This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging at the end of October 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.
This is the second last post in this series. Six days from now is the last day of this month, and the end of a four-year project to re-chronicle twenty years of reading. When I started, I was dredging up memories of sixteen years before; now it’s only a couple of weeks. It’s good to have a project with a defined end.
So what did I do and read last month? I had two trips to the UK, one for a Worldcon planning meeting at Heathrow, and one combining a family party in Northern Ireland with work meetings in London.
I wrote about the Post-industrial Pagodas, and about the consequences of the decline of X, formerly Twitter.
I managed to read 21 books:
Non-fiction 6 (YTD 64)
Dawn of the New Everything: A Journey Through Virtual Reality, by Jaron Lanier
The Night of the Doctor, by James Cooray Smith
Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars, by Catherine Clinton
The Day of the Doctor, by Alasdair Stuart
Dispatches from Chengdu, by Abdel LeRoy
Charmed in Chengdu, by Michael O’Neal (did not finish)
Non-genre 4 (YTD 21)
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Keats and Chapman Wryed Again, by Steven A. Jent
Letters from Klara, by Tove Jansson
Death Notice, by Zhou Haohui
SF 7 (YTD 146)
The Bruising of Qilwa, by Naseem Jamnia
Ocean’s Echo, by Everina Maxwell
The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd
Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Rupetta, by N.A. Sulway
Shorefall, by Robert Jackson Bennett
What Not: A Prophetic Comedy, by Rose Macaulay
Doctor Who 2 (YTD 27)
Extraction Point, by MG Harris
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, by Steven Moffat
Comics 2 (YTD 23)
War of the Gods, by Nick Abadzis et al
A Doctor in the House?, by Jody Houser et al
5,600 pages (YTD 70,500)
11/21 (YTD 126/288) by non-male writers (Clinton, Kingsolver, Jansson, Jamnia, Maxwell, Shepherd, Sulway, Macaulay, Harris, illustrators of War of the Gods, author and illustrators of A Doctor in the House?)
3/21 (YTD 39/288) by a non-white writer (Zhou, Jamnia, Shepherd)