2024: A Year in Review
Personal, Books, Films, Games and Blogging
This was a year of stability - and that was a good thing. I end the year in the same job and same house as I started, and thoroughly happy in both places. I’ve often had ‘itchy feet’ syndrome in the past, but right now contentment is much more dominant1.
Of course, with kids nothing stays quite the same. Eldest has moved up to Scouts, is starting secondary school next year and otherwise getting bigger and bigger. Youngest had some challenging health issues, particularly around the middle of the year, but is pushing through them and loving gymnastics, dance and giant fluffy cats2. There have been lots of good times with both of them.
In terms of personal challenges, I finally finished my second novel, Visions in Exile3 which felt like a definite achievement - over ten years is probably not the optimum length of time to take! I made good progress in learning Python, and want to keep pushing forward with that. And I’m hugely happy with how this blog has developed (of which more below).
Added to all this, it’s generally just been a very nice year, with lovely holidays (including to see family in New Orleans), interesting and fulfilling work, good time with friends and neighbours and great times spent playing and doing things with the kids. Long may it continue!
Enough about this, what about the book and film recommendations?
Some book, film and game recommendations. Not a remote attempt at categorising everything I've read or seen, simply some highlights.
Books (Fiction): I read a fair bit of classic science fiction of variable quality, including Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber (good), Julian May’s Many Coloured Land and Golden Torc (weird but good), Frank Herbert’s Destination: Void (bad) and Garett Putmann Serviss’s Edison’s Conquest of Mars (terrible in an amusing way)4. I read a lot of John Scalzi and John Grisham and retried Duncton Quest5 and found it most enjoyable6. And also read three more on my Aubrey-Maturin read-through, having just finished Clarissa Oakes.
Books (Non-Fiction): Nate Silver’s On the Edge was outstanding - a real insight into a world of people - professional gamblers, VCs, crypto-enthusiasts - who are in some ways similar to me (analytical, probabilistic thinking) and in other ways not at all (risk-taking). Sam Freedman’s Failed State was interesting - particularly given the level of agreement I had with his diagnoses but disagreement (other than devolution, where I suspect he’s on to something) with his solutions7. And David Petraeus’s Conflict was a very readable overview of modern (post-1945) war - which felt particularly relevant given what was happening around the world.
Films: Two clear highlights: Wicked (outstanding adaptation of the play) and The War of the Rohirrim (massively superior to the Hobbit films or Rings of Power - there are benefits to taking a simple story and telling it well). Dune 2 was great, though not quite as good as Dune 18. I also watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid9 and it was interesting to see but didn’t grab me10.
TV: Black Doves - a new Netflix thriller - was outstanding and I would fully recommend11. It had my wife and I gripped. However, most of my TV watching has been of oldies: I’ve found Seinfeld hugely amusing and recently, after much dithering, took the plunge and tried Buffy the Vampire Slayer - to find it surprisingly enjoyable12.
Games: This was the year of Dune: Imperium13, which I played lots and got better at. I played the classic Wars of the Roses Game Kingmaker - and could see both why it was a classic and why it’s been superceded14. For computer games, I’ve enjoyed the 4X game Millennia15 and Battle Brothers, where one commands a mercenary company in a fantasy pseudo-Mediaeval Germany and also completed the second Act of Baldur’s Gate 316.
Blogging
I said last year it had been a great year of blogging - and this year it’s been that squared. The move to Substack has paid off in spades, in both audience and reduced bugginess17.
In 2023 I just hit 20,000 views. This year I’ve had over 85,00018 views. I’ve posted 57 times, meeting my target of at least once a reach on average. My best post had over 10,000 views and while, at the beginning of the year, I was pleased if a post got 100 views, it’s now rare for one to get below 500 and 7 of the last 21 have had over 1,00019.
Perhaps more importantly, after quadrupling in 2023, my subscriber count has similarly increased more than 4-fold, from 150 to just under 700, putting me well on track to have the entire world population subscribing by 203720. Thank you all for your support in reading, liking, lurking, commenting, sharing and recommending - this site only grows by word of mouth, and you really are what makes it.
If you’ve joined partway through the journey, here's a list of my favourite posts for each month to catch up on anything you've missed.
January: How Did England Fall Out of Love with Universities? The Four Horsemen of Fees, Culture, Expansion and Quality
February: The Decline of Sacral Kingship. Starting with Rishi Sunak building a quantum supercomputer in his basement, we gallop through the Middle East peace process to look at why being a king doesn’t carry the same weight it used to 2,000 years ago.
March: Inspiring Women, Invisible Women. How only certain 'types' of women are allowed into the new canon
April: Hack Attack. I got hacked. It wasn’t fun.
May: History Will Call Us Wives. Love, Faith and Colonialism in 'Dune: Part Two'
June: Who should you vote for in the General Election? and The Microparties21. A guide to what factors to consider when voting in the general election - and a light-hearted look at the smaller parties standing.
July22: An Arminian take on Public Services. Are libraries for everyone, or only for those who use them?
August23: A Tale of Spaddery. Covering my time as a SpAd, 2019 - 2022, with recollections of COVID, Brexit, Free Speech and more.
September: What Will Happen at the 2029 General Election? Five scenarios explored using a fragmentation model
October: How Elite Benevolence Hurts the Middle. Why the interests of the upper and middle classes are often unaligned - and how the middle, not the upper, often pay the price for initiatives aimed at helping the disadvantaged.
November: The Lure of the Designer24. Why we broke childcare and how to fix it
December: You Cannot Only Sometimes Stand for Truth. If institutions and authorities lose trust by obvious lying, they can’t just turn it back on again.
And finally, to confirm that 2024 forecasting contest results will be out tomorrow - and to those doing it, remember Christmas Quiz answers need to be in by 11:59pm on 5th January!
Happy End of Year to All!
A sign of being in my 40s, perhaps?
Well, let’s be honest: cats of all sorts.
This is essentially a contemporaneous fan-fiction sequel of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds. It evidently contains a number of ‘firsts’ (e.g. first space-ship battle) but really makes you appreciate how good Wells and Verne are by comparison!
Last attempted as a teenager.
It doubles-down on the more weird aspects of Duncton Wood.
I find it fascinating that he doesn’t see that, in most cases, his solutions are just doubling down on the cause of the problems he’s correctly diagnosed.
See my review here.
At least in part because William Goldman, of Princess Bride fame, directed it.
In style it felt a lot older than it actually was (1969) - I don’t know if that was a deliberate choice at the time.
And not just because one of the kids’ friends was playing the little girl - though that was also pretty cool!
I’m halfway through Season 2, so no spoilers!
Yes, I know I mentioned this last year too.
If you’re looking for that kind of game but with just slightly smoother and better mechanics, the Game of Thrones board game feels like a spiritual successor (and does not require you to be a GoT fan).
Underrated.
I find playing in underground or ‘dark’ areas less fun.
Though I know a couple of readers preferred Wordpress.
For comparison, a really popular personal blog, such as Bret Devereaux’s history blog, got 3.6 million - so I should not get too big-headed!
This includes everything from 1.05k through several in the 2-3k and one over 5k.
That’s how exponential growth works, right?
Cheating by listing two. But they go together!
This was hard - I had at least three good choices here!
On the other hand, this was easy - I only wrote one post!
Yes, I know everyone loves the ‘Whatever Happened to my [cohort]?’ pieces. But I like this piece better.