November 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 (though this one is very soon after the previous one, which was late) 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
From here on it gets much easier to track my own movements, as this was the month I signed up for Foursquare (now Swarm) and faithfully recorded places I had been.
So I know that in the course of the month, I went to Berlin (cannot now remember why), Moldova (to meet our client there), London (again, cannot remember why) and Dubrovnik (to speak at a conference). That's quite a lot. I was still using the crappy HTC Desire, the worst gadget I have ever bought, but got one good photo of locals using the free wifi in Pushkin Park in Chișinău.
My favourite blog post of the month was on what happened to the Doctor Who companions?
I read 26 books in November 2010.
Non-fiction 5 (YTD 66)
Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - the Final Chapter, by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook
The Love Letters of Henry VIII
The Cyprus Question and the EU, by Andreas Theophanous
Shakespeare (the illustrated edition), by Bill Bryson
Elizabeth and Essex, by Lytton Strachey
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 45)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
SF (non-Who) 6 (YTD 68)
The Thunderbirds Bumper Story Book, by Dave Morris
Analog 6, edited by John W. Campbell Jr
The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald
The Book of Lost Tales I, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home, by James Tiptree, Jr.
Utopia, by Thomas More
Doctor Who 8 (YTD 64, 71 counting comics and non-fiction)
The Coming of the Terraphiles, by Michael Moorcock
The Doctor Who Annual 1976
Lucifer Rising, by Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore
System Shock, by Justin Richards
Wolfsbane, by Jacqueline Rayner
Doctor Who Annual 1977
Placebo Effect, by Gary Russell
White Darkness, by David McIntee
Comics 2 (YTD 17)
Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, by Bill Willingham
~7,500 pages (YTD ~83,400)
6/26 (YTD 57/264) by women (McCullough, Mantel, Gregory, Desai, 'Tiptree'/Sheldon, Rayner)
2/26 (YTD 20/264) by PoC (Desai, O'Malley)
The best of these were Ian McDonald's The Dervish House, which you can get here; Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, which you can get here; and Utopia by Thomas More, which you can get here. Shout out also to Huck Finn, which you can get here.
The worst was Theophanous' dismally biased The Cyprus Question and the EU, which you can get here, though I was also underwhelmed by the 1976 and 1977 Doctor Who Annuals, which you can get here and here.
From here on it gets much easier to track my own movements, as this was the month I signed up for Foursquare (now Swarm) and faithfully recorded places I had been.
So I know that in the course of the month, I went to Berlin (cannot now remember why), Moldova (to meet our client there), London (again, cannot remember why) and Dubrovnik (to speak at a conference). That's quite a lot. I was still using the crappy HTC Desire, the worst gadget I have ever bought, but got one good photo of locals using the free wifi in Pushkin Park in Chișinău.
My favourite blog post of the month was on what happened to the Doctor Who companions?
I read 26 books in November 2010.
Non-fiction 5 (YTD 66)
Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - the Final Chapter, by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook
The Love Letters of Henry VIII
The Cyprus Question and the EU, by Andreas Theophanous
Shakespeare (the illustrated edition), by Bill Bryson
Elizabeth and Essex, by Lytton Strachey
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 45)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
SF (non-Who) 6 (YTD 68)
The Thunderbirds Bumper Story Book, by Dave Morris
Analog 6, edited by John W. Campbell Jr
The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald
The Book of Lost Tales I, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home, by James Tiptree, Jr.
Utopia, by Thomas More
Doctor Who 8 (YTD 64, 71 counting comics and non-fiction)
The Coming of the Terraphiles, by Michael Moorcock
The Doctor Who Annual 1976
Lucifer Rising, by Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore
System Shock, by Justin Richards
Wolfsbane, by Jacqueline Rayner
Doctor Who Annual 1977
Placebo Effect, by Gary Russell
White Darkness, by David McIntee
Comics 2 (YTD 17)
Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, by Bill Willingham
~7,500 pages (YTD ~83,400)
6/26 (YTD 57/264) by women (McCullough, Mantel, Gregory, Desai, 'Tiptree'/Sheldon, Rayner)
2/26 (YTD 20/264) by PoC (Desai, O'Malley)
The best of these were Ian McDonald's The Dervish House, which you can get here; Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, which you can get here; and Utopia by Thomas More, which you can get here. Shout out also to Huck Finn, which you can get here.
The worst was Theophanous' dismally biased The Cyprus Question and the EU, which you can get here, though I was also underwhelmed by the 1976 and 1977 Doctor Who Annuals, which you can get here and here.