In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

December 2004 was a quieter month, celebrating little U’s second birthday and then Christmas at home with just the five of us; I cooked boar as usual, and we watched the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings DVDs during the holiday. No Crisis Group publications, though I was working hard on the big Kosovo report for early 2005, and I did have the thrill of being quoted by the prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milošević (at end here and then again here). I don’t even seem to have travelled – cancelled a planned trip to Albania at the last moment owing to pressure of work. (My non-systematic tally, before I started doing the overnights meme properly, was that I had been to twenty different countries in 2004.) My Slovenian intern K left; by peculiar coincidence, within a few months she was working for my present employers, and now works for one of our biggest corporate clients, so we are still in touch. This was also the year of the Boxing Day tsunami.

I read 9 books that month.

Non-fiction 2 (2004 total 42)
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility Report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Uncyclopedia, by Gideon Haigh

SF 5 (2004 total 75)
Cyteen, by CJ Cherryh
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
The Radiant Seas, by Catherine Asaro

Comics 2 (2004 total 9)
A Contract With God, by Will Eisner
Berlin: City of Stones, by Jason Lutes

3,600 pages (2004 total 46,800)
2/8 by women (2004 total 33/149, 22%)
None by PoC (2004 total 2/149, 1%)

I hugely enjoyed both The Time Traveler’s Wife, which you can get here, and Berlin: City of Stones, which you can get here. However, The Radiant Seas failed to convert me to Catherine Asaro. You can get it here.

So looking at the 150 books that I read in 2004 as a whole (the first full calendar year that I systematically tracked my reading):

SF 75 (50% – higher percentage than in any recent years, though if you count Doctor Who and SF together it works out about average)
Best of 2004: Sacrifice of Fools, by Ian McDonald, The Time Traveller’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, Changing Planes, by Ursula Le Guin
The one you haven’t heard of: Bad Timing, by Rebecca Levene
Worst of 2004: Humans, by Robert J. Sawyer

Non-fiction 42 (28% – also higher than any recent years, though not by as much)
Best of 2004: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin; J.R.R. Tolkien: author of the century, by Tom Shippey
The one you haven’t heard of: Home Rule: an Irish History, 1800-2000, by Alvin Jackson
Worst of 2004: Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, by Lin Carter

Non-genre 20 (13% – lower than most recent years)
Best of 2004: The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson, Beasts and Super-Beasts, by Saki
The one you haven’t heard of: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, by Emma Donoghue
Worst of 2004: To the Nines, by Janet Evanovich

Comics 9 (6% – lower than any recent year)
Berlin, Maus, Persepolis are all great.

Book of the year 2004: Claire Tomalin’s bio of Samuel Pepys. You can get it here.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

November 2004 was grimly dominated by the re-election of President Bush, which I honestly had not seen coming. It was an important lesson to me to avoid wishful thinking in my elections analysis in the future.

The newly re-elected Bush administration immediately recognised what is now North Macedonia under the name of Macedonia, which probably played an important role in the failure of the following week’s referendum which would have reversed some elements of the post-conflict local government reform if it had passed.

We presciently published a report on South Ossetia, and I had another op-ed on Moldova.

My one work trip was to Geneva, where I rather bravely drove there and back; I remember a long and valuable walking conversation with Pat Cox beside the lake, where he gave me some invaluable career advice (“get up early, and read the paperwork before the meeting”), and also giving Hattie Babbitt a lift to Geneva Airport as I departed. We actually managed two family trips, one ot the Ardennes with the kids, and one with just the two of us to the Hague for a dance performance connected with the royal wedding earlier in the year.

I read 10 books that month.

Non-genre 7 (2004 total 19)
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
The Scheme for Full Employment, by Magnus Mills
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton
The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
The Distant Past, by William Trevor
The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
Tears of the Giraffe, by Alexander McCall Smith

SF 3 (YTD 70)
Science Fiction: The Best of 2003, ed. Jonathan Strahan and Karen Haber
Missing Man, by Katherine MacLean
Year’s Best SF 9, ed. David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

2,800 pages (YTD 46,000)
3/10 by women (YTD 34/140)
None by PoC (YTD 2/140)

The best of these is Tove Jansson’s quiet novel, The Summer Book; you can get it here. The Hartwell/Cramer collection is particularly good this year. You can get it here. On the other hand, I could not see the point of Magnus Mills’ The Scheme for Full Employment. If you want to try it anyway, you can get it here.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

I started the month in Portugal, and also went to Washington, New York, Utah, Boston, and London. At work, we published a report on Armenia. (Anne and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary, but I was in Portugal on the day itself.) Somewhere in the internets there is video of me giving evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in London on 26 October, but you’ll have to settle for the minutes, here and here. Misha Glenny and I emerged from Westminster to see the sad news that John Peel had died. Here I am speaking at Brigham Young University on 13 October. I had more hair then.

The saddest news of the month was the loss of my former assistant from Bosnia days, Danijela. I was able to visit her resting place in 2019.

I read 22 books that month, thanks to lots of daytime flying.

Non-fiction 8 (YTD 40)
Scholars and Rebels in nineteenth-century Ireland, by Terry Eagleton
The Measure of All Things, by Ken Alder
Roger Zelazny and Andre Norton: proponents of individualism, by Carl B. Yoke
Making Sense of the Troubles, by David McKittrick and David McVea
America Right or Wrong: an anatomy of American nationalism, by Anatol Lieven
A Treasury of Great American Scandals, by Michael Farquhar
Fermat’s Last Theorem, by Simon Singh
Walking the Bible, by Bruce Feiler

Non-genre 1 (2004 total 13)
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne

SF 11 (YTD 67)
Veniss Underground, by Jeff VanderMeer
Destiny’s Shield, by Eric Flint and David Drake
The Well of Lost Plots, by Jasper Fforde
Primary Inversion, by Catherine Asaro
Strontium Dog: Bad Timing, by Rebecca Levene
The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, ed. Jeff VanderMeer
The Locus Awards: thirty years of the best in science fiction and fantasy, ed. Charles N. Brown
The Forever Machine/They’d Rather Be Right, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley
The Pilgrim’s Progress From this World to that which is to come, by John Bunyan
Wondrous Beginnings, ed. Steven H. Silver
The Golden Age, by John C. Wright

Comics 2 (YTD 7)
Strangers in Paradise v1, by Terry Moore
In The Shadow Of No Towers, by Art Spiegelman

6,800 pages (YTD 43,200)
2/21 by women (YTD 31/130)
None by PoC (YTD 2/130)

Best book of the month: the Locus Awards anthology pulls together a lot of superlative short stories, some of which I already knew but almost all of which I really liked. You can get it here. Also Making Sense of the Troubles is dated but thorough; you can get it here. However, you can skip Destiny’s Shield, third in an alternative timeline series about Belisarius fighting an alien invasion; the hero never loses a battle or an argument and it gets boring fast. If you want, you can get it here.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

Back at work, I continued lobbying for a Commission cabinet position until it became obvious that this was not my year. (I have not seriously tried again since.) I had another op-ed on Macedonia as the political situation there took another twist. I travelled to Moldova, Belfast and ended the month in Portugal, with a day trip to the Hague. A writer whose books I don’t especially like rather sweetly got in touch and offered to send me some more so that I could make a more informed judgement; I accepted. And we celebrated little U’s christening (sadly since then we have lost both Liz, her godmother, and Guy Van Haver, the parish priest).

I read 12 books that month.

Non-fiction: 2 (YTD 32)
Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic, by Christopher Stephen
The 9/11 Commission Report

Non-genre 1 (YTD 12)
To The Nines, by Janet Evanovich

SF: 7 (YTD 56)
The Warrior’s Bond, by Juliet McKenna
The Tale of the Next Great War, ed. I.F. Clarke
Star Trek: Enterprise – The First Adventure, by Vonda N. McIntyre
Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett
The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
Downbelow Station, by C.J. Cherryh
Brother Berserker, by Fred Saberhagen

Comics: 2 (YTD 5)
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi
The Sandman: Endless Nights, by Neil Gaiman

I see that when I first tallied this month I counted Janet Evanovich as sf; I think that was wrong and will have to correct the record going forward.

4,300 pages (YTD 36,400)
5/12 by women (YTD 29/109)
1/12 by PoC (YTD 2/109)

The best of these were Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, the first half of Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran, a milestone in comics which you can get here; and the morbidly factual 9/11 Commission Report, which notably fails to make any connection between the September 2001 attacks and Iraq – you can get it here.

My dislike of The Gods Themselves is well recorded; I was also deeply disappointed by Janet Evanovich’s To The Nines – I had enjoyed several earlier books in the series but this one put me off the rest. You can get them here and here.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

I spent most of August 2004 on holiday, but this was also the moment that I set my long-laid plans to join the cabinet of one of the new members of the European Commission in motion. (Those plans failed.) I also set up and publicised my Interactive Language Quiz, based on the instructions from a McDonald’s toy. While on holiday we published reports on Macedonia and Georgia, and I had an op-ed on the Macedonian local government reform plans (rather a good one, if I say so myself). Once I got back to work, my new intern, K, a Slovenian, arrived. The month ended with me doing an RTÉ interview on the tenth anniversary of the IRA ceasefire with Albert Reynolds and John Hume – sadly, Hume was already showing his illness. (I saw him in person in Brussels a few days later in early September and drew the same conclusion.)

Cute picture: young F, recently turned 5, trying his hand at archery.

I read 18 books that month.

Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 30)
The Political Animal, by Jeremy Paxman
The Revolution of America, by Guillaume Thomas François Raynal
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, by Niall Ferguson
Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson

Non-genre: 4 (YTD 11)
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Don Quixote (part 1), by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Accusers, by Lindsey Davies
Scandal Takes a Holiday, by Lindsey Davies

Scripts: 1 (YTD 1)
Hard To Swallow, by John Dowie, illustrated by Hunt Emerson

Poetry: 1 (YTD 1)
Lucky Dip, by Ruth Ainsworth

SF: 8 (YTD 49)
The Year of Our War, by Steph Swainston
Felaheen, by John Courtenay Grimwood
Beyond Infinity, by Gregory Benford
After the King: Stories in Honour of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Jane Yolen
Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak
The Demolished Man, by Alfred P. Bester
Year’s Best SF 21, ed. Gardner Dozois
The Dream Millennium, by James White

5,200 pages (YTD 32,100)
5/18 by women (YTD 24/97)
none by PoC (YTD 1/97)

Lots of good books this month, but I’m picking out two quirky ones that stick in my mind: the Abbé Raynal’s penetrating analysis of the newly founded United States, which you can get for free here, and Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Felaheen, which you can get here. Least favourite book of the month: tremendously disappointed by Lindsay Davis’ The Accusers.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

July 2004 began and ended with travels for me – beginning with an epic journey by train to Paris, then flying to Berlin, and then Belgrade, then driving from Belgrade to Pristina and Skopje before flying home again via Budapest, a total of six countries in ten days. It was particularly significant because one of my co-speakers at the conference I attended while in Kosovo was to become my next boss two and a half years later; of course neither of us knew that at the time.

I also got to London for a day, and was appointed to the Advisory Board of the South East European Research Centre in Thessaloniki (the centre is still going strong, not sure about the board).

My intern A, half Slovene, half Geordie, left the Brussels office but went on to do some work for us in the Balkans later in the year. (Her replacement arrived only in August.)

And on the last two days of the month we did our usual summer holiday drive to Northern Ireland via Kidderminster.

F celebrated his fifth birthday with schoolfriends – the first time we had had a kids’ birthday party, which was nice. I don’t seem to have any pictures of the party, but here’s B (at 7) up a tree in our back garden, and F (turning 5) and U (19 months) with me on a visit to Mini-Europe.

I read 13 books that month, counting The Complete Maus as two.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 26)
Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro, with six short stories never before collected, by A. J. Langguth
A Narrative About War And Freedom: Dialog with the commander Ramush Haradinaj, by Bardh Hamzaj
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey
The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s, by Robert Thomas
The Story of Alice, by Mavis Batey

SF 6 (YTD 41)
The Holy Machine, by Chris Beckett
Newton’s Wake, by Ken MacLeod
The Human Abstract, by George Mann
Cartomancy, by Mary Gentle
The Door into Summer, by Robert A. Heinlein
River of Gods, by Ian McDonald

Comics 2 (YTD 3)
The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman

3,700 pages (YTD 26,900)
2/13 by women (YTD 19/79)
none by PoC (YTD 1/79)

My two top books of the month are Spiegelman’s classic Holocaust comic Maus, which you can get here, and Tom Shippey’s brilliant book on Tolkien, which you can get here. At the other end, I am not a fan of George Mann’s writing anyway, and The Human Abstract, which you can get here, is my least favourite of his books.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

June 2004 was the month I switched from my old explorers@whyte.com email address, which I’d had since 1997, to my Gmail address, which I’ve had ever since. Ronald Reagan died; the new European Parliament was elected. Those were more innocent times. I also posted my Hugo finalists review.

This was the month of my one and only trip to Russia, a hasty 48 hours in Moscow (actually a bit less, two days and a night). We also published reports on Moldova and Bosnia, and I had an op-ed on Moldova published in European Voice which seems to have vanished from their archive but is preserved by my former employers.

I read 11 books that month.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 21)
Roger Zelazny, by Jane Lindskold
Black Garden, by Thomas de Waal
A Turkey Travelogue, by Mark C. Leeper
Avonturen van een Nederbelg, by Derk Jan Eppink
Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord Of The Rings, by Lin Carter, updated by Adam Roberts

Non-genre 3 (YTD 7)
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
Beasts & Super-Beasts, by Saki
Reginald in Russia, by Saki

SF 3 (YTD 35)
Gather, Darkness!, by Fritz Leiber
Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow
On Basilisk Station, by David Weber

2,800 pages (YTD 23,200)
2/11 by women (YTD 17/66)
none by PoC (YTD 1/66)

Top book of the month was Thomas de Waal’s account of Nagorno-Karabakh, updated by his The Caucasus: An Introduction. I did not know anything much about him back in 2004; we are now friends. You can get it here. Second favourite is Saki’s eternal Beasts and Super-Beasts, which you can get here. Two to avoid: Carter on Tolkien, and On Basilisk Station.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

1 May 2004 was the day of the EU’s big bang enlargement, with ten new countries joining to take the total membership from 15 to 25. There was a big celebration in the Cinquantenaire and we all went into Brussels for it (including visitors).

A few days later, I travelled to Zagreb for a meeting with Norwegian diplomats, and then later in the month did a grand Caucasus tour of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, meeting all three presidents and both prime ministers (Georgia did not have a PM at the time), and changing planes in Prague on the way there and back, thus adding three countries to my lifetime list and bringing my total to 43 (I had been to Georgia before). Here President Aliyev, who is still in power today, tells us what he thought of our new report. (I’m at the far end of the table, on the left.)

We also did an op-ed on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

I read 14 books this month (including the first Doctor Who-related book in this sequence). That’s 22 years ago.

Non-fiction 1 (YTD 16)
Manifesto for a New World Order, by George Monbiot

Non-genre fiction 1 (YTD 4)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon

SF (non-Who) 11 (YTD 32)
Tales of the Dying Earth, by Jack Vance
Wild Seed, by Octavia E. Butler
Shadows over Baker Street, eds. Michael Reaves and John Pelan
Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross
Blind Lake, by Robert Charles Wilson
Light, by M. John Harrison
Irresistible Forces, ed. Catherine Asaro
The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson
Too Long a Sacrifice, by Mildred Downey Broxon
Sacrifice of Fools, by Ian McDonald
Humans, by Robert J. Sawyer

Doctor Who, etc 1 (YTD 1)
Decalog 5: Wonders, eds. Paul Leonard and Jim Mortimore

5,400 pages (YTD 20,400)
3/14 by women (YTD 15/55)
1/14 by PoC YTD 1/55)

Top book of the month for me is Sacrifice of Fools by Ian McDonald, the best SF book ever set in Belfast. You can get it here. I noted at the time that I very much enjoyed Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, which you can get here, but I can remember much less about it. I’m afraid I bounced off Light, by M.John Harrison, which a lot of people love; but the worst book of the month is Robert Sawyer’s execrable Humans. You can get them here and here.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

This was the month I turned 37. I went to Strasbourg for work, and also to the Hague with Anne, F, U and Anne’s sister H (who babysat the kids during the ceremony) for the wedding of my friend Mabel to Prince Friso of the Netherlands. Their marriage was tragically brief, as it turned out.

Romance was clearly in the air that month. A couple of days after the royal wedding, I had a birthday dinner in Brussels; a colleague visiting from out of town discovered that he really liked one of our Brussels team, and things developed from there. They stayed together for several years, though are no longer an item. Still, their little girl owes her existence to my 37th birthday celebrations.

Meanwhile at work, my Croatian intern S also left (as mentioned before, she was last heard of working for an international organisation back in Croatia), and was replaced by A, half Slovene, half Geordie. We published a report reacting to the previous month’s Kosovo violence. At this passage of time, I can also reveal that I wrote most of an op-ed on Cyprus published in the New York Times under the names of my boss and the chair of the board. The referendum, of course, went the wrong way. I had no idea that I would get more involved in that issue in the years to come.

It was a busy month when I completed reading only 5 books, all the same genre.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 15)
What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley (presented as non-fiction)
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitch-hiking the Galaxy One Last Time, by Douglas Adams (edited by Peter Guzzardi) (includes some fiction, but the core is non-fiction)
Green Shadows, White Whale, by Ray Bradbury (also includes some fiction, but the core is non-fiction)
Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome, by Thomas Babington Macaulay
How Bosnia Armed, by Marko Attila Hoare

1,300 pages (YTD 15,000)
0/5 by women (YTD 12/40)
still none by PoC

To be honest, I hesitate to recommend any of them very strongly, but the Douglas Adams book is at least by Douglas Adams, and the Bosnia book is good for specialists. The Ray Bradbury was disappointing.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

March 2004 began with a week of travel, to Paris, Washington DC and New York. Riots broke out in Kosovo. We published a report on Serbia. I had to cancel a trip to Oslo (did not visit Norway until 2023), but I also visited Budapest, and finished the month with a work conference in Dublin and a day in Belfast, where I met (separately) with Peter Robinson and Denis Donaldson. At home, we parted company with our au pair (a grumpy Belgian). One news item which I knew was important, but had no idea just how important it would be for me, was the announcement of Christopher Eccleston as the new Doctor Who.

I read 14 books that month.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 10)
The Sandman Companion, by Hy Bender
Ask Me Anything about the Presidents, by Louis Phillips
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons
Chance Witness: An Outsider’s Life in Politics, by Matthew Parris

SF 10 (YTD 21)
On, by Adam Roberts
Changing Planes, by Ursula Le Guin
Maul, by Tricia Sullivan
The Gambler’s Fortune, by Juliet E. McKenna
The Green Gene, by Peter Dickinson
Coalescent, by Stephen Baxter
The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O’Shea
The Sandman Book of Dreams, ed Neil Gaiman and Ed Kramer (and, uncredited, Martin Greenberg)
Kushiel’s Avatar, by Jacqueline Carey
The Master, by TH White

5,400 pages (YTD 13,700)
6/14 by women (YTD 12/34)
still none by PoC

Some very good books this month, and none that I would particularly disrecommend. I think top non-fiction are Matthew Parris and the Eleanor of Aquitaine book, and top sf are The Master and The Gambler’s Fortune, probably in that order.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

The big work news of February 2004 was the tragic death in a plane crash of Boris Trajkovski, the genial President of Macedonia who was very friendly with me and many others. This was the day after we published a report on pan-Albanianism (concluding that there was not much there there). I also went to London to shadow my boss at a Chatham House meeting where the other speaker was the late great Albert Rohan.

I read 12 books that month.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 6)
How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, by Orson Scott Card
The Daily Telegraph Book of Military Obituaries, ed. David Twiston Davies
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn

Non-genre fiction 3 (YTD 3)
The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits, by Emma Donoghue (collection, including one story which has fantasy elements)
Memories of the Irish Israeli War, by Phil O’Brien
Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry, by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch

SF 6 (YTD 11)
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
Ilium, by Dan Simmons
Worlds That Weren’t, by Harry Turtledove, S.M. Stirling, Mary Gentle, and Walter Jon Williams
The House on the Borderland and Other Stories, by William Hope Hodgson (could not finish The Night Land)
The Meeting of the Waters, by Caiseal Mór
Paths to Otherwhere, by James Patrick Hogan

4,400 pages (YTD 8,300)
3/21 by women (YTD 6/21)
none by PoC

The best of these was probably The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, which won the Hugo the following year; you can get it here. Molvania has some good lines; you can get it here. The one to skip: The Meeting of the Waters.

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.

The most crucial event of January 2004 was that little U took her first steps, at 13 months.

My first work outing of the year was to the Liberals’ New Year reception in Brussels, after which I note that I had an awful lot of whisky with MEP Graham Watson. I was on a panel with the Bosnian and Croatian foreign ministers as well. (Fraser Cameron sitting between them.) This was shortly after returning from a conference on Moldova in Munich.

We also did a report for the new Independent Monitoring Commission in Northern Ireland, comparing its mission with Balkan equivalents. This was also the month that I started to seriously strategise about getting a job with the new European Commission due to take office at the end of the year. (Spoiler: I didn’t get a job there in the end.)

I read 9 books that month.

Non-fiction 3
Home Rule: An Irish History 1800-2000, by Alvin Jackson
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin
The Procrastinator’s Handbook: Mastering the Art of Doing It Now. by Rita Emmett

SF 5
1610: A Sundial in a Grave, by Mary Gentle
Looking Backward: from 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
From the Dust Returned, by Ray Bradbury
The Best of Lester Del Rey

Comics 1
Death: The High Cost of Living, by Neil Gaiman

3,900 pages
3/9 by women
none by PoC

The Lord of the Rings is of course one of my favourite books ever, but that was a re-read (you can get it here if you still need to). My best new book this month was Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys, which is superb and made me a real Pepys fanboy (and also a bit of a Claire Tomalin fan). You can get it here.

The one to skip: disappointed by 1610.