So, the good news is that the Belgian numbers are pretty stable, with today showing hospitalisations, ICU cases and reported infections down since yesterday, and infections also down from last week. Of course, kids have gone back to school in the last few days, which will cause an uptick; but it feels like it’s all under control.
The Brussels rentrée is under way, with the Liberals hosting a reception a week ago at the Grand Central – you can see me talking to a Bulgarian MEP at a couple of points in this video.
And there’s another reception this evening, hosted by POLITICO; setting this entry to post just before I arrive at it.
Also very glad to say that last weekend our village held its annual zomerfeest, cancelled last year, but arranged at short notice last week. All the traditional elements were there, the nature walk on Saturday:
And on Sunday there was an exhibition of local artists, including in the church:
While in the beer garden behind the parochial hall, a trio sang Yves Montand’s La Bicyclette and other chansons:
Quand on partait de bon matin Quand on partait sur les chemins À bicyclette
Nous étions quelques bons copains Y avait Fernand, y avait Firmin Y avait Francis et Sébastien Et puis Paulette
On était tous amoureux d’elle On se sentait pousser des ailes À bicyclette
Sur les petits chemins de terre On a souvent vécu l’enfer Pour ne pas mettre pied à terre Devant Paulette
Faut dire qu’elle y mettait du cœur C’était la fille du facteur À bicyclette
Et depuis qu’elle avait huit ans Elle avait fait en le suivant Tous les chemins environnants À bicyclette
Quand on approchait la rivière On déposait dans les fougères Nos bicyclettes
Puis on se roulait dans les champs Faisant naître un bouquet changeant De sauterelles, de papillons Et de rainettes
Quand le soleil à l’horizon Profilait sur tous les buissons Nos silhouettes
On revenait fourbus, contents Le cœur un peu vague pourtant De n’être pas seul un instant Avec Paulette
Prendre furtivement sa main Oublier un peu les copains La bicyclette
On se disait c’est pour demain J’oserai, j’oserai demain Quand on ira sur les chemins À bicyclette
If you leave early in the morning If you go on these roads By bicycle
We were a bunch of good friends There were Fernand and Firmin There were Francis and Sébastian And then there was Paulette
We were all in love with her We were all growing wings On our bicycle
On these small dirt roads We often went through hell To not make our feet touch the ground In front of Paulette
One has to say that she really put her heart into it She was the daughter of the postman On a bicycle
And ever since she turned eight She followed him around On all the ways in the neighbourhood By bicycle
When we came close to the river We threw into the bracken Our bikes
Then we rolled around in the fields Making a changing bouquet come to life Of grasshoppers, butterflies and Tree frogs
When the sun at the horizon Began to cast our shadows Over the shrubs
We returned exhausted and content Yet the heart a bit vague Because I never had a moment all alone With Paulette
To take her hand all furtively To forget a few of the friends The bicycle
I told myself I’d leave that for tomorrow I will dare to, I will dare to tomorrow When we will be on the roads By bicycle
We’re not back to normal yet, but the trajectory is clear, and the weekend celebrations of the turn of the seasons in our village helped to reinforce that feeling.
Wed, 10:45: Hollywood struggles with accents in Branagh’s Belfast https://t.co/b7Hzc0cIih Though I have no problem with adding subtitles – better to be sure you are being understood.
Set in mid-19th century Ireland, an English nurse is sent to investigate the mystery of a child who apparently survives without food, in the immediate aftermath of the Famine. It's pretty obvious to the attentive reader what is really going on from an early stage, but it's a well-told story and the ending was unexpected. (However, I really doubt that a 19th-century Englishwoman would be unaware of the Biblical story of manna!) You can get it here.
Mon, 12:56: RT @Bencjacobs: At almost 58, Andrew Jackson was the oldest member of the Senate in 1825. Today, that would make him younger than over 70 c…
Mon, 16:05: Nadia Whittome MP on trauma and recovery: ‘Some said I couldn’t have PTSD because I haven’t been in a war’ https://t.co/UMbpOYGIww A fascinating profile. Someone to watch.
Mon, 18:25: RT @tconnellyRTE: So, back from the summer break and lots of churn about the NI Protocol already, esp today’s FT story by @pmdfoster https:…
A knocking from inside the bell in the hall suddenly interrupted their work. The monks looked at each other: was it a monster? They began chanting “The King’s Sutra”, accompanied by the mysterious banging. Eventually some among them pulled the bell aside and together lifted the censer. To their horror, out rolled a ball of flesh. The monks jumped back in fright. The ball then slowly uncurled and stood up; it was Ryder Han. He was unaware of how the fight had ended, but immediately spotted that Scorched Wood was at eternal rest and his martial family gravely injured. Taking up his Golden Dragon whip he marched towards where Qiu Chuji was lying and raised it above the Taoist’s head.
“Third Brother, no!” Gilden Quan cried.
“Why not?”
“You mustn’t,” was all his brother could manage through the pulsing pain in his stomach.
Back at Eastercon, I attended a panel on Chinese sf and fantasy, and this was one of several books strongly recommended. The author is described by Wikipedia as Hong Kong's greatest writer, and also one of the key renewers of the subgenre of wuxia, heroic martial arts fantasy set in what we would call the Middle Ages. A Hero Born is the first of four volumes comprising the translation of Jin Yong's most famous book, The Legend of the Condor Heroes, originally published in 1957.
It is a lot of fun. intersecting plot lines include children with a hidden heritage growing up, the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan (a group of virtuous martial artists each with his or her own skill) and Genghis Khan. Unlike a lot of Chinese literature that I have previously tried, I never got lost with the characters or the geography. I don't think I will persevere with the series, but this was a great start. You can get it here.
One always has to wonder what the linkage is between literature and politics here. Deng Xiaoping was a big fan, and the author (real name Louis Cha Leung-yung) was the first non-Communist who he met in Hong Kong. I think that the core message of the desirability of a united China dealing collectively with external and internal threats is pretty clear, but it's not shoved down your throat. (And most countries would want the same for themselves.)
This was my top unread book by a non-white writer. Next on that list is Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, eds. Zelda Knight & Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald.
Sun, 12:56: RT @daraghcarville: @EddieRobson Hey Eddie, have you ever seen this? Hartnell in colour, from the 1964 Radio Times Xmas issue. Spotted toda…
Sun, 14:48: RT @EmmeTillcenter: Today, we found out that the Emmett Till historical marker in front of Bryant’s Grocery in Money, MS, is missing. It ap…
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.
At work, it was a bit quieter after the excitement of my November trip. I went to Geneva with intern MG for two days. Very sadly, a Serbian friend took his own life in dramatic circumstances. In the outside world, Patrick Moore died.
At home, after a failed effort in November, I managed to get a good picture of all three kids at the Paterskerk in Tienen for our Christmas letter:
Anne’s brother R and his wife V came for New Year, and we had oysters:
Also the glorious Belgian state issued us with a tandem bike for little U, which was tried out by everyone:
~7,200 pages (2012 total 77,800) 1/17 (2012 total 65/259) by women (Yoshinaga) 1/17 (2012 total 12/259) by PoC (also Yoshinaga)
Tes best of these were the completion of my two big reading projects for 2012 – War and Peace, at a chapter a day, and The Bible. But I liked most of the books I read that month; I’m going to single out John Major’s history of music hall, and the companion to Doctor Who comics, as especially noteworthy. I did not expecially enjoy the Who novel Colony of Lies, or Rankin’s Bleeding Hearts, both from authors whose other work I have enjoyed.
I failed to do a 2012 books roundup at the time, so this is a reconstruction.
Total books: 259 – ninth highest of the 17 years I have been keeping track, so firmly in the middle. Total page count: ~77,800 – seventh highest of the last 17 years, so a bit above average.
Diversity: 65 (25%) by women – higher than any previous year, lower than any subsequent year, augmented by 10 Agatha Christie novels. 12 (5%) by PoC – more than any year before 2009, less than any year since 2015.
Most books by a single author: 2012: Jonathan Gash (11), Ursula Vernon (6), Ian Rankin (5), Alison Plowden and Justin Richards (4 each); though the Ursula Vernon and Alison Plowden books could be considered as component parts of a single work in each case.
Doctor Who fiction
Novels, collections of shorter fiction, etc excluding comics
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
18
32
32
51
39
43
59
72
75
80
71
71
179
27
28
5
1
7%
14%
12%
21%
18%
15%
20%
30%
29%
27%
26%
21%
48%
11%
14%
3%
1%
All Who books including comics and non-fiction
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
25
43
42
55
42
54
68
81
76
87
78
81
180
49
32
5
1
9%
18%
16%
23%
20%
19%
23%
34%
29%
29%
28%
23%
49%
21%
15%
3%
1%
Third highest tally and pecentage ever.
Top Doctor Who book of the year: Shada, the long awaited novelisation by Gareth Roberts from Douglas Adams’ script. Shame that Roberts turned out to be a bigot. (Review; get it here.)
The one you haven’t heard of: The above-mentioned Comic Strip Companion, by Paul Scoones (review
; get it here)
The one to avoid: Torchwood: Into the Silence, by Sarah Pinborough; disposable autistic character (review; get it here
Non-Whovian sff
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
114
77
108
68
80
130
124
65
62
78
73
78
54
75
68
79
76
43%
33%
41%
29%
38%
45%
43%
27%
24%
26%
26%
23%
15%
32%
33%
55%
51%
Second lowest tally and third lowest percentage ever.
Top SF book of the year: Among Others, by Jo Walton – like most of the Hugo and Nebula voters, I found that the author had somehow got inside my head and shared my memories. (Review</a>; get it here.)
Honourable mentions: Assassin’s Apprentice, by Robin Hobb (review; get it here The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers (review; get it here)
The one to avoid: Dagger Magic, by Katherine Kurtz (review; get it here)
Non-fiction
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
50
49
50
57
37
47
48
46
53
69
66
94
70
78
70
42
42
19%
21%
19%
24%
17%
16%
16%
19%
20%
23%
24%
27%
19%
33%
34%
29%
28%
Eighth highest tally of 17 years, firmly in the middle; tenth highest percentage, also fairly average.
Top non-fiction book of the year: The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, by Edmund de Waal – brilliant story of heirlooms, Proust, the Holocaust and Japan. (Review</a>; get it here.)
Honourable mentions to:
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself, by Harriet Ann Jacobs (review; get it here)
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCulloch (review; get it here)
The one you haven’t heard of:
Pawns of peace: evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, 1997-2009, from NORAD, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (review; get it here for free)
The one to avoid:
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, by Emile Durkheim (review; get it here)
Non-sfnal fiction
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
40
45
36
26
28
42
41
44
48
48
50
59
24
33
35
9
19
15%
19%
14%
11%
13%
14%
14%
19%
19%
16%
18%
17%
6%
14%
17%
6%
13%
Third highest tally and joint highest percentage ever.
Top non-genre fiction of the year: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë – I came to it late, but much my favourite Brontë novel – seems somehow a bit more in balance than her sisters’ books. (Review; get it here.)
Honourable mentions: The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James (review; get it here) Goodnight Mister Tom, by Michelle Magorian (review; get it here)
The one you haven’t heard of:
Lust, Caution: And Other Stories, by Eileen Chang (review; get it here)
The one to avoid: The Vatican Rip, by Jonathan Gash (review; get it here)
Comics
2020/
2019/
2018/
2017/
2016/
2015/
2014/
2013/
2012/
2011/
2010/
2009/
2008/
2007/
2006/
2005/
2004/
45
31
28
29
27
18
19
30
21
27
18
28
6
20
6
8
8
17%
13%
11%
12%
13%
6%
7%
13%
8%
9%
6%
8%
2%
8%
3%
6%
5%
Eigtht highest tally and eighth highest percentage, firmly in the middle.
Top comic of the year: Digger, by Ursula Vernon, a deserving winner of the Hugo. (Review</a>; get it here.)
Honourable mention: The Unwritten Vol 3: Dead Man’s Knock, by Mike Carey (review</a>; get it here)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë: Helen is an early feminist heroine, rushing into what rapidly turns out to be an unsuitable marriage and then making the tough choices facing any woman attempting to navigate their own course in a small-minded, small-town society. It’s interesting that New England is her preferred haven of liberty. I was captivated by it.
Sat, 12:56: RT @NewYorker: The Texas abortion law is not only a radical departure from convention, it’s a repudiation of due process. A more judicious…
Sat, 14:48: Why Texas Republicans’ Abortion Ban Could Backfire – The Atlantic https://t.co/RizMVOE9kS Most American voters have quietly understood for a long time that most politicians who claim to be “pro-life” are hypocrites. These politicians do not really mean what they say, or anyway,…
Sat, 18:26: RT @BenRosher: This is the key paragraph in the speech – that it is the fact of the protocol as agreed, rather than its implementation, tha…
Sat, 20:21: RT @DavidHenigUK: Purely hypothetically shall we imagine the speech a UK minister wanting in good faith to renegotiate the Northern Ireland…
Sun, 10:45: RT @FutureDocs: This is pretty big news and they deserve our full support on this: Texas Medical Association has publicly come out against…
Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1998, and six others – Best Actress (Gwyneth Paltrow), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench, who is only on screen for 8 minutes), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. The Hugo that year went to The Truman Show.
I have not seen any of the other four Oscar nominees, which were Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. That was the year I lived in Bosnia and then Croatia, so I have seen very few films from 1998; apart from the Oscar and Hugo winners, I have watched There’s Something About Mary, Sliding Doors, Primary Colors, Bulworth, Playing by Heart and that’s it. I like all of these, Bulworth least and, I’ll be honest, Shakespeare in Love most.
IMDB users, as so often, take a different view, ranking it only 15th on one ranking and an incredibly low 44th on the other, which is a worse aggregate ranking than any Oscar winner since Cavalcade (slightly worse than Tom Jones). The Big Lebowski and Saving Private Ryan top the two counts. Among the allegations about Harvey Weinstein is the story that he lobbied mercilessly to get Shakespeare in Love its nomination and win ahead of Saving Private Ryan, but to be honest it’s entirely in character for Oscar voters to go for the big warm-hearted romantic tale ahead of a gritty reality-based war film. (I admit that they have sometimes made the other choice.)
Here’s a trailer.
Because this is a film made with mainly British actors in 1999, loads and loads of the cast have also been in Doctor Who, one of whom was also in an Oscar-winning film. That one is Simon Callow, here the randy Master of the Revels, previously impresario Emanuel Schikaneder in Amadeus, and also of course Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead, the third episode of New Who.
The only representative of Old Who is Martin Clunes, here Richard Burbage, previously the spoiled aristocratic Lon in an early appearance in the Fifth Doctor story Snakedance.
Mark Williams, the stuttering tailor Wabash here, went on to be Rory Williams’ father in several Eleventh Doctor stories.
Barnaby Kay is Nol here and went on to be the Viking Heidi in The Girl Who Died:
And Nicholas Boulton is the actor Condell here and the Businessman in the Tenth Doctor story Gridlock.
I love Imelda Staunton, the nurse here and the invisible voice of the computer in The Girl Who Waited.
As noted above, this film is far from most people’s top ten films of 1999, and you may not have seen it. It’s a romantic comedy – the first comedy to win Best Picture since Annie Hall, more than twenty years before – set in Merrie England, which was the setting of a spate of Oscar-winners in the 1960s but has since been visited only for parts of Chariots of Fire (which is perhaps too late to be Merrie). The plot is that beautiful (and completely fictional) Viola de Lesseps is in love with young playwright William Shakespeare, disguises herself as a man in order to join his theatre company, and the two of them end up playing the lead roles in the first ever performance of Romeo and Juliet. This is surely the first Oscar-winning film about the writer of a previous Oscar-winning film. The two leads, played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes, are tremendously watchable, and I think there’s more sex in this film than in all the previous 70 Oscar-winning films combined.
(I’m going to pause to recommend the Arkangel audio of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo is Joseph Fiennes (who plays Shakespeare himself in Shakespeare in Love) and Juliet is Maria Miles (Elfine in Cold Comfort Farm). But both are somewhat overshadowed by three excellent supporting performances: Clive Swift (who has been in Doctor Who three times over the years) doubling up as both Friar Laurence and the Chorus; Elizabeth Spriggs (who was, among other things, one of the cannibalistic old ladies in Paradise Towers) as Juliet’s Nurse, and best of all, Mercutio is played, in his native Scottish accent, by David Tennant. You can get it here.)
I guess I should try and do my usual thing of going from the bits I didn’t like to the bits I did, but really, there’s very little to dislike here. Historical purists will complain that it’s hugely inaccurate in terms of what people wore, said and did in England in the 1590s, and I would add (as I must) that there actually were non-white people in London then and had been for centuries. Fine. It’s entertainment, not education. It’s very funny and the music is great.
As mentioned, Judi Dench is only in it for 8 minutes, but my god does she dominate those 8 minutes.
I think one has to admit that Paltrow and Dench somewhat overshadow Fiennes and the other male actors, good as they are. Again, fine. Too many romances portray the woman as lacking agency; Viola here challenges convention and while she is not ultimately completely successful, the point has been made.
I’m surprised by how far up my ranking I’m putting this – just outside the top ten, below Rain Man but above Terms of Endearment.
Next up is American Beauty, which I actually saw in the cinema when it came out.
Fri, 17:11: Remainers lost the argument on free movement – and the UK is paying the price https://t.co/tiMYgmVUlO Brexit does not need to be as damaging as it is proving to be but the current labour shortages highlight that even a more pragmatic approach would come at a cost.
Fri, 19:34: Two years of online polling about the best Doctor Who story, and it’s the same answer as last time! Seriously, though, thanks for all of this hard work. Tremendous stuff and I disagree with less of it than I expected. https://t.co/hhu0rdzgpk
Surfacing after the usual intense week at work to catch up on news from outside my professional area of concern. And good heavens, the new Texas law on abortion, which the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to annul, is a truly horrible development.
My own position on the overall issue is that pregnant people should be trusted to make their own healthcare decisions, and the legitimate role of the state in intervening is very little indeed. I set out my thoughts in some detail before the Irish referendum in 2017:
However, even if you describe yourself as pro-life, surely you cannot support the Texas law that criminalises victims of rape and incest, and people whose medical situation requires that the pregnancy cannot go to full term. Rachel Cunliffe writes about the biology of this in the New Statesman.
And in particular, surely you cannot support the vigilantism of the Texas law, where anyone is entitled to sue anyone else who they suspect of being involved with an abortion. As Sue Halpin points out in the New Yorker, it will (as usual) be non-white people who bear the brunt of it, just as they are penalised by the new voting laws in Texas.
David Frum in the Atlantic thinks that Republicans have over-reached, and will pay the price for it, drawing a historical parallel with Prohibition. I do hope so, but I certainly feel for those who will be and are already being directly affected by the new law in Texas, and in the other red states that are rushing to follow where Texas has led.
Not much I can do from here other than write about it, so that’s what I have done.
Second paragraph of third chapter (Sunday 22 April 1945):
Halsbrecherischer Treppenabstieg. Ich blieb einmal mit dem Absatz an einer Stufenkante hängen. Todesschreck, konnte mich eben noch am Geländer fangen. Weiter, mit weichen Knien. Ich suchte und tastete lange und herzklopfend in dem stockfinsteren Gang herum, bis ich die Hebel der Kellertür fand.
A breakneck rush down the stairs. I was scared to death when my heel got caught on the edge of a step. I barely managed to grab hold of the railing in time. My knees went weak, but I went on, heart pounding, slowly groping my way through the pitch-dark passage. Finally I found the lever to the basement door.
A Woman in Berlin is the diary of an anonymous resident of Berlin during and after the final defeat of the Third Reich, from 20 April to 22 June. It's an intense, closely observed account of how an entire society and system of government collapses, and then the first steps to restoring it to a state of order, though under foreign occupation and with a new ideology being imposed on the disempowered inhabitants.
If that were all, it would still be a really valuable account of catastrophic endings and stumbling beginnings at a truly historical moment for Europe. But that is not all. From 27 April to 7 May, the writer, and pretty much every woman in Berlin who did not manage to hide, was raped repeatedly by Russian soldiers (strictly, Soviet soldiers; she mentions some from other parts of the USSR). I guess I've always known that this was an integral part of the collapse of the Eastern Front, but it's quite another matter to read a first person account. The details are calmly recounted, as the Russians arrive and take what they want, using German homes and bodies with no need for restraint and encountering little resistance (but no consent). It's a collective experience for the women of Berlin, and to an extent their few remaining men who are unable to intervene; but also an intensely personal and individual one for every woman affected. This grim situation is not unique to Germany in 1945, but it can rarely have been better described.
And yet those 11 days of constant rape are less than a fifth of the time period covered by the diary. On 8 May, VE Day, Berliners, women and men, wake up to the abrupt disappearance of the Russians and then the gradual restoration of civil authority after total catastrophe. The writer, aged 34 in 1945, later moved to Switzerland, and after the brutal reception of her diary when published in Germany in 1959, decided that it would not see light again in her lifetime. She died in 2001, and her identity is now pretty well established
Current Blood of Atlantis, by Simon Forward Hurricane Fever, by Tobias S. Buckell The Return of the Discontinued Man, by Mark Hodder
Last books finished The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley Angel of Mercy, by Julianne Todd, Claire Bartlett and Iain McLaughlin Zodiac Station, by Tom Harper Jack, by Marilynne Robinson
Next books Felaheen, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood The Bloodline Feud, by Charles Stross
Thu, 12:56: Labour’s lost future: the inside story of a 20-year collapse https://t.co/RUrR5pOeey Fascinating long read on how the UK Labour Party got to where it is.
Thu, 20:48: Exploring the future beyond cyberpunk’s Neon and Noir https://t.co/IrtlKWT9HU Nine types of contemporary SF. (Article from 2018, but still valid.)
Fri, 07:18: RT @DTzantchev: Leaving Brussels after proudly serving for 9,5 years as Bulgaria’s EU PermRep: 58 #EUCO, BG EU Presidency 2018, two MFF neg…
I have been thoroughly enjoying the Thirteenth Doctor comics, perhaps even a little more than the TV show. Here Jody Houser brings the four-strong TARDIS crew to play a Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern type role in the background of Blink, which remains for me the single best episode of New Who. The Thirteenth Doctor bonds with Martha Jones, and sheepishly realises the Tenth Doctor's emotional cluelessness; and the Tenth Doctor meanwhile is perturbed by three time-travelling strangers. There are Autons and a Time Agent as well, but who cares? It's immense fun just to see the characters actually doing something together, and wishing it could have been televised like this. (Though there are already rumours that Tennant will return for the 60th anniversary…) You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English. Next on that pile is Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall.
Thu, 10:45: RT @BalkanInsight: The movers and shakers of the video game industry in the Balkans say they are helping to bridge ethnic divides. But what…
“You know,” he said, “if I were a sub-editor on anything but a distinguished literary paper, I should say you were playing with me — playing fast and loose.”
Williams was one of the other Inklings apart from J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and for some reason I decided to start reading him with this work, though it is not his most popular (according to both LibraryThing and Goodreads, that would be Descent into Hell). I confess I did not get much out of it. Platonic archetypes begin to appear disruptively in today's world (England in 1931) and disrupt but also ennoble our hero and heroine. All a bit confusing really. You can get it here. Maybe I'll try Descent into Hell, but maybe not.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2019, and also my top unread sf book. Next on those piles respectively are John Quincy Adams by Fred Kaplan and Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley.
Wed, 10:45: King Arthur’s Stone Is Older Than Stonehenge https://t.co/HLaiVdQ9pu New research suggests Arthur’s Stone in Herefordshire was built around 3700 B.C.E. as part of an intricate ceremonial landscape.
Non-fiction 3 (YTD 27) The Secret of Kit Cavenaugh, by Anne Holland (has fictional elements) A Woman in Berlin Humankind, by Rutger Bregman
Non-genre 2 (YTD 19) Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue
SF 9 (YTD 83) Contact, by Carl Sagan Strange Bedfellows: An Anthology of Political Science Fiction, ed. Hayden Trenholm Two Truths and a Lie, by Sarah Pinsker Fish Tails, by Sheri S. Tepper The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams A Hero Born, by Jin Yong Cryptozoic!, by Brian Aldiss The Primal Urge, by Brian Aldiss The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Doctor Who 3 (YTD 8, 11 inc comics) The Beast of Stalingrad, by Iain McLaughlin The HAVOC Files 2, ed. Shaun Russell Dalek, by Robert Shearman
Comics 10 (YTD 29) In de tuin, by Noëlle Smit Hr. Alting, by Bente Olesen Nyström Trocoscópio, by Bernardo P. Carvalho Meidän piti lähteä, by Sanna Pelliccioni Mijn straat: een wereld van verschil, by Ann De Bode Fridolin Franse frisiert, by Michael Roher Otthon, by Kinga Rofusz La Ciudad, by Roser Capdevila Sortie de nuit, by Laurie Agusti A Tale of Two Time Lords, by Jodie Houser et al
6,300 pages (YTD 46,400)
13/27 (YTD 78/171) by non-male writers (Holland, the woman in Berlin, Donoghue, Pinsker, Tepper, Bradley, Smit, Pelliccioni, De Boda, Rofusz, Capdevilar, Augusti, Houser et al)
1/27 (YTD 31/171) by PoC (Jin Yong)
3/27 rereads (YTD 18/171) – Contact, Two Truths and a Lie, The Primal Urge
Current Zodiac Station, by Tom Harper Jack, by Marilynne Robinson
Coming soon (perhaps) Angel of Mercy, by Julianne Todd, Claire Bartlett and Iain McLaughlin Hurricane Fever, by Tobias S. Buckell The Return of the Discontinued Man, by Mark Hodder Felaheen, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood The Bloodline Feud, by Charles Stross Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall
"The Saturn Game", by Poul Anderson Great Glowing Coils of the Universe, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor Retour sur Aldébaran, tome 2, by Leo Kipps, by H. G. Wells John Quincy Adams: American Visionary, by Fred Kaplan Time Must Have a Stop, by Aldous Huxley Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, eds. Zelda Knight & Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald City of Miracles, by Robert Jackson Bennett Day of the Dead, by Neil Gaiman Paul: A Biography, by Tom Wright The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
Mon, 19:25: RT @setoacnna: Ok, long dull thread on the decision in AEA v EHRC and the legal feminist blog’s piece on it. Find the decision here. https:…
Mon, 19:26: RT @setoacnna: Coda I hadn’t realise that AEA still aren’t admitting they are wrong and they think the problem is the judge just didn’t und…
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.
Just one trip this month, to New York for a work meeting. This was just after Hurricane Sandy, and the last ten rows of my plane were empty apart from me. I've never seen that before or since.
My visit coincided with election day, as it had done in 2008. Queues of people voting, but the outcome was even less in doubt than four years before. I watched the results at the Nielsen Haydens'.
That night it snowed, and Washington Square turned into Narnia.
I also attended Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ, outside Philadelphia, where I first met Colette Fozard, whose birthday is today – Happy Birthday, Colette!!! Here's Gary S. Blog sitting on the Loncon table.
And I tried to take a Christmas picture of the children, but failed.
I read 18 books that month, some of them quite long.
~5,900 pages (YTD 70,600)
4/18 (YTD 64/242) by women (Salter, Stratton-Porter, Magorian, Clough)
1/18 (YTD 11/242) by PoC (Clough)
Three particularly lovely books this month: Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, which you can get here, Michelle Magorian's children's classic Goodnight Mister Tom, which you can get here, and Diarmaid MacCulloch's magisterial History of Christianity, which you can get here. For once, no particular turkeys.
We made it back from Norn Iron OK on Sunday, flying home from Belfast via Amsterdam, which is the cheapest and quickest route these days. A good break.
I diligently went for my return-to-Belgium COVID test on Monday, and was offered three for the (already modest) price of one as they were doing tests for a new procedure. In for a cent, in for a euro, and they gave me €35 of shopping vouchers as a reward (which meant I almost came out ahead on the deal). I was actually a bit worried. I had had a very sore throat and a bit of a cough all weekend in Northern Ireland, and it was so bad on Sunday and Monday nights that I slept very poorly. However the test cleared me within five hours, so it was just a “normal” cold.
Also on Monday, work asked me to go to London again for a meeting on Thursday, so I booked the Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning Eurostars. It turned out that my Monday back-to-Belgium test was also valid for another entry to the UK, so it was even better value than I had realised. I still needed to pay for a Day 2 test in the UK which I was never going to use, as I left my hotel before the post arrived on Friday morning, but the rules only say you have to pay for a test before you arrive in the UK, they don’t say you have to actually take it. Returning to Belgium on Friday, I did not need to test again as I had been out of the country for less than 48 hours, and as we all know the virus waits until the 49th hour to strike, or at least that’s the approach the regulations seem to take.
I commented to a couple of people that actually in the olden days, international travel was much more hassle than it is now, with the need to get travellers’ cheques and printed tickets etc, and also passports even for internal European trips. One of the people I pointed this out to responded that none of those inconveniences required anything to be put up your nose, which I must admit is a fair point.
Checking in for the outward Eurostar on Wednesday, the UK border chap reminded me that I’ll need my passport to travel to the UK after 1 October; my ID card will no longer do. Global Britain, open for business, eh?
I worked from home on Monday, waiting for my test result, and again on Tuesday because I had slept badly and couldn’t face the train. But I went to the office Wednesday morning – still pretty empty – and again on Friday afternoon – even emptier. (And of course worked from the London office in Bloomsbury on Thursday, including the meeting I had come over for and numerous others.) Like most places, I suspect, the rule is that you wear a mask unless sitting at your desk, and that in an open-plan office nobody sits directly opposite anyone else. But restaurants and pubs are open again as usual; I had two fine dinners in London, one in a gentlemen’s club courtesy of a knight of the realm, the other with a cousin at the Elgin gastropub in Maida Vale.
One welcome sign of normality: the Thai food truck which used to appear regularly on Fridays in the Square de Meeûs, around the corner from the office, has returned, so I can feed my Pad Thai addiction.
There has been a bit of a rise in the COVID numbers in Belgium over the last few weeks, though signs are that it is now tailing off. Presumably it will get another boost again when schools restart next week. The number of people in hospital and in intensive care, while higher than in June, is still lower than at any time between then and last October. So basically the modest rise in the number of cases has been only weakly mirrored in terms of impact on the health system; the vaccination campaign has worked.
But I think I will keep up this series of posts for now. It is a good mental discipline, and we are still quite a long way from being back to normal.
“What did you mean to do? Didn’t I hear you refer to my children as fish?” She turned from him, ebony hair swirling, dusty, no-colored traveling robe lashing around slender ankles—ankles, deplorably, that were as dusty as the hair, as the soiled robe. The wearisome roads, wet or dry, were dirty. Even her hands and face were covered with a gray film. She looked at her wrists in fury. She could plant grass in the creases of her skin. A little sweat and they’d grow! Or tears! Tears would do it. She turned her face away. The rain of tears was imminent.
Very very long book, following up the story from The Waters Rising (and also tying in with characters from a lot of her earlier works), a future humanity doomed to imminent environmental disaster and blighted by societal collapse, which gives her an opportunity to make many of her favourite points about how things are and how they should be. Enjoyable enough, but good god, over 700 pages! You can get it here.
This was the most popular book that I had acquired in 2014 but not yet read. Next in that rapidly dwindling pile is The Return of the Discontinued Man, by Mark Hodder.
Sat, 10:45: RT @davidallengreen: Why the Michigan election law judgment is a Judgment for the Ages Today’s post on a remarkable US federal judgment: h…
It might be thought that they had been paired deliberately as comic contrast. But they hadn’t. Van Statten didn’t have that sort of sense of humour. And now as he swept into the Cage operations room, they both snapped to attention and saluted. They knew that their boss wouldn’t acknowledge them, that he probably wouldn’t even notice they were there – but it was the correct form of the thing. If they were surprised that he’d brought the intruder with them they didn’t show it. They were paid not to be surprised.
Great novelisation of one of the great New Who episodes. You have seen the show, here's the writer's cut, as it were, giving new background to a number of the characters, smoothing out a couple of plot kinks, with combination of tight-third for Rose interspersed with notes from the omniscient narrator explaining what was happening. We lose a couple of the good lines ("He's a bit pretty" / "I hadn't noticed") but we get a lot more in other areas. Well worth adding to the collection. You can get it here.
Thu, 18:33: What are the farthest points on the compass you have travelled to in 2021? North: Jordanstown West: Dundalk bypass South: Paris East: W�ris https://t.co/39Ji45nMCF
Thu, 20:48: RT @davidallengreen: “Brexit is an unspectacular failure” @rafaelbehr is spot on (as usual) However badly Brexit goes in practice, it is…
The limo driver had parked within ten feet of a hot dog stand that boasted a big picture of my face on an ad board taped on the lower panel of the cart. Like I needed the cosmos to remind me of the difference between me and Rudy. Soon as we got into the limo, Rudy took a call on his cell. The driver took us to a restaurant on Park Avenue South. I couldn't even pronounce the name of it. It looked French. Rudy disconnected his call soon as he left the car and said, "I love this place. Best ramp soup in the city."
Having whined about creative typography in my last review, I'm going to salute the creative presentation of the title here, TH1RT3EN – no doubt about what it means and no violence done to anyone's culture.
This is a thriller set in a New York courtroom, a celebrity murder trial where the real villain is an absurdly intelligent and horrible serial killer whose ability to outwit the forces of law and order is only just outmatched by the grit and determination of the narrator. The gruesomely realistic detail helps to distract from the fundamental improbability of the plot, and it's an entertaining read, if not Great Literature. You can get it here.
This was my top unread non-genre book. Next on that list is Jack, by Marilynne Robinson.
