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 saw in the New Year with Anne’s brother and his wife, and a big chunk of slow-cooked venison; and then immediately zoomed off to Birmingham to watch John Barrowman in pantomime. While we were in the theatre, it was announced that Matt Smith would be David Tennant’s successor on Doctor Who. Otherwise I didn’t travel and it was cold.
I see that I previously counted The Stainless Steel Rat Omnibus as a single book, but it is a compilation of three novels so I am increasing the SF total by 2.
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 had one of the strangest days ever at work on 11 December 2008, when I had not one but two presidents of unrecognised states in my office at different times. (They did not and still do not recognise each other, so I had to juggle schedules carefully.) Sadly, neither is in office any more; Mehmet Ali Talat lost his re-election bid in 2010, and Mohamed Abdelaziz died in 2016.
I put a lot of energy into following the fall of the Belgian government the following week. All forgotten now, though coincidentally it has just fallen again. I joined Twitter, and my first Tweet was a link to my review of Terry Pratchett’s Nation.
I was in London in the first week of the month, but otherwise in Belgium. Christmas seems to have been just us, with a bit of a rabbit theme.
I read only 16 books in December, the end of an epic year where my 371 books was a record that still stands.
4,100 pages (total 89,400) 2/16 by women (total 49/371) None by PoC (total 6/371)
Again, I’m going to be nice and single out four good books here:
The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, which is my book of the year for 2008; you can get it here.
As You Like It, a Shakespeare play I had not previously encountered; you can get it here.
Nation, by Terry Pratchett: “the perfect world is a journey, not a place”; you can get it here.
The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco, a tremendous evocation of a tragic time and place; you can get it here.
2008 books roundup
The 371 books I read in 2008 remain my record for a single year – boosted by easily digestible Doctor Who novelisations and fairly brief Shakespeare plays. I did a roundup at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system (and reclassifying a few books as well).
Doctor Who: 172 fiction other than comics (47% – biggest of any year); 182 all Doctor Who books (49%; also biggest of any year)
Best of 2008: Two of the First Doctor novelisations, the very first one, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, which you can get here, and Donald Cotton’s Doctor Who – The Romans, which you can get here. Best original fiction: All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane, in which the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny encounter Sherlock Holmes and the Great Old Ones. You can get it here. Best non-fiction: Who Goes There, by Nick Griffiths, exploring the locations of Doctor Who filming around England and Wales; you can get it here. The one you haven’t heard of: Time and Relative, by Kim Newman, a novella set on Earth in 1963 before the Doctor and his granddaughter meet Ian and Barbara. At a cost, you can get it here. The one to avoid: Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, a dreadful adaptation of a dreadful story. You can get it here.
Non-fiction: 70 (19%, a tad below average)
Best of 2008: Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl; as mentioned already, you can get it here. Runner-up: The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi; you can get it here. The one you haven’t heard of: Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union, by Christine Mahoney, a great explanation of the world of my work; you can get it here. Worst of 2007: J.R.R.Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, by Daniel Grotta, a poor effort. You can get it here.
SF (other than Doctor Who): 53 (14%, lowest of any year – squeezed out by Doctor Who books)
Best of 2008: Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, which I hadn’t read before. You can get it here. Runners-up: Terry Practchett’s Nation, as noted above, which you can get here; and Silverberg’s Hall of Fame anthology, which you can get here. The one you haven’t heard of: The Fifth Interzone Anthology, which you can get here. The one to avoid: Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice – the most awful tosh. You can get it here.
Non-genre fiction 24 (6%, probably a record low)
Best of 2008: Vanity Fair, Thackeray’s story of life among the declining gentry of the early nineteenth century. You can get it here.
At the top, it’s difficult to choose between Romeo and Juliet (which you can get here), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (here) and As You Like It (here) as my favourite Shakespeare of the year; also enjoyed the two rather less well known scripts I read, Improbable Frequency (about Schrodinger in Ireland, here) and The Office (here). However I really bounced off both The Taming of the Shrew (here) and Love’s Labour’s Lost (here).
Comics 6 (2%, a record low)
Best of 2008: The Fixer (here), as noted above, and Jessica Jones vol 4 (here). The one you haven’t heard of: Macedonia, written by Harvey Pekar, Heather Roberson, art by Ed Piskor; you can get it here. The one to avoid: Tales of Human Waste, by Warren Ellis; you can get it here.
My book of the year 2008, as noted above, was Anne Frank’s Diary, which I have also written about here and here. If you haven’t yet read it, you should. And as mentioned twice above, 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.
By great good chance I happened to be in New York during the first week of November 2008, 18 years ago this month, so I was able to witness at first hand the jubilation around Obama’s first election as President. It’s a nice coincidence for this month to come up now in my schedule of posts as we brace for the results of the mid-terms.
We also had a lovely weekend in Cambridge, marred however by the car breaking down on the Brussels ring road just as we were nearing home at 3.30 am.
Literally the following day, I went on one of my regular visits to Cyprus. I filmed a few streetscape shots of the northern part of Nicosia, with the intention of sharing them with work colleagues, but in the end was not satisfied with either the sound or the picture quality. Still, for posterity, here they are.
With transatlantic and Cyprus travels, I read 32 books in November 2008.
9,200 pages (YTD 85,300) 8/32 by women (YTD 47/355) none by PoC (YTD 355)
I’m going to single out four good ones this month:
Who Goes There (Travels through Strangest Britain, in Search of the Doctor), by Nick Griffiths – a great book about looking for famous Doctor Who locations in England and Wales, while dealing with real life as well. You can get it here.
The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, a lovely little novella about Queen Elizabeth II suddenly deciding to start reading, and the viciously negative reactions of her advisers to her new habit. You can get it here.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time, edited by Robert Silverberg, one of those classic collections, assembling the top sf stories published before 1965 as voted for by the membership of SFWA in the late 1960s. You can get it here.
Alias vol 4: The Secret Origins of Jessica Jones, by Brian Michael Bendis and others; so many pages here where Bendis and the artists achieve statements that couldn’t be made in any other medium – the schooldays flashback, Jessica’s first encounter with other superheroes, and the unspoken parts of her conversations with her friends and lovers. 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 October 2008, 18 years ago this month, with a day in Paris, and visited The Hague overnight mid-month. For half term we visited my sister in France, to meet very new baby S. F was enchanted; U fascinated, though we had to monitor her interactions quite carefully.
The big political news of the month for me was the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to former president Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, who I had worked with quite a lot in my time with the International Crisis Group. He was one of the most impressive people I ever met. Meanwhile globally the financial crisis gathered pace.
At work, my super-effective American intern D moved on; she is now a foreign service officer with the US State Department. Her replacement was Spanish S.
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 spent most of August in Loughbrickland as usual, catching the partial solar eclipse on our way over and the total lunar eclipse two weeks later.
F and I visited the Doctor Who exhibition in Earl’s Court on the way over, I looked in on DWCon in Birmingham on the way back, and I finished the month at the Bled Forum in Slovenia.
In world news, this was the month of the South Ossetia war, bringing back sad memories of my visit to Tskhinvali in 2005.
9200 pages (YTD 63,000) 7/34 (YTD 29/274) by women None (YTD 6/274) by PoC NB that P.J.T. Glendening appears to be Peter Joseph Glendening (1926-2023). I have found a photograph of him as a child and he does not appear to be a writer of colour.
Best and worst: the second series of The Office seemed to me somehow more coherent than the first and very nicely done; you can get the scripts here. Proust finishes on a high note; you can get the last volume here. On the other hand, the Bakers’ novelisation of Time and the Rani is awful; 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.
July 2008 began very painfully. At the very end of June I had a vasectomy, and with somewhat imperfect timing moved office a few days later, thinking I would have recovered over the weekend. No. My testicles were swollen to the size of a tennis ball (felt much bigger) and I could barely walk. My gallant intern D and neighbour J did most of the packing up of the old office, and young F joined in the trip to IKEA and putting furniture together. I should also chronicle that the first external visitor to the office was A, who then worked for AP across the corridor but is now largely freelance and actually interviewed me last week. Here is D, screwdriver at the ready, wishing I would start helping her rather than sitting in the comfy chair taking photos.
More cheerfully, Anne’s brother R married V. I attended the civil ceremony in Etterbeek Town Hall.
And we all attended the religious ceremony in the Église Sainte-Croix (the one off Place Flagey) a week later.
F had his ninth birthday at the end of the month, and two friends came round to meet the star attraction.
I had a day trip to London at the end of the month, and on 1 August we set off for our summer holiday.
6,000 pages (YTD 53,800) 7/34 by women (YTD 22/240) 2/34 by PoC (YTD 6/240) – NB that Glen McCoy was the first non-white writer of Doctor Who.
When I wrote this month up first time round in 2020, I singled out The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi, which you can get here, and Richard Calmady, which you can get here. In retrospect, though, the book that has lingered most warmly in my memory is Farthing, by Jo Walton, which you can get here. Worst of the month, and in the running for worst Doctor Who book ever, was Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, which if you really want 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.
We celebrated the summer solstice by having a party in our back garden – something we have done very rarely, in fact. Some nice pictures, though a lot of friends have since moved away. I wish I had taken more. (I also wish I had had my eyes open in the only one taken of me.)
Unfortunately eating leftovers I cracked a tooth on an olive stone, and the following week I had a brief visit to the hospital for a vasectomy; this was not brilliant timing for reasons I’ll explain in the July write-up.
I don’t seem to have travelled, so with the regular commute I read no less than 49 books, my second highest monthly total ever, many of them short and easily digestible Doctor Who novels.
9,400 pages (YTD 47,800) 3/49 by women (YTD 15/206) 1/49 by PoC (YTD 4/206)
I gave four of these 4½ stars out of five at the time, but the only one I can remember much about is A History of the Arab Peoples, which you can get here. The worst is Peter Grimwade’s novelisation of Time Flight, 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.
Started May 2008 with a long weekend at my sister’s in France; later on travelled to Montenegro and Albania, and then for a day to Belfast.
Plenty of daytime travel and easily consumed reading meant I got through 39 books that month:
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.
April 2008 was the month that we applied for Belgian citizenship. A rare month (before 2020) when I don’t seem to have left the country at all, having arrived home from Ireland late on 31 March and departed for France early on 1 May. This was also the month that B moved from the place near the Dutch border where she had been living since leaving home in October 2007, to where she now is half an hour east of here.
I remember also a dinner in Brussels with George Soros and a few others, at which he told us that the subprime mortgage crisis would likely lead to a huge financial meltdown in a few months. He was right, of course. (He was saying this in public too.)
Regular commuting (and short Doctor Who novelisations) meant that I read 43 books in April 2008.
9,300 pages (YTD 28,900) 1/43 by a woman (YTD 11/118) None by PoC (YTD 2/118)
I’m not going to be cruel to the books I didn’t like this month, and instead will recommend the four best new reads (with a shout out also to Carpenter’s Tolkien biography, which you can get here): Donald Cotton’s novelisation of the story we now call The Romans, which you can get here; Ian McDonald’s future Brasyl, which you can get here; Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, which you can get here; and Moorcock’s Cornelius Quartet, which you can get here. When I was tallying books back in 2008, I counted the last of these as one volume, but these days I am tallying them separately.
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 with a trip to Cyprus, and the following weekend went to Dublin for P-Con and on to Limerick to give a lecture.
A rare picture taken at Easter weekend of the five of us together:
The long travel to Cyptus and Limerick, and the long weekend, and the short length of the Doctor Who novelisations, meant that I read no less than 44 books in March 2008.
10,900 pages (YTD 19,800) 2/44 by women (YTD 10/75), though I don’t know anything about the author of the Berlitz Turkish Travel Pack or the editor of Pass the Port 2/44 by PoC (YTD 2/75), subject to the same caveat
The best of these was Alan Garner’s classic The Owl Service, which you can get here. The worst by some way are the two novelisations by Nigel Robinson of the stories we now call The Edge of Destruction and The Sensorites, which you can get 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.
4,800 pages (YTD 8,900) not counting the two audiobooks 4/20 (YTD 8/31) by women, though I have no information about the authors of Oxford Take Off In Russian or The Time Out Guide to Rome None so far this year by PoC, subject to the same caveat.
Four of these to particularly recommend: Improbable Frequency, a play about Schrödinger set in Dublin, which you can get here; Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer’s Journey, the story of the classic sf story/book, which you can get here; No Great Mischief, a lovely Scottish Canadian novel, which you can get here; and The Megalithic European, which ticked my archæological boxes, and 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 saw in the new year multinationally, with Belgian friends coming for dinner and cooking a raclette for us (very nice) and then the brother-in-law and his Eastern European fiancée showing up in time for the fireworks. One of F’s Christmas presents was a meccano-style Shark Run roller-coaster, which he set up pretty much single-handed.
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 Lib Dems elected Nick Clegg, Belgium got a new government, and I borrowed my brother-in-law’s suit. No travel for me, but meanwhile little U got birthday cake at school, F got what he wanted for Christmas, and B settled into the snoezelruimte in her new home.
4,100 pages (2007 total 69,900) none by women (2007 total 53/235) none by PoC (2007 total 5/235)
The best and worst of these were all about Doctor Who. I loved both the About Time volume, which you can get here, and the David Butler essay collection, which you can get here. But the Back in Time volume tried constrained its analysis of the programme to a Christian perspective, which misses the mark. You can get it here.
2007 books roundup
I did a roundup at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system (and reclassifying a few books as well).
Non-fiction: 78 (33%, almost as high as 2006 which is the highest for any year I have on record)
Book of the year 2007:Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy, by Alison Bechdel, a brilliant exploration of growing up with family secrets, and your own secrets too. You can (and should) 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 London, and then went to Cyprus for a work trip via Istanbul on the way out and (very briefly) Malta on the way back. Later in the month there was a science fiction convention in Leuven, where I renewed acquaintance with Ken MacLeod and Al Reynolds, and got to know Christopher Priest. I finished the month with a trip to Skopje, including a day excursion to Pristina.
F got his first taste of Doctor Who live when we let him stay up to watch Time Crash. He and I also visited Technopolis in Mechelen, where he had a hair-raising experience:
U delighted us with a little dance.
I read only 11 books in November 2007, still I think decompressing from October. (Also did quite a lot of driving – in Cyprus and between Skopje and Pristina.)
3,800 pages (YTD 65,800) 3/11 by women (YTD 53/222) none by PoC (YTD 5/222)
Several of these were very good, and I’m going to single out The Prestige, by Christopher Priest, which you can get here, and The Steep Approach to Garbadale, by Iain Banks, which you can get here. Mutiny in Space, by Avram Davidson, was pretty awful but you can get it here anyway (without the famous cover).
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 that B finally moved out, initially to a centre up near the Dutch border for a few months. It was of course for the best that she should be with people professionally trained to look after people with her needs. But we found it a pretty difficult transition. She was generally pretty doped up for her last few weeks with us, but I did get a nice picture of her on the final day.
Despite all this, I managed two trips that month, to the frankly disappointing Octocon in Maynooth, and to London at the very end of the month. I had one really funny moment at a seminar in the European Parliament, where the chair, somehow confusing me with Sarah Ludford (who was also participating in the meeting, but not sitting beside me), addressed me as “Baroness Nicholas Whyte”. In a surprise development, Menȝies Campell resigned as Lib Dem leader after only 19 months.
5,100 pages (YTD 62,000) 3/19 by women (YTD 50/211) 1/19 by PoC (YTD 5/211)
Some really good books this month. I’m going to single out Patrick Leigh Fermor’s two classics, which you can get here and here, and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Lord of Emperors, which you can get here. On the other hand, I totally bounced off Vineland, 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.
We spent September 2007, nineteen years ago this month, pretty much in limbo waiting for word on B’s future accommodation once she returned home after a couple of weeks’ respite. At work my Italian intern V left (she went off to run refugee camps and is now raising her family) and was replaced by a Dane, also V (who charmed me on her arrival by revealing that as an exchange student at Michigan State University she had actually shaken hands with Gerald Ford). I had one trip to London.
3,800 pages (YTD 56,900) 1/13 by women (YTD 47/192) None by PoC (YTD 4/192)
My two favourite books of the month were the longest and the shortest: Proust’s second volume, which you can get here, and the lovely wee guide to the history of Belfast, which you can get here. Wooden spoon to E.E. “Doc” Smith’s First Lensman, 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 first part of August 2007 was spent on holiday in Northern Ireland as usual, with MeCon a particular high point. My account of it here and here, but my favourite picture, for sentimental reasons, is this one:
Ian McDonald and Iain Banks
We got back to a very grim situation with B, which culminated in her being removed from the house at the end of the month by three burly ambulancemen to give us a break for a few weeks, still waiting for a permanent residential place to become available. In the meantime we got very little sleep, and were very stressed.
So I only read 13 books that month, mostly non-fiction.
4,100 pages (YTD 53,100) 2/13 by women (YTD 46/179) None by PoC (YTD 4/179)
I’m going to break my usual pattern and list the four books I most enjoyed this month: From the Holy Mountain, by William Dalrymple, which you can get here, Real Fast Food: 350 recipes ready-to-eat in 30 minutes, by Nigel Slater, which you can get here; About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1975-1979, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood, which you can get here; and Not Quite the Diplomat, by Chris Patten, which you can get here.
July 2007 was a fairly dramatic month. My mother-in-law came to stay with us to help with B, whose behaviour was becoming more and more challenging. She stayed in Belgium while the rest of us went on our usual holiday, taking in the two Roald Dahl museums in Buckinghamshire and Paul Cornell’s birthday party. See also speculation on the future of Latveria, and local megaliths. Paul Cornell was not the only person to have a birthday that month.
Because of long journeys (also a work trip to Cyprus with crazy flight connections) and sleepless nights, I managed to read no less than 45 books that month, a number which I have since equalled twice and exceeded twice.
11,000 pages (YTD 49,000) 14/45 by women (YTD 44/166) None by PoC (YTD 4/166)
If I have to pick two of these as particularly good, my choices are feminist sf classic The Female Man by Joanna Russ, which you can get here, and a mother’s account of living with two autistic sons, George and Sam by Charlotte Moore, which you can get here. Wooden spoon to Wilt in Nowhere which bored and repelled me in the first 100 pages, 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.
June 2007 was the month in which B’s behaviour took a serious downward step, and she had to be kept at home from mid-month (just before her 10th birthday) until other arrangements were made later in the year. I had to fly back early from a trip to Greece to help with the situation.
Apart from my curtailed trip to Greece, I also visited Kosovo, reflecting that on the day Tony Blair came to office, 2 May 1997, I returned home from a business trip by way of Slovenia; and on the day he left office, 27 June 2007, I also returned home from a business trip by way of Slovenia. My intern J left (as mentioned before, she is now a British diplomat) and was replaced by Italian V.
Culturally, this was the month both of Blink , the best Doctor Who story ever, and of the revelation at the end of Utopia, one of the best Who twists ever.
4,300 pages (YTD 38,000) 3/15 by women (YTD 30/121) 1/15 by PoC (YTD 4/121)
The best of these was Jung Chang’s history of her own family, Wild Swans. You can get it here. I was disappointed with both John Lucarotti’s novelization of the story we now call The Aztecs, which you can get here, and with Kate Chopin’s 1899 feminist novel The Awakening, 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.
9,000 pages (YTD 33,700) 8/26 by women (YTD 27/106) 1/26 by PoC (YTD 3/106)
The best book of the month for me – indeed, the best book of the year – was Alison Bechdel’s family chronicle, Fun Home, which you can get here. I also hugely enjoyed Sailing to Sarantium, which you can get here. However I thoroughly bounced off Nobel laureate Kertész’ Kaddish for a Child Unborn; you can get it here anyway.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
