Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage & Other Stories

Another from the scratch-off list of 100 essential novels, and the first novel to present a realistic view of warfare apparently (except War and Peace?), but it didn’t grab me and the formal Victorian language did not make for an easy read. I'd be hard put to tell you much of what happened as I skimmed through.

Teresa May has just called a General Election, which will entrench her majority and give her a mandate for hard BREXIT, grammar schools, NHS cuts and all manner of other awful things. Donald Trump is about to bomb Korea and it feels like the end of days with two trigger-happy 'strong men' in charge of the two military machines that could obliterate human life. What a horrible, horrible time.

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (Penguin History), Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Brendan Behan, Borstal Boy, Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Peter Furtado (ed) Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged, Margaret Attwood, The Handmaid's Tale, Simon Bradley, The Railways: Nation, Network and People

Have left this too long again, I can hardly remember reading 'Religion and the Decline of Magic.'  Three more 'classics' in the list for me to scratch off on my wall chart. 'The Handmaid's Tale' was chilling, and with Trump in charge it's becoming a more possible future. It's even more worrying when you realise (late in the day if you’re a slow learner like me) that a world where women are subjugated and not free to make their own decisions isn't a dystopian vision, it's true of most of the world historically and geographically. Still. Tottenham are second in the table and the wisteria is about to bloom, so we might as well enjoy the small things before the impending apocalypse.