This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

I had two nice trips with Anne that month, first to Bruges, where I became fascinated by the portraits of Baron de Keverberg and his young English wife:

And then to Sofia, Bulgaria, where my former intern M married D, who I had introduced her to in the summer of 2013.

The celebrations unfortunately had to be downscaled at the last moment because it was the weekend of the Paris terrorist attacks, and D was the foreign minister of Bulgaria at the time. We returned to a locked down Brussels, where worse was to come a few months later.

This was also the month that I formally took on the role of Hugo Administrator for 2017, with Colette Fozard as my deputy. And in London for a work trip, I looked at Charles Babbage’s brain and Jonathan Swift’s cranial cavity in the Hunterian Museum.

I read 33 books that month (though in a couple of cases these were short story collections where I read only the ones from 1940).

Non-fiction: 2 (YTD 45)
The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar
Bits of Me are Falling Apart, by William Leith

Fiction (non-sf): 8 (YTD 40)
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah
The Summer Before the Dark, by Doris Lessing
Sleepyhead, by Mark Billingham
The Invention of Happiness, by Brian W. Aldiss
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
Babes in a Darkling Wood, by H.G. Wells
Waiting for Elizabeth, by Joan Rosier-Jones

SF (non-Who): 16 (YTD 112)
The Ultimate Egoist, by Theodore Sturgeon (1940 stories only)
Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories vol 2, eds. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
The Clock Strikes Twelve And Other Stories, by H. Russell Wakefield
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein (1940 stories only)
Kallocain, by Karin Boye
The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White
Somewhere! / هُناك , by Ibraheem Abbas
A Million Years to Conquer, by Henry Kuttner
Monkey Planet, by Pierre Boulle
Twice in Time, by Manly Wade Wellman
North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 1, ed. von Dimpleheimer
Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 2, ed. von Dimpleheimer
The Wonder City of Oz, by John R. Neill

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 39)
The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton
To the Slaughter, by Steve Cole
Oblivion, by Dave Stone
[Doctor Who: The Glamour Chronicles] Deep Time, by Trevor Baxendale

Comics : 3 (YTD 16)
The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
Saga Volume 4, by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
De Tweede Kus, by Conz

~8,600 pages (YTD 72,600)
6/33 by women (YTD 76/261) – Munro, Lessing, Rosier-Jones, Boye, Jones, Staples
2/33 by PoC (YTD 17/261) – Abbas, Staples

The best this month were Alice Munro’s collection Too Much Happiness, which you can get here; Scott McCloud’s graphic novel The Sculptor, which you can get here; and (a reread) the third part of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which you can get here.

On the other hand, The Wonder City of Oz has been justly forgotten. You can get it here (for a price).

This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

I started the month in Windsor at a work retreat, and had another trip to London within the week, followed by a family trip to Luxembourg and another work trip to Geneva. The best photograph I took all month was actually of the Dijlepark in Leuven at twilight on the 31st.

With lots of daytime travel I read only 15 books that month.

Non-fiction: 5 (YTD 43)
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 6: Peter Davison and Colin Baker, by Elizabeth Sandifer
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us: Or Why You Have No Idea How Your Mind Works, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to “Faerie”, by Verlyn Flieger
A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571-1641, by Jon G. Crawford
Family Britain, 1951-1957, by David Kynaston
    

Fiction (non-sf): 1 (YTD 32)
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo

SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 96)
Jacaranda, by Cherie Priest
Forsaken, by Kelley Armstrong (did not finish)
Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds
The Arabian Nights, ed. Muhsin Mahdi, tr. Hussein Haddawy
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
Slan, by A.E. van Vogt
     

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 35)
Business Unusual, by Gary Russell
The Deadstone Memorial, by Trevor Baxendale
Walking to Babylon by Kate Orman
  

~6,400 pages (YTD 64,000)
4/15 by women (YTD 68/228) – Flieger, Priest, Armstrong, Orman
1/15 by PoC (YTD 15/228) – Mahdi/Haddawy

The best of these was of course Les Misérables, which you can get here; the best new reads were The Invisible Gorilla, which you can get here, and Family Britain, 1951-1957, which you can get here.

I bounced off Kelley Armstrong’s Forsaken, but you can get it here.

This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

A busy travel month, as I visited London, Barcelona and, for the only time in my life so far, Nigeria for work purposes, and also went to my cousin’s housewarming/wedding party in Luxembourg.

En route to the latter, we detoured to Trier in Germany, where the Emperor Constantine’s throne room, built in the early 300’s, is now the main Protestant church in the city and was hosting a sculpture exhibition.

As we drove home, the EU summit was sorting out Greece’s finances.

Puppy madness was still dominating my reading time, so I read only 18 books that month.

Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 27)
Splintered Light: Tolkien’s World, by Verlyn Flieger
The Prisoner, by Dave Rogers
Gulp, by Mary Roach
The King’s Speech, by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

Fiction (non-sf): 4 (YTD 22)
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson
Ulysses, by James Joyce
The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hust

SF (non-Who): 3 (YTD 77)
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear (did not finish, 100 pages only)
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
Kushiel’s Mercy, by Jacqueline Carey

Doctor Who, etc: 6 (YTD 28)
Killing Ground, by Steve Lyons
Halflife, by Mark Michalowski
Ghost Devices, by Simon Bucher-Jones
Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal by William H. Keith, Jr.
Doctor Who and the Rebel’s Gamble by William H. Keith, Jr.
Doctor Who – The Drosten’s Curse, by A.L. Kennedy

Comics : 1 (YTD 11)
Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, by Mary M. Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot

~6,300 pages (YTD 43,700)
9/18 by women (YTD 48/165) – Flieger, Roach, Catton, Jansen, Hustvedt, Kennedy, Talbot/Charlesworth
0/18 by PoC (YTD 11/147)

The best new read of these was Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, which you can get here, though I also enjoyed returning to Ulysses, which you can get here, and A Scanner Darkly, which you can get here.

I thoroughly bounced off The Sorrows of an American, but you can get it here.