November 2013 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.
This of course was the month of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, with Peter Davison's The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot) featuring me in the background of an early crowd scene.
Doctor Who also provided me with one of my most successful Tweets ever ()to the extent that it featured in a Buzzfeed roundup of pictures we can stop tweeting in 2014):
#fb Tom Baker's answer when asked about his favourite memory of #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/li28XFwyXj
- 𝙉𝙞𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙖𝙨 𝙒𝙝𝙮𝙩𝙚 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 (@nwbrux) November 14, 2013
I had a lot of leisure travel this month - we took the long 1 November weekend in Amsterdam, where we visited the Anne Frank House; F and I went to Novacon in Nottingham in the middle of the month (as it happens I am going to this year's Novacon tomorrow); and on 23 November we drove to Germany to see Day of the Doctor in a cinema near Cologne. I also flew to Edinburgh on a work trip, though even there I stayed with Charlie and Feorag. At the end of the month came the sad but not unexpected news of my aunt Nora's death. Here's Jo Walton, the Guest of Honour at Novacon, with the coins that she named her excellent Small Change trilogy after.
Work continued to be unhappy and I started seeing a career counsellor, which was quite expensive but money well spent, as we shall see when I get to that stage.
With a lot of driving, I read only 11 books.
Non-Fiction 3 (YTD 43)
The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I, by Stephen Alford
Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction, by Michael White
Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea
Fiction (non-sf) 2 (YTD 39)
Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
Reamde, by Neal Stephenson
SF (non-Who) 1 (YTD 56)
There Will be Time, by Poul Anderson
Doctor Who etc 5 (YTD 67, 78 counting non-fiction and comics)
Nightdreamers, by Tom Arden
SLEEPY, by Kate Orman
Dark Progeny, by Steve Emmerson
Nothing O'Clock, by Neil Gaiman
Torchwood: Long Time Dead, by Sarah Pinborough
~3,400 pages (YTD ~60,200)
3/11 (YTD 66/235) by women (Paterson, Orman, Pinborough)
0/11 (YTD 10/235) by PoC
The two I enjoyed most were Jacob Have I Loved, which you can get here, and The Watchers, which you can get here. Michael White's Asimov biography was forgettable, but you can get it here.
This of course was the month of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, with Peter Davison's The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot) featuring me in the background of an early crowd scene.
Doctor Who also provided me with one of my most successful Tweets ever ()to the extent that it featured in a Buzzfeed roundup of pictures we can stop tweeting in 2014):
#fb Tom Baker's answer when asked about his favourite memory of #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/li28XFwyXj
- 𝙉𝙞𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙖𝙨 𝙒𝙝𝙮𝙩𝙚 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 (@nwbrux) November 14, 2013
I had a lot of leisure travel this month - we took the long 1 November weekend in Amsterdam, where we visited the Anne Frank House; F and I went to Novacon in Nottingham in the middle of the month (as it happens I am going to this year's Novacon tomorrow); and on 23 November we drove to Germany to see Day of the Doctor in a cinema near Cologne. I also flew to Edinburgh on a work trip, though even there I stayed with Charlie and Feorag. At the end of the month came the sad but not unexpected news of my aunt Nora's death. Here's Jo Walton, the Guest of Honour at Novacon, with the coins that she named her excellent Small Change trilogy after.
Work continued to be unhappy and I started seeing a career counsellor, which was quite expensive but money well spent, as we shall see when I get to that stage.
With a lot of driving, I read only 11 books.
Non-Fiction 3 (YTD 43)
The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I, by Stephen Alford
Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction, by Michael White
Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea
Fiction (non-sf) 2 (YTD 39)
Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
Reamde, by Neal Stephenson
SF (non-Who) 1 (YTD 56)
There Will be Time, by Poul Anderson
Doctor Who etc 5 (YTD 67, 78 counting non-fiction and comics)
Nightdreamers, by Tom Arden
SLEEPY, by Kate Orman
Dark Progeny, by Steve Emmerson
Nothing O'Clock, by Neil Gaiman
Torchwood: Long Time Dead, by Sarah Pinborough
~3,400 pages (YTD ~60,200)
3/11 (YTD 66/235) by women (Paterson, Orman, Pinborough)
0/11 (YTD 10/235) by PoC
The two I enjoyed most were Jacob Have I Loved, which you can get here, and The Watchers, which you can get here. Michael White's Asimov biography was forgettable, but you can get it here.