Not a lot to report. Back in Northern Ireland, the SDLP had a leadership election, and I analysed the candidates based on their internet presence and plans for party organisation. I found Alasdair McDonnell significantly more convincing on the latter point, and SDLP delegates felt the same way. Unfortunately the wheels started coming off his leadership at the very start, with a disastrous acceptance speech, and did not get a lot better over the four painful years that he remained in the position.
I gave a lecture on Northern Ireland that month to Anne’s classmates, she recently having started a teacher training course, and went straight from there to Kosovo, for the first time in ages. I also find in my archives a very blurry photograph of Neil Kinnock, taken at 7.08 pm on the 29th, but I have no idea why or where.
I read 26 books that month.
Non-fiction 6 (YTD 61)
Diana Wynne Jones, by Farah Mendlesohn
Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
The New Face of Digital Populism, by Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell and Mark Littler
The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Christopher Haigh
Why Nonviolent Resistance in Kosovo Failed, by Shkëlzen Maliqi
Why Kosovo Still Matters, by Denis MacShane
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 46)
The Private Eye Annual 2008, edited by Ian Hislop (belongs in this category I suppose)
Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy
SF (non-Who) 6 (YTD 72)
I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett
The Demon Headmaster, by Gillian Cross
The Treason of Isengard, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
Heart of the Sea, by Nora Roberts
A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin
Doctor Who (inc Torchwood) 6 (YTD 73)
Autumn Mist, by David A. McIntee
Pack Animals, by Peter Anghelides
The Prison In Space, by Dick Sharples (ed. Richard Bignell)
Heart of Stone, by Trevor Baxendale
Death Riders, by Justin Richards
Dreams of Empire, by Justin Richards
Comics 3 (YTD 25)
The Crab With The Golden Claws, by Hergé
The Secret of the Unicorn, by Hergé
Red Rackham's Treasure, by Hergé
~6,700 pages (YTD ~80,200)
4/26 (YTD 59/277) by women (Mendlesohn, Cross, Roberts, Le Guin)
0/26 (YTD 13/277) by PoC
The best of these were A Wizard of Earthsea, a reread of couse, which you can get here; Treason of Isengard, which you can get here; The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which you can get here; Race of a Lifetime, also known as Game Change (the title of the film based on the book), which you can get here; and I Shall Wear Midnight, which you can get here. Very disappointed with The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland, which you can get here, and not much more impressed with Heart of the Sea, which you can get here.
