February 2008 began with a really glorious moment as Iain Banks visited Brussels to speak at Scotland House - which occupies the top two floors of the building that my office was then located in. I went to Geneva for what was then my regular gig at GCSP, and Anne and I had a rare romantic getaway weekend in Rome. I wrote blog posts on the Lisbon ( Read more... )

We saw in the new year multinationally, with Belgian friends coming for dinner and cooking a raclette for us (very nice) and then the brother-in-law and his Eastern European fiancée showing up in time for the fireworks. One of F's Christmas presents was a meccano-style Shark Run roller-coaster, which he set up pretty much single-handed.

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A modest ( Read more... )

Book review of the year

Non-fiction

Best in category: Anne Frank's Diary, a re-read for me (though this edition has all her original text in); a searingly unforgettable account of life in an intolerable situation.
( Other non-fiction )

This is the list of books I’ve read this year - please tick if you have read (including started but not finished) any of them They are blocked out by category, and (except for the very last section) ranked in order of appearances in the LibraryThing catalogue. Books in italics have a female author or editor credited. I’ve split two collections (by ( Read more... )

14) Sometime Never, by Justin Richards

( meh )

13) As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

( new to me )

12) The Genius of Shakespeare, by Jonathan Bate

wwhyte was kind enough to get me both this and Bate's more recent book on Shakespeare for Christmas. Since I'm just over halfway through my absorption of the Complete Works at present, I decided to read the earlier book (first published 1997, updated 2008) at this stage and save the more recent until I've ( Read more... )

What I've read/listened to this year, with a few omissions (either where Librarything hasn't got the cover, or where I haven't finished the books yet). Big review post coming on Thursday, but I wanted to get this done now because I think it looks pretty. More or less alphabetical by author.

( lots of pictures )

11) Nation, by Terry Pratchett

A lot of people have been raving about this, and why it is the best Pratchett book for ages. It is set in a mildly alternate universe, in what might or might not be the South Pacific (the mutiny on the Bounty and Moby Dick are referenced); in Pratchett's characteristic liberal humanist way, religion and good ( Read more... )

10) The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco

This is, in a sense, a sequel to Sacco's brilliant Safe Area Goražde, but following just one person, Neven, a Sarajevo Serb, a former fighter on the Bosnian side in the war who Sacco got to know as his "fixer" when he first visited Sarajevo just after the war ended in 1995. (I first went there ( Read more... )