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.

My final Crisis Group publication was a briefing on Kosovo. In my four years and eight months there, I had overseen the publication of 46 reports, 16 briefings and ten op-eds (in the last case, just counting those published under my own name; I was ghost-writer for a few more). Meanwhile I chose my new office, a serviced arrangement on Rond Point Schuman. In Belgium the big news was a hoax TV news programme announcing that Flanders had unilaterally declared independence. Gerald Ford died just after Christmas.

Anne’s sister joined us again for Christmas, which was just as well when one of the household had to be taken to casualty on Christmas Day itself (naming no names). The kids enjoyed themselves, though B’s behaviour was getting more and more difficult to manage:

I don’t appear to have travelled this month. My overnights tally for the year was 25 places in 18 countries.

Thanks to my sudden conversion to commuting by train, I read 20 books in December 2006:

Non-fiction 8 (2006 total 70)
This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, by Swanee Hunt
The Great English Pilgrimage, by Christopher Donaldson
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown (did not finish)
The Elusive Quest: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, by Norman Porter
Ockham’s Razor: A Search for Wonder In An Age of Doubt, by Wade Rowland
Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson
An Intimate History of Humanity, by Theodore Zeldin (did not finish)
Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, by Marina Warner

Non-genre 7 (2006 total 35)
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink
White Eagles over Serbia, by Lawrence Durrell
The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
Perfume, by Patrick Süskind
Crooked Little Heart, by Anne Lamott
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming

SF (non-Who) 3 (2006 total 68)
Thunderbird Falls, by C.E. Murphy
Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett
Unfinished Tales, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Doctor Who 2 (2006 total 28)
Timewyrm: Apocalypse, by Nigel Robinson
Timewyrm: Revelation, by Paul Cornell

Comics 0 (2006 total 6)

7,400 pages (YTD 61,600)
4/20 (34/207) by women
None (8/207) by PoC

For once I’m going to highlight one book I liked and two I didn’t, rather than the other way around. Norman Porter’s exploration of how to achieve reconciliation in Northern Ireland is very good and a partial recantation of his earlier views; you can get it here. I could not finish either Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee or Zeldin’s An Intimate History of Humanity. You can get them here and here.

2006 books roundup

This was the first year that I did a proper book roundup at the time. Reformatting that post to my current system:

Non-fiction 70 (34% – highest percentage of any year I have on record)
Best of 2006: 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; The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper
The one you haven’t heard of: Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, by David Feige
Worst of 2006: An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General’s Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004, by Claire Palley

SF 68 (33% – same as last year, a bit below average)
Best of 2006 (not including rereads): The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn; Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
The one you haven’t heard of: Impossible Stories, by Zoran Živković
Worst of 2006: Galactic Patrol, by E.E. “Doc” Smith

Non-genre 35 (17% – about average)
Best of 2006:  The Warden’s Niece by Gillian Avery; The File on H, by Ismail Kadarë.
The one you haven’t heard of: A Game With Sharpened Knives, by Neil Belton
Worst of 2006: Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

Doctor Who 28 (14% – this number got bigger after this year)
Best of 2006: Evolution, by John Peel; Doctor Who – The Rescue, by Ian Marter
Worst of 2006: (The Companions of) Doctor Who – Harry Sullivan’s War, by Ian Marter

Comics 6 (3% – lowest of any year I have on record)
Best of 2005: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
Worst of 2006: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes (second year in a row that one of his books occupied this spot)

My second lowest percentage of books by women in all my years of monitoring, and pretty low on writers of colour as well.

Book of the year 2006: 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.

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 mentioned, we started the month with a half-term break at my sister’s in Burgundy. Cluny is a remarkable town with a ruined abbey which dominates the urban landscape.

I moved my personal website to http://www.nicholaswhyte.info – I should start updating it a bit more often… I also visited London for orientation with the new job, and drove to the depths of the Ardennes for my last Crisis Group retreat. We got reports out on Serbia, Kosovo and Georgia, as my time with the organisation wound down.

The month ended dramatically. I had a work trip to Berlin which included, rather unusually, a meeting in the Defence Ministry (normally I end up farther east, between the Bundestag/Kanzleramt and foreign ministry). On my way out I asked the silver-haired colonel who I was meeting about the building’s history. He told me that it had originally been the headquarters of the German Navy from 1911, and was then the territorial army headquarters; and then became the centre of resistance to Hitler within the armed forces, in particular under Claus von Stauffenberg. “So after 20 July 1944, von Stauffenberg was shot in one of the courtyards,” indicating which one with a nod.

That wasn’t the really dramatic part. The really dramatic part was after I landed back in Brussels on an early morning flight and started driving the family car to the office. As I went through the Montgomery tunnel, I felt a sudden KCHUNK, and the car coasted to a halt on the uphill stretch. Phone calls to Touring, long wait while traffic pooled around me in one of the prime choke-points of Brussels suburbia, finally the Touring guy arrived and towed me to a nearby layby, more long wait while he fiddled with the distributor cap before shaking his head in bafflement and calling a pickup truck, more long wait for the pickup truck, which then couldn’t find the garage, probably because its driver was too busy talking to his girlfriend on his mobile phone to look for it properly, and eventually walked from the garage to my office with all my luggage from Berlin. The garage looked at the car for a few days and then confirmed that fixing it would cost more than we had paid for it, so since then I have largely commuted to Brussels by public transport.

In my office, my Macedonian intern E was doing handover to her successor, Belgian S. E has now moved to Budapest where her Belgian husband has a senior academic position. S now lives in Geneva, where he married a Quebecoise; their children’s French must be very interesting to hear. Here’s a picture of the three of us at a conference in the European Parliament where I was speaking that week, E on the left, S on the right and me sitting down. (And a bearded chap, who I don’t recognise, talking to us.)

I managed to read 27 books in November 2006, more than half of which were short Doctor Who books, mostly by Ian Marter.

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 62)
The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert Cooper
A Bachelor’s London: Memories of the Day before Yesterday, 1889-1914, by Frederic Whyte
An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General’s Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004, by Claire Palley (did not finish)
Disaccord on Cyprus: The UN Plan and after, by Clement Dodd
Everything is about Cyprus, by Hasan Erçakica
Skeletons on the Zahara, by Dean King
Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War, by Tony Hodges
Endgame in the Western Sahara, by Toby Shelley
Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate, by Erik Jensen

SF 3 (YTD 65)
Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 edition, edited by Rich Horton
A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

Doctor Who 14 (YTD 26)
The Clockwise Man, by Justin Richards
The Monsters Inside, by Stephen Cole
Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – Earthshock, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Dominators, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Invasion, by Ian Marter
Harry Sullivan’s War, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror, by Ian Marter
Doctor Who – The Rescue, by Ian Marter
Evolution, by John Peel
The Stealers of Dreams, by Steve Lyons

Comics 1 (2006 total 6)
Preacher: Until the End of the World, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

6,000 pages (YTD 54,200)
1/27 (YTD 30/187) by a woman
None (YTD 8/187) by PoC

Robert Cooper’s The Breaking of Nations was the best of these; you can get it here. Close behind is Skeletons on the Zahara, a tale of shipwrecked sailors sold into slavery; you can get it here. Claire Palley’s book on Cyprus is awful, but you can get it here. (I didn’t pay for it – a friend had been gifted a copy and passed it on to me.)

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 major personal developments for me in October 2006 were breaking the news of my imminent job change to colleagues and friends, and also finding a daycare place for B, whose behaviour was becoming too difficult for her special school to cope with. We had some diversion also at work when it was rumoured that we might get the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. (We didn’t.) My foreign trips were a rather weird one-day trip to Ankara, Turkey, (the only time I have been there); a much less weird conference in Chişinău, Moldova; and a half-term visit to my sister in Burgundy at the end of the month, taking in the Eiffel Tower en route (inspired by Barnaby Bear). Here’s the view from the top (well, as far as we could get), with F (aged 7) practicing to be a teenager.

Sadly this was also the month that we lost David Stewart, of Irish sf fandom.

As well as enjoying I, Claudius and the first episodes of Torchwood, I read 16 books that month.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 53)
Confessions, by St Augustine
Charlotte Brontë’s Promised Land, by Eric Ruijssenaars
A Wayfarer in Sweden, by Frederic Whyte

Non-genre 4 (YTD 28)
Villette, by Charlotte Brontë
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
The File on H, by Ismail Kadarë
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

SF 8 (YTD 62)
The Syſtem of the World, by Neal Stephenſon
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
Star Songs of an Old Primate, by James Tiptree Jr
Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny
The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny
Sign of the Unicorn, by Roger Zelazny
The Hand of Oberon, by Roger Zelazny
The Courts of Chaos, by Roger Zelazny

Doctor Who 1 (YTD 12)
The Scales of Injustice, by Gary Russell

5,100 pages (YTD 48,200)
4/16 (YTD 29/160) by women
1/16 (YTD 8/160) by PoC

My own all-time favourite of my reviews is my write-up of The Syſtem of the World, by Neal Stephenſon.

The best book of the month was Ismail Kadarë’s Albanian tale The File on H, which you can get here. And the first Chronicles of Amber remain a guilty pleasure; you can get them in a single volume here. I thought The Lovely Bones was an awful book, but you can get it here if you want.

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.

September 2006 was a momentous month for me: ploughing through unread emails in Budapest on the evening of the 1st, I found a message from Independent Diplomat, with whom I had been in communication for about eighteen months, inviting my application for the position of director of their not-yet-established Brussels office. I applied, was interviewed later in September, and got offered the job early in October. Apart from my trip to London for the interview, I also went to Washington DC and New York for networking and to Athens for a conference during the month.

I read 22 books that month.

Non-fiction 7 (YTD 50)
What If? Alternative Views of Twentieth-Century Ireland, by Diarmaid Ferriter (listing as non-fiction rather than sf, because very few of the essays were genuinely counterfactual)
Girl with a One-track Mind: Confessions of the Seductress Next Door, by “Abby Lee” [Zoe Margolis] (presented as autobiography, though I’m sure it is somewhat fictionalised)
Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo, by Iain King and Whit Mason
Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, by David Feige
31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today, by Barry Werth
Kosovo’s Endgame: Sovereignty and Stability in the Western Balkans, by Aristotle Tziampiris
The Prince, by Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

Non-genre 8 (YTD 24)
A Game With Sharpened Knives, by Neil Belton
The Last Word and other stories, by Graham Greene (NB two of the stories are actually set in the near future, so they could qualify as sf)
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life, by Lawrence Durrell
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
Beloved, by Toni Morrison

SF 5 (YTD 54)
A Time of Changes, by Robert Silverberg
The Terminal Experiment, by Robert J. Sawyer
Rite of Passage, by Alexei Panshin
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois
Epic, by Conor Kostick

Doctor Who 1 (YTD 11)
Short Trips: Past Tense, ed. Ian Farrington

Comics 1 (YTD 5)
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

6,900 pages (YTD 43,100)
5/22 (YTD 25/144) by women
2/22 (YTD 7/144) by PoC

Two New York tales topped my personal list for the month: my old friend David Feige’s autobiographical account of the American justice system, which you can get here, and the graphic version of the 9/11 Commission report, which you can get here. The worst book of the month was Nebula-winning The Terminal Experiment, which was not quite as bad as I had expected, but my expectations were low; 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.

We started August 2006, 20 years ago this month, in Northern Ireland as usual, and I attended MeCon 9 in Belfast where the guests included Ian McDonald, Hal Duncan, Ken MacLeod, Leah Moore, and John Reppion. I thought I had pictures from it, but in fact they seem to be from the following year, and I’m not in anyone else’s that I can find. I remember having a lot of fun.

We also had a family excursion to the Legananny Dolmen and the Finnis Souterrain:

A mid-holiday work trip to London was unexpectedly extended by a day when I arrived at Heathrow to get a morning flight back to Belfast, and found myself in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 airport plot. I got the train to Liverpool and the overnight ferry, arriving not quite 24 hours after originally planned.

We published a report on Moldova mid-month (must have been just before I got back, in fact), and I ended the month in Budapest speaking at a conference in the rather splendid parliament building there.

I read 25 books that month – I think a record since I started keeping count. (Exceeded a few times since.)

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 43)
Lost Railways of Co. Down and Co. Armagh, by Stephen Johnson
Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who, by James Chapman
Doctor Who, by Kim Newman
Salonica: City of Ghosts – Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower
The Independent Irish Party 1850-9, by J.H. Whyte
Sixteenth Century Ireland, by Colm Lennon
H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, by Michel Houellebecq
A Rulebook for Arguments, by Anthony Weston
Critical Reasoning: An Introduction, by Anne Thomson

Non-genre 4 (YTD 16)
Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
The Warden’s Niece, by Gillian Avery
The Brightfount Diaries, by Brian Aldiss

SF 7 (YTD 49)
The Healer’s War, by Elizabeth Anne Scarborough
The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn
Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick
October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle
Southern Fire, by Juliet McKenna
Year’s Best SF 11, ed. David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Winter Moon, by Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee and C.E. Murphy

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 10)
Short Trips: Companions, ed. Jacqueline Rayner
Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors, ed. John Binns
The Empire of Glass, by Andy Lane

Comics 2 (YTD 4)
Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes
Preacher: Gone to Texas, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

6,400 pages (YTD 36,200)
6/25 by women (YTD 20/122)
None by PoC (YTD 5/122)

Best of these, and the one which still sticks with me, is The Wreck of The River of Stars, by Michael Flynn; you can get it here. I also gave The Healer’s War, by Elizabeth Anne Scarborough, an enthusiastic write-up, but can’t remember as much about it. You can get it here. I found Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller, thoroughly unpleasant, 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.

I was hugely honoured to be present at the Presidential residence in Podgorica on 13 July 2006, 20 years ago this month, the last leg of a trip that had started in Skopje and continued through Prishtina with an exciting journey through the mountains to Montenegro itself. There were perhaps 300 guests. The mood was festive, everyone shaking hands and embracing. The moment eventually came when the guards played a fanfare, and then a young man began to sing the new/old nation’s anthem, joined in the second verse by a young woman, without any other accompaniment, their voices trembling with emotion. For the first time in nine decades, Montenegro was celebrating its traditional independence day as an independent state. They didn’t drop a beat, or miss a note. It was one of the most electrifying things I have ever witnessed. I don’t have photographs, but I was given a souvenir first day cover.

The month started with a family trip to Antwerp to see the Sultan’s Elephant, an extraordinary live action steampunk show. I got a few film shots of the elephant and the little girl in action:

F celebrated his 7th birthday later in the month, and actually had a party, though my contribution was to take B on a long drive to keep her out of the way.

At the end of the month we drove as usual to Northern Ireland (Anne failing to be persuaded of the merits of Fury from the Deep), but made the tough decision to leave B in Belgium under the supervision of my mother-in-law. It actually went all right, but it was a bit sad.

I managed to read 24 books in July 2006, thanks perhaps to several long land-based trips.

Non-fiction 7 (YTD 34)
The Economist Style Guide, no author given apart from one section by John Grimond
The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, by George Soros
Café Europa: Life after Communism, by Slavenka Drakulić
Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, by M.J. Simpson
The Belgian House of Representatives: From Revolution to Federalism, by Derek Blyth, Alistair MacLean, and Rory Watson
Under the Devil’s Eye: Britain’s Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915-1918, by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody
Mr Belloc Objects To “The Outline Of History”, by H.G. Wells

Non-genre 5 (YTD 12)
Eleven on Top, by Janet Evanovich
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow
The Man With Two Left Feet, and Other Stories, by P.G. Wodehouse

Sf (Non-Who) 10 (YTD 42)
Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman
The Prisoner, by Thomas M. Disch
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
The Compleat Enchanter – The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea, by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Galactic Patrol, by E.E. “Doc” Smith
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
The Mark of Ran, by Paul Kearney
The Lady of the Shroud, by Bram Stoker
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams

Doctor Who 1 (YTD 7)
Timewyrm: Exodus, by Terrance Dicks

Comics 1 (YTD 2)
Buddha, Volume 1: Kapilavastu, by Osamu Tezuka

6,500 pages (YTD 29,800)
3/24 (YTD 14/97) by women
2/24 (YTD 5/97) by PoC

NB that I reviewed The Compleat Enchanter in iambic pentameter.

The one I enjoyed most was The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson’s classic horror tale, which you can get here. There were a lot of other good ones, and I guess my favourite reread was Fahrenheit 451, which you can get here. I thoroughly bounced off Galactic Patrol, 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.

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.