Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

A book in a day, it's been a while since that happened. It was only a wee novella , but it kept me gripped through my cycle in the morning and then finished off in the evening while Helen was out at dance class. A ghost story set on Spitzbergen, and written as a journal, so had the immediacy and shared paranoia of Dracula, with the villain of the piece barely appearing, but lurking as a presence.

Freddie is getting more and more confident with his cycling, we go out exploring at night at the weekends now, and our journey back from Gemma's is getting more and more convoluted. Each route or part of the journey has a name: 'St Andrew's Passage' if we go through the council offices, 'The Magic Raindrops' if we go along Victoria Way (there's a sprinkler permanently turned on causing a tiny burst of rain for a second or two), 'the York Road Hideout' if we go through the new development between The Sovereigns and the railway and 'Morrisons Madness' if we go past Morrisons and over the canal on the footbridge. . .

If I take him to school in the morning, we race between the bridges - Bedser Bridge, the 'BAC' Bridge (after some graffito on it), the Tall Bridge and finally the Barn Bridge (The Bridge Barn Bridge?) . It's the best part of the day.

Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56

I'm sure I wrote a very dull essay on this subject once. It's more of a case study of East Germany, Poland and Hungary than the whole of Eastern Europe, but very interesting and wide-ranging. I really enjoyed Anne Applebaum's books on her travels in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, I'd love to go back and read it again. There's a whole bookshelf full of unread books in the study though, including some real corkers; Caro's biog of LBJ, some Hilary Mantel, the Inspector Montalbano novels, Morrissey's newly-published autobography, Peter Hennessy's 'Having It So Good' and hundreds more. Also, if I were to embark on an Eastern European Travelogue, the last volume of Patrick Leigh Fermor's has just been published, which would also mean going back and reading the first two. . .

Reading may have to take a back seat though for a few decades; We went to the hospital on Friday for a 12 week scan, and we are expecting another child in May. No idea how we'll cope, either financially or physically, but my parents managed with three and so do Steve and Jess. At least we have the space for another now. Helen is convinced it's a boy, as it feels like Freddie did, and Freddie would like to call the baby 'Starwars' if it's a boy. He's very excited by it all, but Libby doesn't get it yet. She seems quite affronted by the suggestions that there is a baby in Mummy's tummy, when it's obvious to everyone that Baby (her dolly) is there in the buggy.

Ella, Amy and George were christened on Sunday, and Ella kindly asked me to be her godfather. That's 5 godchildren now, not bad for an atheist wastrel.

Oszkar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, John le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor

Most of both of these read on an epic train journey from Woking to Cardiff for Paul Shah's out-of-season 40th Birthday celebrations. The Severn Tunnel was shut, so 3 rail replacement services, hour-long waits at Bristol Parkway and Shrewsbury and lots of time for reading. I'm far too old for the carnage of Cardiff After Dark though, I serendipitously met up with Clay in the station car park and whined about my longing for a comfy chair and wine rather than shots and loud music and vomiting in chip alley.