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 family event of June 2006 was my great-aunt’s 90th birthday. Here she is with her four children (the four on the left, with her sister-in-law) and her eight nieces and nephews, including my mother. I’m glad to say that she had another 17 years ahead of her.

Two of the pictures from my own camera show the guest of honour and the youngest guest, young F, and me with my siblings.

The other family birthday that month was B’s ninth. The big present was a crocodile-shaped water sprinkler, which all three children hugely enjoyed.

Here is a rare video (well, compilation of several short videos) of the three kids together, B just 9, F about to turn 7 and U at 3½:

Apart from that, I see I went to the Tun on 1 June so must have been in London, was in Thessalonica for a meeting with the SEERC later in the month, attended a Wilton Park conference, and seem to have ended the month with a visit to Paris. At work we published a report on the Preševo Valley of Southern Serbia. My Greek intern K was replaced by Macedonian E. (He now works for the European Commission.) And I wrote what turned out to be the last of my mega-meta-reviews of that year’s Hugo finalists. (It wasn’t possible the following year, for reasons which will become clear, and by 2008 other channels had taken over.) This was also the month that I started really getting into the Big Finish Doctor Who audios.

I read 16 books that month.

non-fiction 6 (YTD 27)
Lords of Parliament: Manners, rituals and politics, by Emma Crewe
The Story of the Salonica Army, by G. Ward Price
The Television Companion: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, by David J Howe and Stephen James Walker
The Triumph of the West, by J.R. Roberts
The New Macedonian Question, ed. James Pettifer
The Gardeners of Salonika, by Alan Palmer

non-genre 1 (YTD 7)
See Delphi and Die, by Lindsey Davis

sf (non-Who) 6 (YTD 32)
Impossible Stories, by Zoran Živković
The Falling Woman, by Pat Murphy
Duel in Nightmare Worlds, by “B. Flackes” (W.D. Flackes)
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 6)
Managra, by Stephen Marley
I Am A Dalek, by Gareth Roberts
Timewyrm: Genesys, by John Peel

4,700 pages (YTD 23,300)
3/16 by women (YTD 11/73)
none by PoC (YTD 3/73)

The two really good ones here are Zoran Živković’s collection of short stories, which you can get here, and Emma Crewe’s anthropological stody of the House of Lords, which you can get here. I found The Triumph of the West pretty pointless, but 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.

No Crisis Group papers in April 2006, but I did publish a piece in Interationale Politik in the wake of the failed Dutch and French referenda on the EU’s Constitutional Treaty, advocating the sort of citizen’s assembly, with an element of random selection, that has subsequently been used to great effect in Ireland and which President Macron is now advocating for France and for Europe; I was ahead of my time. You can read it here.

My only trip was to Stockholm, starting on my 39th birthday; as well as attending a conference, I went to the Vasa Museum and the Nobel Prize Museum, both very interesting. We celebrated my birthday at the weekend when I got back, which also was the weekend that the lovely School Reunion episode of Doctor Who was broadcast.

More grimly, one of our neighbours was murdered by her husband, who later took his own life in prison. She had been a stalwart of the annual dorpsfeest, and a bench in the grassy space behind the parochial hall is dedicated to her memory (lovely photo by Ernst Gülcher).

I read 13 books that month.

non-fiction 7 (YTD 17)
A Man On The Moon, by Andrew Chaikin
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, by Amanda Foreman
Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow
William Heinemann: A Memoir, by Frederic Whyte
Malachy, by Brian Scott
You, The People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration and State-Building, by Simon Chesterman
International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction, by Richard Caplan

non-genre 1 (YTD 3)
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

sf 5 (YTD 21)
Mappa Mundi, by Justina Robson
The Jennifer Morgue, by Charles Stross
Secret Files: The Inside Story of International Rescue, by Chris Bentley, Stephen Cole and Graham Bleathman
A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett
The Moon Pool, by A. Merritt

4,900 pages (YTD 15,300)
2/13 by women (YTD 7/42)
1/13 by PoC (YTD 2/42)

The best of these are the two biographies of Alexander Hamilton and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. They were almost exact contemporaries – they were born two years apart and died two years apart, she soon before her 49th birthday (of natural causes) and he a few months after his (shot dead by the vice-president of the United States).

Neither is mentioned in the other biography, and they would not have ever met (neither ever crossed the Atlantic), but they would have known about each other. John and Abigail Adams certainly knew them both. Abigail was not a fan of either. On 30 September 1785, she wrote of Georgiana,

Amongst the most celebrated of their beauties stands the Duchess of Devonshire, who is masculine in her appearance… [not intended as a positive statement]

and on 28 January 1797, she wrote of Hamilton,

Beware of that spare Cassius, has always occured to me when I have seen that cock sparrow. O I have read his Heart in his wicked Eyes many a time. The very devil is in them. They are lasciviousness itself.

Angelica Schuyler Church (who gets a lot of the good lines in Hamilton the musical) and her husband (a radical English MP) must also surely have known them both on rather better terms – John Church was an ally first of Earl Grey (he of the tea, who was also Georgiana’s lover) and then of Charles

James Fox (who she also strongly supported).

One of Hamilton’s great-granddaughters was a Georgina, but that’s more likely a homage to Washington than Devonshire. (Incidentally it was she who got the famous Emma Lazarus poem, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses..” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.) You can get Alexander Hamiton here and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire here.

None of the other books this month was all that bad but I guess The Moon Pool failed to convince me; 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.

March 2006 was a pretty memorable month for me. I had one of the most fun science fiction convention experiences I can remember at P-Con in Dublin, where I moderated four panels, one of which was interrupted by the BBC calling me for a statement on the death of Slobodan Milošević. My brains were eaten by Fluff.

I went on from Dublin (having spoken at a panel with Garret Fitzgerald) to Cyprus, where I presented the first Crisis Group report on the situation there at a packed event in the Ledra Palace Hotel on the Green Line. This was more significant than I had perhaps realised; it was the first time since the referendums of April 2004 that someone had come to the island to tell the Greek Cypriots that they had voted for continued partition. Tempers were still high (actually they still are, many years later) and one Greek Cypriot newspaper accused me of behaving “με αναίδεια χίλιων πιθήκων”, “with the impudence of a thousand monkeys”. But I feel it was one of the more important bits of work we did in my time at Crisis Group, and perhaps more important, I made friends on that trip who I am still in touch with. (The chap in the picture below is not one of them.)

I also presented the report in Athens and Istanbul, my first ever visit to Turkey. The reception was a bit more laid back in both cases.

Anne and I attempted to have a romantic weekend break to Maastricht. It rained. Weirdly enough I went back to that part of the world later in the month for a conference about Kosovo in a chateau very near by (in Château St-Gerlach). And we did a nice little report on the EU and the South Caucasus. Outside Crisis Group, I published a short note on how to proceed with EU integration, proposing the citizens’ dialogues later adopted by President Macron (who may have come up with the idea separately).

Meanwhile back at home, F made a scale model of the solar system in our back yard. Here are the Sun (portrayed by a space hopper), a barely visible Mercury, and more clearly visible Venus, Earth and Mars.

I read 11 books that month.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 10)
Does Anything Eat Wasps? And 101 Other Questions, ed. Mick O’Hare
The Discontinuity Guide: The Definitive Guide to the Worlds and Times of Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping
Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea
Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion, by Charles Townshend

sf 7 (YTD 16)
Air (or Have not Have), by Geoff Ryman
Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod
Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
Take Back Plenty, by Colin Greenland
Different Kinds of Darkness, by David Langford
Hidden Camera, by Zoran Živković
Swords in the Mist, by Fritz Leiber

4,200 pages (YTD 10,400)
None by women (YTD 5/29)
None by PoC (YTD 1/29)

This was a really good month for books as well, despite a certain lack of diversity. The top book of 2006 for me was Lost Lives, the gruelling account of people who died in the Troubles. You can get it (for a price!) here. Others that I particularly enjoyed were The Discontinuity Guide, which you can get here; Easter 1916, which you can get here; and Thud!, which you can get 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.

As previously noted, I started the month in Skopje, and then returned to Prishtina in Kosovo for more work meetings, extended by a day when fog prevented my flight home from taking off. This was all leading up to publishing another Kosovo report mid-month. I also got quoted in the Guardian by the lovely and much missed Ian Traynor. My other trip of the month was to Vienna, a rather mad affair which included intense chats with the late great Albert Rohan and the late great Martti Ahtisaari.

My negotiations with my future employer were meantime continuing, but I received an unexpected approach from a head-hunter looking for someone to run a new thinktank on longevity issues. I don’t know a lot about the subject, but I kept up the conversation for several weeks until we mutually decided that it just wasn’t my thing. (Much later, I tracked down the person who did get the job; let’s just say that I dodged a bullet.)

At home, we had a lovely ceremony organised by the municipality in which young F attended the ceremonial planting of his special tree. Our village donates or plants a tree for every child turning seven each year; we did not make anything of it for the girls, who would not really appreciate it, but F was certainly interested and engaged.

We went back to the scene in 2013 to see if we could find the same tree, and I’m pretty sure we did.

Another seven years on, we went back again in the early pandemic. – you can see I think that it is the same tree, and the same person who stood by it aged six and thirteen, now twenty.

I read 12 books that month.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 6)
EU’ve got mail! by Graham Watson
First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, by James R. Hansen
Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia, by Richard Caplan
Fanny Kemble: The Reluctant Celebrity, by Rebecca Jenkins
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839, by Frances Anne Kemble

Non-genre 1 (YTD 2)
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

SF 6 (YTD 9)
Azem Berisha’s One and Only Flight to the Castle, by Veton Surroi
Ghosts of Albion: Accursed, by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
The Einstein Intersection, by Samuel R. Delany
The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
9Tail Fox, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

4,200 pages (YTD 6,200)
4/12 (YTD 5/18) by women (Jenkins, Kemble, Alcott, Benson)
1/12 (YTD 1/18) by PoC (Delany)

The best and worst of these were all non-fiction. The best is Fanny Kemble’s account of slavery from the point of view of someone who married a slave-owner. You can read it for free here. Almost as good is Richard Caplan’s definitive account of the diplomatic response to the break-up of Yugoslavia, which kills a few myths and which you can get here. The worst by far is Rebecca Jenkins’ biography of Fanny Kemble. 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.

As previously noted, 2006 started with a full house of visitors and much fun, though B’s behaviour was becoing more and more difficult. I got very excited about the Lib Dem leadership, with Charles Kennedy’s dramatic fall and the nearly successful wonkish challenge by Chris Huhne to veterans Menȝies Campbell and Simon Hughes. At work we published a report on (North) Macedonia, but I was running out of steam… I had a one-day trip to Paris, and actually finished the month in Macedonia, having travelled there from Kosovo on frozen and slippery tracks over the hills after a landslide had knocked out the main road from Prishtina to Skopje; these pictures don’t quite convey just how scary a drive it was.

I read only 6 books that month.

Non-fiction 1
God’s Clockmaker: Richard of Wallingford and the Invention of Time, by John North

Non-genre 1
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

SF 3
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
Steppe, by Piers Anthony
Year’s Best SF 10, ed. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Comics 1
Shutterbug Follies, by Jason Little

2,000 pages
1/6 by women
None by PoC

Best: Year’s Best SF 10 which you can get here. Worst: Steppe, which you can get here.