October 2012 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.
My Georgia work culminated with our client winning the election. I have not agreed with everything he has done since, but I'm really glad to have contributed to this moment of Georgian history.
I brought back a souvenir for little U.
This moment of elation was tempered by the awfully sad news of the sudden death of my youngest aunt, Denise Keenan, aged only 54 - the same age that I am now. Just a few weeks ago I posted the last picture I took of her in May 2012, grinning widely (as usual) at the front of a family group.
Less dramatically, we had local elections here in Belgium, and as usual I asked the candidates difficult questions. Our mayor was running for a seventh six-year term, having been in office since 1976; he lost.
Apart from two visits to Tbilisi and a sad journey to Ireland, I also went to Barcelona, and to London for a Worldcon meeting.
In my office, my Doctor Who-loving Colombian intern L was hired by one of the other Brussels consultancies who had worked on the Georgian dossier, and is still with them, though no longer in Brussels. She was replaced by MG, French but more or less naturalised to Geneva, taking a brief Brussels phase in her career.
Rather a low page-count and book tally for the month, but I was about to finish three longer books.
Non-fiction: 2 (YTD 43)
The Twilight Lords, by Richard Berleth
Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England, by Stuart Maconie
Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 38)
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson
The Tartan Sell, by Jonathan Gash
SF (non-Who): 1 (YTD 56)
Conquest of the Amazon, by John Russell Fearn
Doctor Who: 6 (YTD 64)
Torchwood: Consequences, by David Llewellyn, Sarah Pinborough, Andrew Cartmel, James Moran and Joseph Lidster
Day of the Cockroach, by Steve Lyons
The Nu-Humans, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
The Empty House, by Simon Guerrier
Combat Rock, by Mick Lewis
Infinite Requiem, by Daniel Blythe
~2,300 pages (YTD 64,800)
1/11 (YTD 60/224) by women (Pinborough)
1/11 (YTD 10/224) by PoC (Johnson)
The two best of these were the Torchwood short story collection Consequences, which you can get here, and Stuart Maconie's Adventures on the High Teas, which you can get here. You can skip J. Russell Fearn's Conquest of the Amazon, which I admit I only bought because of the cover; but if you want you can probably get it here.
My Georgia work culminated with our client winning the election. I have not agreed with everything he has done since, but I'm really glad to have contributed to this moment of Georgian history.
I brought back a souvenir for little U.
This moment of elation was tempered by the awfully sad news of the sudden death of my youngest aunt, Denise Keenan, aged only 54 - the same age that I am now. Just a few weeks ago I posted the last picture I took of her in May 2012, grinning widely (as usual) at the front of a family group.
Less dramatically, we had local elections here in Belgium, and as usual I asked the candidates difficult questions. Our mayor was running for a seventh six-year term, having been in office since 1976; he lost.
Apart from two visits to Tbilisi and a sad journey to Ireland, I also went to Barcelona, and to London for a Worldcon meeting.
In my office, my Doctor Who-loving Colombian intern L was hired by one of the other Brussels consultancies who had worked on the Georgian dossier, and is still with them, though no longer in Brussels. She was replaced by MG, French but more or less naturalised to Geneva, taking a brief Brussels phase in her career.
Rather a low page-count and book tally for the month, but I was about to finish three longer books.
Non-fiction: 2 (YTD 43)
The Twilight Lords, by Richard Berleth
Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England, by Stuart Maconie
Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 38)
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson
The Tartan Sell, by Jonathan Gash
SF (non-Who): 1 (YTD 56)
Conquest of the Amazon, by John Russell Fearn
Doctor Who: 6 (YTD 64)
Torchwood: Consequences, by David Llewellyn, Sarah Pinborough, Andrew Cartmel, James Moran and Joseph Lidster
Day of the Cockroach, by Steve Lyons
The Nu-Humans, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
The Empty House, by Simon Guerrier
Combat Rock, by Mick Lewis
Infinite Requiem, by Daniel Blythe
~2,300 pages (YTD 64,800)
1/11 (YTD 60/224) by women (Pinborough)
1/11 (YTD 10/224) by PoC (Johnson)
The two best of these were the Torchwood short story collection Consequences, which you can get here, and Stuart Maconie's Adventures on the High Teas, which you can get here. You can skip J. Russell Fearn's Conquest of the Amazon, which I admit I only bought because of the cover; but if you want you can probably get it here.