April 2010 books
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.
The highlight of April 2010 for me personally was a school reunion in Belfast, 25 years on from our A-levels. I wrote a long piece about it at the time:
Not all of my group of close friends made it, but two did.
I was possibly a bit tipsy when talking to the classmate who is probably most famous in Northern Ireland, now a TV weather forecaster.
I had some other excitement on the trip too, but the party was a personal highlight for me.
Later in the month I went to Southern Sudan (now South Sudan) for a third time, with my colleague L (who now runs the Whitlam Institute in Sydney). We were stuck in Addis Ababa for two unexpected days on the way out, and to make matters worse this was the week of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, so it was not at all clear how we would get home. (A colleague got home to the USA from the UK by going overland to Madrid and flying from there.) Eventually we made it to Juba just as the ash clouds were beginning to clear over Europe. The best part of the trip was meeting the famous Dan Eiffe; the worst was that I got the worst stomach bug of all my African trips, and was still as sick as a dog on my birthday after I had got home. Before the bacteria hit, a friend of L's took a nice picture of me and her by the River Nile.
The end of the month saw me in Belfast again, but that story is for next time.
I read 30 books in the 30 days of April; I have reclassified some of them since my first record.
Non-Fiction 3 (YTD 21)
Untold Stories, by Alan Bennett
Triumph of a Time Lord, by Matt Hills
The Twilight of Atheism, by Alister McGrath
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 20)
The Great Dinosaur Robbery, by David Forrest
One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, by John Harvey
Unauthorised Departure, by Maureen O'Brien
Njal's Saga
The Hanging Garden, by Ian Rankin
Poetry, plays, religious literature 4
The Emperor's Babe, by Bernardine Evaristo
Double Falshood, or, The Distrest Lovers, by William Shakespeare et al
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
The Koran
SF (non-Who) 9 (YTD 32)
The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
Seasons of Plenty, by Colin Greenland
Impossible Things, by Connie Willis
The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin
Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett
Stress Pattern, by Neal Barrett jr
Judge Dredd, by Neal Barrett jr
Doctor Who etc fiction 7 (YTD 24, 27 counting comics and non-fiction)
Nightshade, by Mark Gatiss
Kursaal, by Peter Anghelides
Sick Building, by Paul Magrs
Doctor Who Annual 1970
The Forgotten Army, by Brian Minchin
The Runaway Train, by Oli Smith
Short Trips: The Centenarian, edited by Ian Farrington
Comics 2 (YTD 2)
Fables vol 12: The Dark Ages, by Bill Willingham
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman
Page count ~8,900 (YTD ~31,300) including a notional 100 for The Runaway Train.
6/30 (YTD 22/103) by women (Evaristo, O'Brien, Bujold, Willis, Jones, Jemisin)
2/30 (YTD 9/103) by PoC (Evaristo, Jemisin)
I'm going a bit overboard on recommendations and disrecommendations this time.
The highlight of April 2010 for me personally was a school reunion in Belfast, 25 years on from our A-levels. I wrote a long piece about it at the time:
Not all of my group of close friends made it, but two did.
I was possibly a bit tipsy when talking to the classmate who is probably most famous in Northern Ireland, now a TV weather forecaster.
I had some other excitement on the trip too, but the party was a personal highlight for me.
Later in the month I went to Southern Sudan (now South Sudan) for a third time, with my colleague L (who now runs the Whitlam Institute in Sydney). We were stuck in Addis Ababa for two unexpected days on the way out, and to make matters worse this was the week of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, so it was not at all clear how we would get home. (A colleague got home to the USA from the UK by going overland to Madrid and flying from there.) Eventually we made it to Juba just as the ash clouds were beginning to clear over Europe. The best part of the trip was meeting the famous Dan Eiffe; the worst was that I got the worst stomach bug of all my African trips, and was still as sick as a dog on my birthday after I had got home. Before the bacteria hit, a friend of L's took a nice picture of me and her by the River Nile.
The end of the month saw me in Belfast again, but that story is for next time.
I read 30 books in the 30 days of April; I have reclassified some of them since my first record.
Non-Fiction 3 (YTD 21)
Untold Stories, by Alan Bennett
Triumph of a Time Lord, by Matt Hills
The Twilight of Atheism, by Alister McGrath
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 20)
The Great Dinosaur Robbery, by David Forrest
One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, by John Harvey
Unauthorised Departure, by Maureen O'Brien
Njal's Saga
The Hanging Garden, by Ian Rankin
Poetry, plays, religious literature 4
The Emperor's Babe, by Bernardine Evaristo
Double Falshood, or, The Distrest Lovers, by William Shakespeare et al
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
The Koran
SF (non-Who) 9 (YTD 32)
The Vor Game, by Lois McMaster Bujold
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
Seasons of Plenty, by Colin Greenland
Impossible Things, by Connie Willis
The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin
Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett
Stress Pattern, by Neal Barrett jr
Judge Dredd, by Neal Barrett jr
Doctor Who etc fiction 7 (YTD 24, 27 counting comics and non-fiction)
Nightshade, by Mark Gatiss
Kursaal, by Peter Anghelides
Sick Building, by Paul Magrs
Doctor Who Annual 1970
The Forgotten Army, by Brian Minchin
The Runaway Train, by Oli Smith
Short Trips: The Centenarian, edited by Ian Farrington
Comics 2 (YTD 2)
Fables vol 12: The Dark Ages, by Bill Willingham
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman
Page count ~8,900 (YTD ~31,300) including a notional 100 for The Runaway Train.
6/30 (YTD 22/103) by women (Evaristo, O'Brien, Bujold, Willis, Jones, Jemisin)
2/30 (YTD 9/103) by PoC (Evaristo, Jemisin)
I'm going a bit overboard on recommendations and disrecommendations this time.
- Given the importance of Iceland in the month's news, Njal's Saga made an impression on me; you can get it here.
- I also enjoyed:
- Triumph of a Time Lord (analysis of Doctor Who) which you can get here,
- The Emperor’s Babe, a story of Roman London written in verse, which you can get here,
- The Lives of Christopher Chant, one of DWJ's Chrestomanci books, which you can get here, and
- Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, Neil Gaiman's contribution to Batman, which you can get here.
- I do not recommend:
- The Twilight of Atheism, smug Christian apologetics, which you can get here, or
- Sick Building, a particularly poor effort at writing Doctor Who for younger readers, which you can get here.