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I had one of the strangest days ever at work on 11 December 2008, when I had not one but two presidents of unrecognised states in my office at different times. (They did not and still do not recognise each other, so I had to juggle schedules carefully.) Sadly, neither is in office any more; Mehmet Ali Talat lost his re-election bid in 2010, and Mohamed Abdelaziz died a couple of years ago.

I put a lot of energy into following the fall of the Belgian government the following week. All forgotten now. I joined Twitter, and my first Tweet was a link to my review of Terry Pratchett's Nation.

I was in London in the first week of the month, but otherwise in Belgium. Christmas seems to have been just us, with a bit of a rabbit theme.

I read only 16 books in December, the end of an epic year where my 371 books was a record that still stands.

Non-fiction 6 (total 70)
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, by Anne Frank
Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, by Patrick E. McGowan
Daughters of Britannia: the Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives, by Katie Hickman
If I Had Been...: Ten Historical Fantasies, edited by Daniel Snowman
The Cecils: Privilege and power behind the throne, by David Loades
The Genius of Shakespeare, by Jonathan Bate

Non genre total 24

Scripts 4 (total 23)
The History of Henry the Fifth, by William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare
As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

SF 1 (total 54)
Nation, by Terry Pratchett

Doctor Who 3 (total 172)
Sometime Never, by Justin Richards
The Roundheads, by Mark Gatiss
The Dark Path, by David A. McIntee

Comics 2 (total 8)
Berlin: City of Smoke, by Jason Lutes
The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco

4,100 pages (total 89,400)
2/16 by women (total 49/371)
None by PoC (total 6/371)

Again, I'm going to be nice and single out four good books here:

The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, which is my book of the year for 2008; you can get it here.
As You Like It, a Shakespeare play I had not previously encountered; you can get it here.
Nation, by Terry Pratchett: "the perfect world is a journey, not a place"; you can get it here.
The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco, a tremendous evocation of a tragic time and place; you can get it here.

2008 books roundup

The 371 books I read in 2008 remain my record for a single year - boosted by easily digestible Doctor Who novelisations and fairly brief Shakespeare plays. I did a roundup at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system (and reclassifying a few books as well).

Doctor Who: 172 (46% - biggest of any year)

Best of 2008: Two of the First Doctor novelisations, the very first one, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, which you can get here, and Donald Cotton's Doctor Who - The Romans, which you can get here.
Best original fiction: All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane, in which the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny encounter Sherlock Holmes and the Great Old Ones. You can get it here.
Best non-fiction: Who Goes There, by Nick Griffiths, exploring the locations of Doctor Who filming around England and Wales; you can get it here.
The one you haven't heard of: Time and Relative, by Kim Newman, a novella set on Earth in 1963 before the Doctor and his granddaughter meet Ian and Barbara. At a cost, you can get it here.
The one to avoid: Doctor Who - The Twin Dilemma, a dreadful adaptation of a dreadful story. You can get it here.

Non-fiction: 70 (19%, a tad below average)

Best of 2008: Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl; as mentioned already, you can get it here.
Runner-up: The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi; you can get it here.
The one you haven't heard of: Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union, by Christine Mahoney, a great explanation of the world of my work; you can get it here.
Worst of 2007: J.R.R.Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, by Daniel Grotta, a poor effort. You can get it here.

SF (other than Doctor Who): 54 (15%, lowest of any year - squeezed out by Doctor Who books)

Best of 2008: Alan Garner's The Owl Service, which I hadn't read before. You can get it here.
Runners-up: Terry Practchett's Nation, as noted above, which you can get here; and Silverberg's Hall of Fame anthology, which you can get here.
The one you haven't heard of: The Fifth Interzone Anthology, which you can get here.
The one to avoid: Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice - the most awful tosh. You can get it here.

Non-genre fiction 24 (6%, probably a record low)

Best of 2008: Vanity Fair, Thackeray's story of life among the declining gentry of the early nineteenth century. You can get it here.

Runners-up: Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, which you can get here; The History of Sir Richard Calmady by Lucas Malet, which you can get here; Proust vol 6, which you can get here.

The one you haven't heard of: Odd Man Out, by F.L. Green, adapted to a well known film but the novel is worth hunting down. You can get it here.

The one to avoid: The Duke and I, by Julia Quinn. You can get it here.

Scripts 23 (6%, a peak)

At the top, it's difficult to choose between Romeo and Juliet (which you can get here), A Midsummer Night's Dream (here) and As You Like It (here) as my favourite Shakespeare of the year; also enjoyed the two rather less well known scripts I read, Improbable Frequency (about Schrodinger in Ireland, here) and The Office (here).
However I really bounced off both The Taming of the Shrew (here) and Love's Labour's Lost (here).

Comics 6 (2%, a record low)

Best of 2008: The Fixer (here), as noted above, and Jessica Jones vol 4 (here).
The one you haven't heard of: Macedonia, written by Harvey Pekar, Heather Roberson, art by Ed Piskor; you can get it here.
The one to avoid: Tales of Human Waste, by Warren Ellis; you can get it here.

My book of the year 2008, as noted above, was Anne Frank's Diary, which I have also writen about here and here. If you haven't yet read it, you should. And as mentioned twice above, you can get it here.

By great good chance I happened to be in New York during the first week of November 2008, so I was able to witness at first hand the jubilation around Obama's first election as President. It's a nice coincidence for this month to come up now in my schedule of posts about previous years' reading, as we watch Trump's inability to cope with the reality of defeat. McCain has a lot more class.

We also had a lovely weekend in Cambridge, marred however by the car breaking down on the Brussels ring road just as we were nearing home at 3.30 am.

Literally the following day, I went on one of my regular visits to Cyprus. I filmed a few streetscape shots of the northern part of Nicosia, with the intention of sharing them with work colleagues, but in the end was not satisfied with either the sound or the picture quality. Still, for posterity, here they are.

Who Goes There (Travels through Strangest Britain, in Search of the Doctor), by Nick Griffiths - a great book about looking for famous Doctor Who locations in England and Wales, while dealing with real life as well. You can get it here.

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, a lovely little novella about Queen Elizabeth II suddenly deciding to start reading, and the viciously negative reactions of her advisers to her new habit. You can get it here.

Science Fiction Hall of Fame: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time, edited by Robert Silverberg, one of those classic collections, assembling the top sf stories published before 1965 as voted for by the membership of SFWA in the late 1960s. You can get it here.

Alias vol 4: The Secret Origins of Jessica Jones, by Brian Michael Bendis and others; so many pages here where Bendis and the artists achieve statements that couldn't be made in any other medium - the schooldays flashback, Jessica's first encounter with other superheroes, and the unspoken parts of her conversations with her friends and lovers. You can get it here.

This is the latest post in a series I started last November, 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.

I started October 2008 with a day in Paris, and visited The Hague overnight mid-month. For half term we visited my sister in France, to meet very new baby S. F was enchanted; U fascinated, though we had to monitor her interactions quite carefully.

The big political news of the month for me was the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to former president Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, who I had worked with quite a lot in my time with the International Crisis Group. He is not so healthy these days, but still one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

At work, my super-effective American intern D moved on; she is now a foreign service officer wiith the US State Department. Her replacement was Spanish S.

I read 25 books in October 2008.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 56)
The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, by Charles Nicholl
The English: A Portrait of a People, by Jeremy Paxman
Jean Sibelius, by Guy Rickards
Edmund Spenser, by Rosemary Freeman
Waterloo, by Andrew Roberts

Non-genre 3 (YTD 22)
Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Duke and I, by Julia Quinn (did not finish)
The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin

Scripts 5 (YTD 16)
Love's Labour's Lost, by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
Richard II, by William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare
The Life and Death of King John, by William Shakespeare

Poetry 1
Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

SF 5 (YTD 40)
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Gossamer Axe, by Gael Baudino
The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks (did not finish)
Astra and Flondrix, by Seamus Cullen
Sunrise Alley, by Catherine Asaro

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 165)
The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin
All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane
Doctor Who and the City of Death, by David Lawrence
Winner Takes All, by Jacqueline Rayner
Interference Book One: Shock Tactic, by Lawrence Miles

Comics 1 (YTD 4)
The Cruel Sea, eds Tom Spilsbury, Scott Gray

6,200 pages (YTD 76,100)
5/25 (YTD 39/323) by women
none (YTD 6/323) by PoC

Gonna call out four excellent reads here: Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, which you can get here, and Romeo and Juliet, which you can get here; also Heaney's Beowulf, which you can get here, and Thaceray's magnificent Vanity Fair, which you can get here. Worst of the month was Julia Quinn's The Duke and I, which I cast aside after two chapters; you can get it here.

September 2008 was the start of our new lives as Belgian citizens, a mere five months after applying. In other family news, my sister C had her baby daughter S, still my youngest relative on that side of the family. I started the month in Slovenia, as noted, and also travelled to Salzburg for another conference. No photos this month, as far as I can see.

My plan to read the whole of Shakespeare's plays was getting well under way by now. I was combining reading the scripts with listening to the Arkangel Complete Shakespeare, a methodology that I would strongly recommend (though I deviated from it in a couple of cases).

Non-fiction 6 (YTD 51)
Uit het Verleden van de Gemeente Oud-Heverlee, by Erik Martens
How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton
Becoming Somaliland, by Mark Bradbury
Zlata's Diary: a child's life in Sarajevo, by Zlata Filipović
Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470-1603, by Steven G Ellis
In The Land Of Israel, by Amos Oz

Non-genre 2 (YTD 19)
Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane
Peter Abelard, by Helen Waddell

Scripts 7 (YTD 10)
The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth, by William Shakespeare
The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare
A Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, by William Shakespeare

SF 5 (YTD 35)
The Ill-Made Mute, by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Walking Dead, by C.E. Murphy
Love and War, by Paul Cornell
The Golden Transcendence, by John C. Wright (did not finish)
Expiration Date, by Tim Powers

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 160)
The Stone Rose, by Jacqueline Rayner
The Infinity Doctors, by Lance Parkin
Alien Bodies, by Lawrence Miles
Feast of the Drowned, by Stephen Cole

6,900 pages (YTD 69,900)
5/24 (YTD 34/298) by women
none (YTD 6/298) by PoC

Hugely enjoyed Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which you can get here, and How Proust Can Change Your Life, which you can get here. I really did not like either The Taming of the Shrew, which you can get here, or The Golden Transcendence, which you can get here.

This is the latest post in a series I started last November, 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.

We spent most of August in Loughbrickland as usual, catching the partial solar eclipse on our way over and the total lunar eclipse two weeks later.

F and I visited the Doctor Who exhibition in Earl's Court on the way over, I looked in on DWCon in Birmingham on the way back, and I finished the month at the Bled Forum in Slovenia.

In world news, this was the month of the South Ossetia war, bringing back sad memories of my visit to Tskhinvali in 2005.

Non-fiction 9 (YTD 45)
The Right Honorable Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh: A Biography, by Sarah L. Steele
The Incredible Mr Kavanagh: A Triumph of the Human Spirit, by Donald McCormick
Born without Limbs: A biography of achievement, by Kenneth Kavanagh
Kavanagh MP: An Inspirational Story, by David Cohen
Doctor Who: the Unfolding Text, by John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado
Teach Yourself to Learn a Language, by P.J.T. Glendening
A History of the Black Death in Ireland, by Maria Kelly
Liberal Democracy and Globalisation, compiled and edited by Graham Watson MEP and Katharine Durrant
1690: Battle of the Boyne, by Pádraig Lenihan

Non-Genre 1 (YTD 17)
Finding Time Again, by Marcel Proust

Scripts 3 (YTD 3)
The Office: The Scripts: Series 1, by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
The Office: The Scripts: Series 2, by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
The First Part of King Henry the Sixth, by William Shakespeare

SF (non-who) 9 YTD 30)
Teranesia, by Greg Egan
The Pilgrim's Regress, by C.S. Lewis
The Possibility of an Island, by Michel Houllebecq
The Seeds of Time, by John Wyndham
The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman
The Faded Sun Trilogy, by C.J. Cherryh
The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod
Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling
The Carhullan Army, by Sarah Hall

Doctor Who 12 (YTD 156)
The Second Doctor Who Monster Book, by Terrance Dicks
The Adventures of K9 and Other Mechanical Creatures, by Terrance Dicks
Terry Nation's Dalek Special, compiled and edited by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who - Time and the Rani, by Pip and Jane Baker
Doctor Who - Paradise Towers, by Stephen Wyatt
Doctor Who - Delta and the Bannermen, by Malcolm Kohll
Doctor Who - Dragonfire, by Ian Briggs
Doctor Who - Battlefield, by Marc Platt
Doctor Who - Ghost Light, by Marc Platt
Doctor Who - The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs
Doctor Who - Survival, by Rona Munro
Escape Velocity, by Colin Brake

9200 pages (YTD 63,000)
7/34 (YTD 29/274) by women (gender of P.J.T. Glendening unknown)
None (YTD 6/274) by PoC (ethnicity of P.J.T. Glendening unknown)

Best and worst: the second series of The Office seemed to me somehow more coherent than the first and very nicely done; you can get the scripts here. Proust finishes on a high note; you can get the last volume here. On the other hand, the Bakers' novelisation of Time and the Rani is awful; if you want, you can get it here.

July 2008 began very painfully. At the very end of June I had a vasectomy, and with somewhat imperfect timing moved office a few days later, thinking I would have recovered over the weekend. No. My testicles were swollen to the size of a tennic ball (felt much bigger) and I could barely walk. My gallant intern D and neighbour J did most of the packing up of the old office, and young F joined in the trip to IKEA and putting furniture together. I should also chronicle that the first external visitor to the office was A, who then worked for AP across the corridor but shortly after moved downstairs to Bloomberg, where she has been ever since. Here is D, screwdriver at the ready, wishing I would start helping her rather than sitting in the comfy chair taking photos.

More cheerfully, Anne's brother R married V. I attended the civil ceremony in Etterbeek Town Hall.

And we all attended the religious ceremony in the Église Sainte-Croix (the one off Place Flagey) a week later.

F had his ninth birthday at the end of the month, and two friends came round to meet the star attraction.

We celebrated the summer solstice by having a party in our back garden - something we have done very rarely, in fact. Some nice pictures, though a lot of friends have since moved away. I wish I had taken more. (I also wish I had had my eyes open in the only one taken of me.)

This is the latest post in a series I started last November, 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.

I started the month with a trip to Cyprus, and the following weekend went to Dublin for P-Con and on to Limerick to give a lecture.

A rare picture taken at Easter weekend of the five of us together:

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 Treaty and the genetics of blue eyes. Kosovo declared independence and the Greek Cypriot leader lost his re-election bid (and died soon after). At work, my Danish intern V left (she has now founded her own NGO, fighting for gender equality) and was replaced by American D, one of the real stars who I recruited in my eight years at that job (and they were all good).

I managed to read 20 books that month:

non-fiction 5 (YTD 7)
Oxford Take Off In Russian
Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer's Journey, by Daniel Keyes
The Time Out Guide to Rome
Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising: The Story of Sir Matthew Nathan, by Leon Ó Broin
The Megalithic European: The 21st Century Traveller in Prehistoric Europe, by Julian Cope

non-genre 1 (YTD 2)
No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod

script 1
Improbable Frequency, by Arthur Riordan and Bell Helicopter (Conor Kelly and Sam Park)

sf 6 (YTD 11)
The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross
The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith
Naked to the Stars, by Gordon R. Dickson
Interzone: The 5th Anthology, edited by John Clute, Lee Montgomerie and David Pringle
Matter, by Iain M. Banks
Humility Garden, by Felicity Savage

Doctor Who 7 (YTD 9)
The Year of Intelligent Tigers, by Kate Orman
Invasion of the Bane, by Terrance Dicks
Revenge of the Slitheen, by Rupert Laight
Eye of the Gorgon, by Phil Ford
Warriors of Kudlak, by Gary Russell
The Glittering Storm, by Shaun Lyon
The Thirteenth Stone, by Justin Richards

4,800 pages (YTD 8,900) not counting the two audiobooks
4/20 (YTD 8/31) by women, though I have no information about the authors of Oxford Take Off In Russian or The Time Out Guide to Rome
None so far this year by PoC, subject to the same caveat.

Four of these to particularly recommend: Improbable Frequency, a play about Schrödinger set in Dublin, which you can get here; Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer's Journey, the story of the classic sf story/book, which you can get here; No Great Mischief, a lovely Scottish Canadian novel, which you can get here; and The Megalithic European, which ticked my archæological boxes, and you can get it here.

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.

A modest start to the year with eleven books.

Non-fiction 2
Endgame in Ireland, by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence

Non-genre 1
An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears

SF 5
The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable, by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby
Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
The Rising of the Moon, by Flynn Connolly
Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
National Lampoon's Doon, by Ellis Weiner

Doctor Who 2
Doctor Who - Fury from the Deep, by Victor Pemberton
The City of the Dead, by Lloyd Rose

Comics 1
Macedonia, by Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson, illustrated by Ed Piskor

4300 pages
4/11 by women
none by PoC

Best books of the month: An Instance of the Fingerpost, which you can get here, and The Last Hero, which you can get here. Worst by far: Interview with the Vampire, which you can get here.

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 )

Fiction (not sf):

Best in category: Vanity Fair, Thackeray's story of life among the declining gentry of the early nioneteenth century.
( Other fiction )

Comics (other than Doctor Who)

Best in category: The Fixer, Joe Sacco's questionable tales from Sarajevo before, during and after the war.
( More comics )

Shakespeare Plays

Best in category: A Midsummer Night's Dream - a marvelous, inventive play.
( More Shakespeare )

SF and fantasy (other than Doctor Who)

Best in category: Alan Garner's The Owl Service, which I hadn't read before.
( More sf and fantasy )

Doctor Who spinoff fiction (print)

Best in category: All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane, in which the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny encounter Sherlock Holmes and the Great Old Ones. Glorious.
( More Who spinoffs )

Doctor Who audios

Best in category: The Kingmaker, by Nev Fountain, a hilarious inversion of the story of Shakespeare's play Richard III. (I won't do a comprehensive review here, and they are not strictly speaking books anyway, but at some future moment I'll do the whole Big Finish run.)

Doctor Who novelisations

Best in category: The first one published, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, by David Whitaker. (General roundup here.)

I won't nominate a single Book of the Year, as it is too much like comparing apples to geodes; but I will admit that it is Anne Frank who comes back to mind when I least expect her to.

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 Roald Dahl and Dav Pilkey) where their components appeared to be better known; interestingly, this wasn’t the case for Cherryh or Moorcock. A more analytical post is on its way, explaining which ones I actually liked.

[Poll #1323264]

14) Sometime Never, by Justin Richards

( meh )

13) As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

( new to me )

Anyway, this was better than I had anticipated.

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 finished the plays (probably March given my Christmas break).

Well, it's ( jolly good )

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Entries tagged with bookblog 2008

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