"At night comes Mrs. Turner to see us; and there, among other talk, she tells me that Mr. William Pen, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; that he cares for no company, nor comes into any which is a pleasant thing, after his being abroad so long, and his father such a hypocritical rogue, and at this time an Atheist. "
Interview with Deng Alor Kuol, minister of regional cooperation of the government of Southern Sudan; he discusses the future of Abyei; the question of citizenship, after the referendum, which almost certainly will see a vote for separation; and the issue of future reunification.
"this initiative, like so many others in these technology-obsessed days, promotes a "tech-heavy", expensive and - needless to say - fashionable solution above existing mechanisms that exploit that rather under-utilised, unfashionable and ignored resource, local people"
31 December 1965: broadcast of third episode of The Highlanders. Polly overpowers Ffrench; the Doctor overpowers Perkins; but Ben is thrown into the cold sea...
Third in the series of graphic novels about a Japanese child with autism by the late Keiko Tobe. I found the first half of the book, where a new special education teacher repeatedly fails to rise to the occasion and deal with the needs of the children under her care, really quite tough reading; Sachiko Azuma, the viewpoint character whose child is at the centre of the story, displays much more patience than I could bear to in that situation. The second half of the volume has young Hikaru on a four-day school trip, which presents fairly huge challenges from a developmental psychological point of view. (Tobe throws in a couple of more standard soap-opera elements as well, as his schoolfriends engage in classroom politics and his father is demoted at work, but that's forgiveable local colour.) Anyway, once again a fascinating and beautiful book.
Thanks to those who have filled in my unread books poll; this is more of a bit of fun, a tradition started by the librarything community, of listing all the books one has read during the year and seeing who else has read the same ones.
(There's a discrepancy of 10 between the list below and the monthly tallies, mostly due to counting the Bloody Sunday Report as a single entry below but as ten separate volumes while I was reading it.)
