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.

Lots of travel this month, starting rather sadly with a weekend trip to Brussels to say farewell to Ian Traynor. Back at home we had the traditional Dorpfeest, including children’s toy and game sale, and display by local artists including Anne:

Lots of travel, starting with a trip to London (and Oxford), including the Bagpuss and Clangers exhibition with S and little W (who has got a lot bigger since).

This was followed by a grim work trip to Dublin and Serbia in which my back was hurting so badly that I barely staggered out of bed to my meetings. At the end of the month I went to Amsterdam with my brother, mother and sister, and then on to Albania for my first meetings with the Foundation of which I am a trustee.

I read 18 books that month.

Non-fiction: 1 (YTD 32)
A History of the World in Twelve Maps, by Jerry Brotton

Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 25)
Brother and Sister, by Joanna Trollope
Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
Nemesis, by Philip Roth
The Dinner, by Herman Koch

sf (non-Who): 5 (YTD 72)
The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4, ed. Mahvesh Murad
One Does Not Simply Walk into Tudor, by Ivery Kirk and Luna Teague
Cauldron, by Jack McDevitt
Unquenchable Fire, by Rachel Pollack
The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 33)
Short Trips: A Day In The Life, ed. Ian Farrington
Independence Day, by Peter Darville-Evans
Return to the Fractured Planet, by Dave Stone
In The Blood, by Jenny Colgan

Comics: 3 (YTD 22)
Paper Girls, by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
Prisoners of Time, by Scott and David Tipton
Toch Een Geluk, by Barbara Stok

6,200 pages (YTD 53,100 pages)
6/18 (YTD 57/183) by women (Trollope, Murad, Kirk/Teague, Pollack, Colgan, Stok)
2/18 (YTD 12/183) by PoC (Murad, Chiang)

Great to return to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which you can get here; great to read Nemesis, by Philip Roth, which you can get here. Unimpressed by Peter Darville-Evans’ Independence Day, but you can get it here.