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 month I went to the Political Studies Association conference in Bath to do a panel debate on Europe, and travelled back to London talking to the journalist Tim Sebastian, which was fun.

In family news, my brother and his wife welcomed their new daughter. Also I turned 40, but I don’t seem to have done much in the way of celebration; B’s behaviour at home was getting very difficult, and we just didn’t have the energy.

I wrote about Dodo Chaplet as well.

I read 21 books in April 2007.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 24)
In Search of the Dark Ages, by Michael Wood
Field of Bones: An Irish Division in Gallipoli, by Philip Orr
After Dinner Speaking, by Fawcett Boom
A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
800 Years of Women’s Letters, edited by Olga Kenyon (did not finish)

Non-genre 2 (YTD 8)
The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust
The Search For Roots: a personal anthology, compiled by Primo Levi

sf 9 (YTD 26)
The Book of Imaginary Beings, compiled by Jorge Luis Borges
Temeraire, by Naomi Novik
Glasshouse, by Charles Stross
Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
Blindsight, by Peter Watts
Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn
Narn i Chîn Húrin: the Tale of the Children of Húrin, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Blindness, by José Saramago
The Way to Babylon, by Paul Kearney

Comics 3 (YTD 9)
The Last Temptation, by Neil Gaiman
Alias vol. 1, by Brian Michael Bendis
Alias vol 2: Come Home, by Brian Michael Bendis

Doctor Who 2 (YTD 13)
Made of Steel, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters, by Terrance Dicks

5,900 pages (YTD 24,700)
2/21 by women (YTD 19/80)
none by PoC (YTD 2/80)

Best of the month: Tolkien’s Children of Húrin, which you can get here, and Saramago’s Blindness, which you can get here. Worst by far: Fawcett Boom’s pointless guide to After Dinner Speaking, 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.

The Northern Ireland Assembly had an election in March 2007, the last one for which I did not do TV commentary, though I went over a few days later in the wake of P-Con and delivered a lecture about voting.

Apart from that, I had a day-trip to the Hague, and a longer trip to Vienna and Prishtina, all for work.

And I hired my first intern in the new job. J was an intelligent young woman who had tried various career options which didn’t work out, and was prepared to give working in international politics a fling. I’m glad to say that she caught the bug and is now a British diplomat. It also turned out that her elder brother was friends with their neighbour Rebecca Nation, the daughter of Terry Nation who wrote a lovely book for her, and J had played with real Daleks as a child. (For certain values of “real”.) I met Rebecca and Joel Nation earlier this year, and they were amused by the connection.

I read 14 books that month.

Non-fiction 3 (YTD 19)
Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite, by Carne Ross
Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower, by John Brady Kiesling
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, by James Shapiro

SF 4 (YTD 17)
Glorifying Terrorism, ed. Farah Mendlesohn
Master of Earth and Water, by Diana L. Paxson and Adrienne Martine-Barnes
Living Next Door to the God of Love, by Justina Robson
Spin Control, by Chris Moriarty

Comics 1 (YTD 6)
Blankets, by Craig Thompson

Doctor Who 6 (YTD 11)
Doctor Who – The Massacre, by John Lucarotti
Doctor Who – The Ark, by Paul Erickson
Doctor Who – The Celestial Toymaker, by Gerry Davis and Alison Bingeman
Doctor Who – The Gunfighters, by Donald Cotton
Doctor Who – The Savages, by Ian Stuart Black
Doctor Who – The War Machines, by Ian Stuart Black

4,000 pages (YTD 18,400)
5/14 by women (YTD 17/59)
None by PoC (YTD 2/59)

The two best of these were the excellent graphic novel Blankets, which you can get here, and Shapiro’s look at Shakespeare in 1599, which you can get here. I do not particularly recommend the novelisation of problematic Doctor Who story The Celestial Toymaker, but you can get it here anyway (at a price).

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.

February 2007 was the historic month that I joined Facebook. The travel highlight was a trip to the USA, taking in New York and Washington DC as usual, and finishing in very snowy Rockport, Maine, where I spoke at the annual Camden Conference.

Also more Doctor Who fan art from young F, this time a crossover with Spongebob – what if he partly changed his house into the Tardis?

Transatlantic travel and uninterrupted commuting by train allowed me to read 24 books:

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 16)
A Soldier in Time: The Nicholas Courtney Memoirs, by Nicholas Courtney
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1966-1969, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
Endgame in the Balkans: Regime Change, European Style, by Elizabeth Pond
The Three Yugoslavias, by Sabrina P. Ramet
Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze? And 114 Other Questions, edited by Mick O’Hare
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips
The Iraq Study Group Report, co-chairs James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, Executive Director Daniel Serwer
William Howard Taft: A Conservative’s Conception of the Presidency, by Donald F. Anderson
1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs – the Election That Changed the Country, by James Chace

Non-genre 2 (YTD 6)
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Murder at the Worldcon, by J.D. Crayne

sf 6 (YTD 13)
Idolon, by Mark Budz
Mindscape, by Andrea Hairston
Carnival, by Elizabeth Bear
Spin State, by Chris Moriarty
Recursion, by Tony Ballantyne
Catalyst, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 5)
Salvation, by Steve Lyons
Bunker Soldiers, by Martin Day
The Man in the Velvet Mask, by Daniel O’Mahony
Who Killed Kennedy?, by James Stevens and David Bishop

Comics 3 (YTD 5)
Preacher [#4]: Ancient History, by Garth Ennis
The Invisibles [#1]: Say You want A Revolution, by Grant Morrison
100%, by Paul Pope

7,900 pages (YTD 14,400)
8/24 (YTD 12/45) by women
1/24 (YTD 2/45) by PoC

The best of these was Julie Phillips’ biography of James Tiptree Jr / Alice B. Sheldon (get it here), though I also liked Elizabeth Bear’s Carnival (get it here) and About Time 4 (get it here) very much. I really hated The Catcher in the Rye (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.

Momentous times as I started my new job and new office. My first visitor was former Labour MP Dick Leonard. I travelled to London in the first week of January to meet new colleagues, and to Kosovo and Cyprus later in the month for business. Despite only just starting one new job, I interviewed for another when a long-dormant application came to life; I did not get it. I also had the miserable experience of having a laptop stolen at the Gare du Nord in Brussels.

Young F delighted us with this piece of fan art.

Now that I had started commuting largely by train, my reading rate shot up and I read 21 books in January 2007:

Non-fiction 7
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
Actors of the Century: a Play-Lover’s Gleanings From Theatrical Annals, by Frederic Whyte
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1963-1966, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
Machiavelli in Brussels: The Art of Lobbying the EU, by Rinus van Schendelen
Who on Earth is Tom Baker?
To Engineer is Human, by Henry Petroski
From Behind a Closed Door: Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising, by Brian Barton

Non-genre 4
The Sexual Life of Catherine M., by Catherine Millet
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
The Book of Proper Names, by Amélie Nothomb
Starter for Ten, by David Nicholls

SF 7
A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett
The Secret Visitors, by James White
The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Variable Star, by Robert A Heinlein and Spider Robinson
The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass
Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson

Doctor Who 1
The Eight Doctors, by Terrance Dicks

Comics 2
Preacher [#3]: Proud Americans, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Caricature, by Daniel Clowes

6,500 pages
4/21 by women
1/21 by a PoC

The best new reads here were the first of the Wood and Miles Doctor Who volumes, which you can get here, and the first of Bujold’s Sharing Knife series, which you can get here. The worst was Rinus van Schendelen’s incomprehensible guide to EU lobbying; you can get the revised (and possibly improved) edition here.