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 February with a trip to Geneva, and then went to the USA for my usual east coast run, starting with Boskone and continuing to Washington and New York. After New York I visited my grandmother’s childhood home in Plainfield, New Jersey.
At work there was significant news in the big picture, as Kosovo declared independence and the Greek Cypriots voted out their hardline president and voted in a more pro-peace process candidate (who unfortunately turned out to be a complete idiot). On the smaller scale my Spanish intern S left for a public affairs job with a big petrochemical company; she has since moved into corporate sustainability and social responsibility, and lives mainly in Mexico. Her replacement E was German, and actually reminded me after I’d hired her that her sister is a friend of mine (their surname not all that uncommon).
With the massive amount of US travel, I got through 31 books in a 29-day month.
Non-fiction 12 (YTD 16)
The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway
The UN Sanctions against Yugoslavia, by Rita Augestad Knudsen
Understanding Somalia and Somaliland, by Ioan Lewis
The Lyncher In Me, by Warren Read
Africa: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader
Sarajevo Rose, by Stephen Schwartz
The Presidential Book of Lists, by Ian Randal Strock
Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus, Rebecca Bryant
Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict, eds Yiannis Papadakis, Nicos Peristianis and Gisela Welz
Write It When I’m Gone, by Thomas M. DeFrank (about Gerald Ford)
Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, by Stephen Jay Gould
Kosovo: What Everyone Needs To Know, by Tim Judah
Non-genre 2 (YTD 6)
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
Scripts 3 (YTD 7)
All’s Well That Ends Well, by William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare
Othello, by William Shakespeare
SF 6 (YTD 14)
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller jr
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by JK Rowling
The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by T.E. Lawrence
The Stand, by Stephen King
Red Branch, by Morgan Llewellyn
Shambling Towards Hiroshima, by James Morrow
Doctor Who 7 (YTD 8)
Foreign Devils, by Andrew Cartmel
The Doctor Who Annual 1967
Blood and Hope, by Iain McLaughlin
The Coming of the Queen, by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett
Doctor Who: The Ghosts of N-Space, by Barry Letts
Short Trips: Repercussions, edited by Gary Russell
Only Human, by Gareth Roberts
Comics 1 (YTD 2)
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark, by John Coulthart
9,200 pages (YTD 14,900)
7/31 by women (YTD 10/53)
0/31 by PoC (YTD 1/53)
The Odyssey is originally poetry, of course, but Lawrence’s translation is prose so I’m listing it as sf.
Somehow Blood and Hope wasn’t listed when I previously did this exercise, but the number of books was still 31, so I guess I just accidentally deleted it at the last moment.
The best of these were sf classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, a re-read, which you can get here, and Jill Ker Conway‘s autobiograhy, The Road from Coorain, which you can get here. Unimpressed by two of the Doctor Who books, Cartmel’s novella Foreign Devils, which you can get here, and also Short Trips: Repercussions, a rare miss in the anthology series, which you can get here.
