When doing my M Phil I discovered Eleanor of Aquitaine’s long-forgotten exact date of birth from a medieval horoscope. (As I type, the clock has just ticked into what would have been her 880th birthday, December 14.)

I played the clarinet in the school band, and percussion in the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra and occasionally at Cambridge. My children have chewed the ends off my timpani sticks now, though I don’t mind as it’s almost fifteen years since I last used them.

Going back to the cource of the meme, I never used to like spinach but learnt to tolerate it combined with cheese. However when I lived in Bosnia several of the local restaurants did a deliciously garlicky spinach arrangement called a “dalmatinska garnitura” and it completely changed my view.

3) Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

I had a slow start this morning, thanks to the Brussels branch of the Liberal Democrats’ Christmas party last night, and aided the waking process by finishing off Bujold’s latest. This is her third fantasy, stepping away from the superb Vorkosigan space operas, a sequel to The Curse of Chalion. Richly drawn world where theology is an applied science, gripping plot, heartily recommended.

I just got a Christmas card from the Adult Education Centre at University College Dublin, sent to my work address. Very nice of them, but I don’t think I’ve ever had dealings with any of the ten staff let alone the Centre itself. Quite mysterious…

Well, B woke us up at 4.30 last night. Not a particularly unusual event, we expect it to happen several times a month, and usually it's containable. However U had a stomach upset as well, and alternated between gurgling with typical eleven-month-old delight at the state of the world and puking onto our bed. So I have been fit for nothing all day. The senior political adviser to one of the more progressive Balkan prime ministers is coming here to meet me in an hour and a half; I hope I make sense to him; whether or not I do, I'm going home and to bed as soon as he leaves our office.

We finally published the Georgia report a few minutes ago. One of the last minutes hiccups was how to spell the first name of Saakashvili, the leader of the revolution. I managed to transliterate his name to სააკაშვილი, did a Google and found that his first name appears to be მიხეილ – the fourth letter is definitely an e, and the third almost always transliterated kh, so Mikheil.

And then someone pointed out that he had a piece in yesterday’s Financial Times that spells his name Mikheil; and since he speaks fluent English he presumably knows which version is right, so I hardly needed to bother…

8) Ersatz Nation by Tim Kenyon. Another one of the ones sent me for review by Infinity Plus but I think I need to rant here about it before writing something more sober. The main character’s lover gets kidnapped by the villains at some point we don’t hear about and gets rescued at the end. The other main character is estranged from his wife at the start of the book and inexplicably reconciles with her half way through. The setting of the parallel world is completely unbelievable; we never find out enough about the motivation and means of the villainous computer in charge (itself taken straight from The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés I.10, I.12, I.43, III.59 and IV.51). I’m simply stunned that a quick Google turned up only one review that is as negative as mine is going to be and several glowingly positive ones.

Back in April I received the following amusing message from a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from one of the small Unionist parties:

I NOTE THAT YOUR COMMENTS RE ASSEMBLY ELECTION IN [constituency] STATE THAT THE [party deleted] SEAT WILL FALL FOR SURE. I PRESUME YOU ARE REFERRING TO ME. THIS IS PROBABLY THE ONE ELECTION WHICH NO ONE CAN PREDICT. I HEARD AND READ THE SAME SILLY PREDICTIONS IN 1998 WHEN I STOOD ON POLICIES THAT THE ELECTORATE CLEARLY IDENTIFIED WITH.THESE POLICIES I WOULD SUGGEST ARE VIEWED EVEN MORE FAVOURABLY TODAY AMONG THE UNIONIST ELECTORATE. SOMETHING THAT U DONT APPEAR TO EVEN CONSIDER IN YOUR SHALLOW ANALYSIS. I HAVE NEVER SAID HOW I WILL DO IN ANY ELECTIONS AND I WILL NOT START NOW . I WILL LEAVE THAT TO THE SO CALLED EXPERTS, SAD ANORAKS AND KNOW ALLS. I NOTE THAT U ONLY DESCRIBE DAVID FORD OF THE ALLIANCE PARTY AS VULNERABLE.IF YOU HAVE GAGED THE POLITICAL MOOD AMONG THE ELECTORATE AT ALL YOU WOULD HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THE ALLIANCE PARTY MAY SUFFER CONSIDERABLY . I NOTE THAT U SAY THE ALLIANCE PARTY WILL WIN A SEAT IN SOUTH BELFAST .ON WHAT LOGIC DO U BASE THIS ? I SUGGEST U BE FAIR IN YOUR ANALYSIS AND DONT BASE YOUR PREDICTIONS ON SENTIMENT. I WOULDNT GIVE UP YOUR DAYTIME JOB JUST YET FOR A JOB AS GYPSY ROSY LEE’S REPLACEMENT ON BLACKPOOL PIER. LETS HAVE SOME BALANCE AND LESS BIAS.. YOURS SINCERELY [name deleted].

To which I sent this reply:

Dear [name deleted],

PS: I advise you not to send emails exclusively in capital letters – it looks as if you are SHOUTING. But perhaps it was intentional on your part.

It breaks my heart to have to reveal that he got a mere 2% of the votes in last week’s election, and was eliminated on the fourth count. Unfortunately he lost his seat to the DUP rather than someone better!

It’s been a heck of a week. apart from the dismal result of the Croatian elections and the revolution in Georgia, the peace process in Moldova went into meltdown on Tuesday (completely unreported in the Western media as far as I could tell) so work has been pretty hectic – I took my eye off the ball for a number of routine but necessary admin things which I will now have to catch up with.

And of course the elections back home as well interfered with my sleep all week as I prepped my website for the vote on Wednesday and the count on Thursday and Friday. And Friday afternoon at work was a complete dead loss as I desperately waited for news of my former party colleagues, who all seemed to be struggling to get in – and astonishingly all six were elected, by the skin of their teeth in one or two cases.

This probably all means something but I need to go and reacquaint my family with my existence, and then catch up on sleep.

We took F and U to the Toy Museum in Mechelen today (Bridget is in the respite place) but it was a bit of a washout; all the nicest toys frustratingly behind glass and inaccessible. Frankly F got more fun out of MacDonalds on the way there… U was asleep and anyway it would be a bit lost on her.

Georgia: Good. Croatia: Bad. Northern Ireland: wait and see.

7) The Separation by Christopher Priest – excellent stuff, dopplegangers, altered timelines and the second world war, as if Philip K Dick had been English and sober.

Website – 120 predictions of the election results now – whew!

So I went into work yesterday, hoping to clear the paper on Georgia that has been hanging around for too long off my desk.

I expected that the opposition would fail; the paper was written mostly before the 2 November elections, updated later, and took the line that we had to start planning now for Shevardnadze to leave office in 2005, at the planned end of his presidential term.

By lunchtime I was practically finished. I’d been talking to our man on the ground in Tbilisi off and on all morning (having been there myself for a couple of days in July), and reckoned that if the new session of parliament was successfully opened then it was all over for the revolution. Once I heard that Shevardnadze had started speaking I began to clear up my things.

And then Andrew, our media officer, who was also at work and was tuned to CNN, yelled down the hall for me not to leave. As the whole world now knows, the president got only a few sentences into his speech before the opposition broke into the chamber and he had to be rushed away by his bodyguards. Even more significantly (though less reported on the news) the opposition has apparently also got control of the Chancellery, ie the President’s office. I think this makes their takeover irreversible (though I’ve been wrong about Georgia before).

So looks like that’s it for Shevardnadze. He was far from the most oppressive of post-Soviet rulers, with little ideological difference between him and his opponents – the fact that Georgia has a pretty free media was obvious from the way yesterday’s events were covered by well-position local journalists who will have (hopefully) made a fortune as their live feeds were bought by the world’s TV. But he ran a hopelessly corrupt system and appeared incapable of reform of any kind. The new government will face contested legitimacy of their own rule, contested sovereignty over parts of their own country and a desperate population hungry for food and jobs.

Georgian joke (as told by me to Ken MacLeod):

What did we use for lighting before we had candles?

Electricity.

If you go to http://www.thisdayinmusic.com you can find out what was at number one in the charts in both Britain and the US the day you were born.

In my case it’s “Somethin’ Stupid” for both sides of the Atlantic, sung by Frank and Nancy Sinatra.

They also suggest (for those born too early) that you can go for your 18th birthday to find out your “life’s theme song”.

In my case that’s “One More Night” by Phil Collins (US) and “We Are The World” by USA for Africa (UK).

Actually I’d rather have either of those than “Somethin’ Stupid” as my theme song…

According to http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp:

I was born on a Wednesday
under the astrological sign Taurus.
My Life path number is 8.

The Julian calendar date of my birth is 2439606.5.
The golden number for 1967 is 11.
The epact number for 1967 is 19.
The year 1967 was not a leap year.

As of 11/20/2003 11:39:52 AM CST
I am 36 years old.
I am 439 months old.
I am 1,908 weeks old.
I am 13,357 days old.
I am 320,579 hours old.
I am 19,234,779 minutes old.
I am 1,154,086,792 seconds old.

There are 158 days till my next birthday
and 35 days till Christmas!

The moon’s phase on the day I was
born was waning gibbous.

…must start planning a party for when I am 20,000,000 minutes old…

First real kiss: Deirdre who grabbed me at a school disco. Nothing came of it; she was going out with someone else at the time.

First job: Got a pittance on a Northamptonshire archaeology site in autumn 1985 during my year off.

First screen name: nhw14 I think. Certainly nhw** where the number was in the low teens. Back in the old days of Cambridge University's Phoenix.

First self-purchased album: Alan Parsons Project, The Turn of a Friendly Card. No idea where it is now.

First funeral: My paternal grandmother's when I was twelve.

First pets: Never had any of my own as a child, though there were rabbits and cats in the family by my late teens and we briefly had a kitten last year until it ran away.

First piercing: None.

First true love: Sue, who lasted for five years (1983-88). She's married to one of my best friends from college now.

First big trip: The first real adventure was hitching from Cologne to Stuttgart in the summer of 1985. Linked up with a Thai student who spoke no German (though claimed to be fluent in four Asian languages). Took us ten hours.

Last big car ride: driving to Ireland and back last summer.

Last kiss: This morning.

Last good cry: I shed a tear or two when Zoran Djindjic was shot in March. Before that, when U was born in December.

Last movie seen: Terminator 3, while flying back from Washington last month.

Last beverage drank: Large glass of cold water.

Last food consumed: Tuna and mayo sandwich for lunch.

Last phone call: Ekrem, a Kosovo journalist, looking for a quote (I gave him a slightly different one from what he was expecting).

Last TV show watched: University Challenge on Monday night.

Last shoes worn: My new brown work shoes.

Last CD played: The Dire Straits album I have in the car.

Last item bought: probably the grovery shopping on Saturday.

Last soda drank: Ice tea with my sandwich.

Last ice cream eaten: Over lunch on Thursday last week.

Last shirt worn: Blue.

Received an email just now:

Dear Nicholas

With best regards, etc etc

Well, that gives me an incentive to get up early in time for the meeting. I guess they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for semi-presentable people to sit at the top table. Just hope he speaks English…

5) Why is Sex Fun? by Jared Diamond – still no really satisfying answer to the question of why men don’t lactate, except that we don’t.

A few years back I was at a talk by Misha Glenny, who is best known for his writings about the Balkans. He waxed lyrical about his childhood discovery of the Balkans through Tintin’s adventures in Syldavia, particularly in King Ottakar’s Sceptre first published in 1939. But then he finished with a riff about how the Cold War would have treated Syldavia; probably it ended up as effectively a US protectorate, with history of suspicion of the Communist neighbours in Borduria and mutual ill-treatment of each other’s respective minorities.

As I came back from Vienna yesterday I passed by the huge model Tintin rocket in the airport (which is itself something of an icon of Belgian culture) and it occurred to me that of course Syldavia had a space programme, as told in Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon from 1953 and 1954. I was thinking to myself, wouldn’t it be interesting to set a short story of someone investigating, perhaps even trying to revive the Syldavian space programme from half a century ago?

This was on my mind as I drove across Brussels today for a lunch, and to my surprise I found that I ended up sitting opposite the very same Misha Glenny. He was delighted with the concept, and more or less gave me his blessing for it. Now I just have to find some time to write it up… but it’s a good excuse to go out and stock up on Tintin (as if having a literate four-year-old weren’t excuse enough).

3) City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer – excellent, though I now realise I have only the short version. City narratives are always great (China Miéville being the most recent specialist; I finished reading this book in Vienna, home of The Drawing of the Dark and The Third Man) but VanderMeer plays all kinds of fascinating mind games with the reader here – the fact that Ambergris boasts a bookshop called Borges is clue enough.

4) Floater by Lucius Shepard – sent to me for review by Infinity PLus, so can’t say too much here; Shepard’s typical lush sexy tropical prose, though this time set in contemporary New York.

Well, managed to find the new printing of Christopher Priest’s The Separation in the American bookshop, so not a complete waste of time…

Actually that’s a bit unfair. I’d given up on this conference last night, but this morning’s session on the EU was very good. I asked in German wheher the panellists agreed with me that English was becoming the dominant language in EU foreign policy, and if so how important it was. One of them told me over lunch a hair-raising story from Bosnia where lives had been endangered because the helicopter pilots didn’t speak English.

And a jolly pleasant dinner last night with three Macedonians. Good stuff.

I resolved a week ago that as a Celtic New Year resolution I would record at least the names of the books I read as I finish them, along with maybe a thought or two about them.

I was working so hard on both work stuff and the elections site all last week that it was Saturday night/Sunday morning before I finished reading anything. So for the record, the two books I did read are:

1) Neil Gaiman, American Gods – rereading for the third time, to review it for my other website
2) Neil Gaiman, Sandman IV: Season of Mists – am working through these one by one, and fascinated by the way he has managed to meld the plotlines together. Am off to Vienna later today and hope to pick up Vol V in the (excellent) American bookshop while there.

And a whole box of books from Infinity Plus just came through the door while I was typing this. Excellent.

After months of work in what I laughingly call my spare time, the great elections website update is complete, and more than a dozen people have already tried predicting the election results.

It’s really just a sad little hobby but just now it feels like a public service!