September 2014 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 was the month that my current employers offered me a job, and I accepted. There were a number of factors, both push and pull; to be polite and concentrate on the pull, I liked the prospect of applying my skills and knowledge to a diverse group of clients in the private sector, not just the political projects that I had been working on previously in my career (though I am still working on plenty of political projects); I wanted to work in a bigger office, after eight years of sharing what was effectively a large cubicle with a rotation of interns; and the management structure looked (and turned out to be) a lot better developed.

Speaking of the rotation of interns, English L's internship in my office ended; he has gone on to work for three different non-European diplomatic missions in Brussels, and is still with the third of them as far as I know. His replacement was also English, Z from Preston, whose family language is Gujarati though she also speaks Catalan and Arabic fluently. We only worked together briefly, but have stayed in touch; after further study in the Netherlands, she now works for a major charity in London. I myself gave notice on 14 September and worked out my month.

That was the biggest excitement of the month; otherwise I did not leave Belgium. Our village had the annual zomerfeest with art exhibition.

I read 28 books that month.

Non-fiction 2 (YTD 40)
Who's There?, by Jessica Carney
King's Inns and the Kingdom of Ireland, by Colum Kenny

Who's There King's Inns and the Kingdom of Ireland

Fiction (non-sf) 6 (YTD 36)
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
A Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert
Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar
Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott
Race of Scorpions, by Dorothy Dunnett
Harlequin, by Bernard Cornwell

The Power and the Glory A Sentimental Education Memoirs of Hadrian Rob Roy Race of Scorpions Harlequin

SF (non-Who) 12 (YTD 85)
The Mirror Empire, by Kameron Hurley
The Severed Streets, by Paul Cornell
Extinction Game, by Gary Gibson
Unwrapped Sky, by Rjurik Davidson
Word Exchange, by Alena Graedon
Barricade, by Jon Wallace
The Race, by Nina Allan
Lock-in, by John Scalzi
Moxyland, by Lauren Beukes
Marcher, by Chris Beckett
Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, by Adam Roberts
Eva, by Peter Dickinson
The Causal Angel, by Hannu Rajaniemi

Moxyland Eva

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 47)
The English Way of Death, by Gareth Roberts
Eternity Weeps, by Jim Mortimore
History 101, by Mags L. Halliday
The Blood Cell, by James Goss
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller, by Joanne Harris

The English Way of Death Eternity Weeps History 101 The Blood Cell The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Time Traveller

Comics 3 (YTD 17)
De Scepter van Ottakar, by Hergé
La Galère d'Obélix, by Albert Uderzo
Lost At Sea, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

De Scepter van Ottakar La Galère d'Obélix Lost At Sea

~8,400 pages (YTD ~64,900)
9/28 (YTD 58/225) by women (Carney, Yourcenar, Dunnett, Hurley, Graedon, Allan, Beukes, Halliday, Harris)
1/28 (YTD 16/225) by PoC (O'Malley)

My favourite of these was Chris Beckett's Marcher, which you can get hereThe Power and the Glory, which you can get here, and Memoirs of Hadrian, which you can get here.

Some awful books too – Cornwell's Harlequin, which you can get hereLa Galère d'Obélix, which you can get here in French and here in EnglishRob Roy, which you can get here.

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