Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived In The Castle

A nice slice of chilling American Gothic centring on a reclusive oddball aristocratic family imprisoned in their stately pile following a hideous poisoning. Really enjoyable, I was forever sneaking a few extra pages when I got a chance. We're off to the US on Wednesday, so have just started 'Gone With The Wind', the first few chapters of which are outrageous in their faux-nostalgia and blinkered view of the antebellum south. Let's see how it continues. . .

Frank McLynn, The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revoloution, 1381-1926

As a historian, McLynn can be a bit partial and iconoclastic. He takes aim at quite a few shibboleths of English history. It’s hardly new to hear Henry VIII and Churchill denounced, but McLynn is very disparaging about Elizabeth I and Edward III, our perfect queen and perfect king - which makes an interesting change. It was a bit blah for me until the home ground of the 1926 strike was reached. McLynn was in no doubt that it was a truly revolutionary moment, and if the TUC hadn’t caved then the opportunity was there. Of course, as he himself states, the TUC never wanted a revolution and weren't prepared to go there. It's chilling to remember the state's response to the strike though - the black propaganda of the British Gazette, the encouragement of fascists to violence, the willingness for the military to shoot strikers. The General Strike was not intended by the strikers to bring about revolution, but the response of Baldwin's Government and its supporters showed that they thought that a possibility and they were prepared to kill ordinary British working people to avoid that. To Save The Nation. It's easy to draw parallels with the state's approach to striking miners at Orgreave and to anti-capitalist demonstrators more recently.

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Still processing this a bit, the horror of what slavery does to the human psyche is something so beyond my experience it's difficult to digest. To murder your own child so they wouldn't have to endure life on the plantation - how horrifying. A book to recommend.

How do  I segue from that to our holiday in just over a week? I'm torn between some light reading or taking a great big tome that has been sitting there a while. Hmmm. In the meantime, Libby has become a fixture at cubs, despite being a year too young. I found a spare scarf and woggle, and she is now known as 'Black Six'. Daddy's Little Enforcer.

China Mieville, The Last Days Of New Paris

'New Paris' is  a city rebelling against Nazi occupation, where an explosion of such force has resulted in art manifesting itself as living organisms. So lobster telephones are biting people, the sky is obscured by sharks and more seriously, monstrous creatures roam the boulevards. The Nazis are fighting back in league with demons from hell. Bonkers. Just Bonkers. I rather enjoyed it though.  We're flying to the US in a few weeks, so Helen and I have been spending most of our evenings working out logistics and booking rides and restaurants for Disney World. It's mind-bogglingly complex. I've been reading an 'Unofficial Guide to DisneyWorld' which was 800 pages+ long. I think we're more excited than the kids (I am, anyway). Just have to remember that it’s not about an efficient checklist of seeing everything, it’s about having fun, and most kids that go to Disney say the best thing was mucking about by the pool at the resort.

Jean Manco, Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings

Had to gloss over large parts where the book discussed genetic mutations between DH3a1bn and DH3a1bnx and how it could be due to an influx from AB1jyt34 at a later date. The conclusion seems to be that the peoples of Europe were far more mobile in prehistory than has previously been supposed, and that there were some mass migrations where indigenous people were mostly replaced rather than a change in culture or technology being relective of a static population adopting new methods or beliefs, or the changes being accompanied by an elite rather than significantly altering the genetic makeup. Of course, all of these models have been true at one time or another

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle, Jake Arnott, The Fatal Tree, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime And Punishment, Guillem Balague, Brave New World: Inside Pochettino's Spurs, Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove, Zadie Smith, White Teeth, Elizabeth Gee Nash, The Hansa , Jo Nesbo, The Son, Richard Ford, The Sportswrite

'The Sportswriter' was yet another mid 20th Century book by a white, middle-aged East Coast man about an introspective, prosperous white, middle-aged East Coast professional man and his (ahem) struggles. I should be the core constituency for this sort of stuff, but it just leaves me cold. Nothing seems to happen and I struggle to feel any sympathy for the protagonist. My heart plunged when I got to the end and realised it was part 1 of a trilogy.

'The Son' was Nesbo by numbers - grisly deaths in the seedier parts of Norway and a police procedural with dysfunctional detectives. Still enjoyed it, but they're just being churned out like episodes of Midsomer now. 'The Snowman' has been made into a film starring Michael Fassbender. It's meant to be terrible, but it might be ok for an evening's viewing, even for the mountain scenery alone.

'The Hansa' was a history of the Hanseatic League - I picked it up as Mum and Dad are going on a tour of the Baltic soon and I thought it might be a good pop history for Mum, but it was a wee bit too dry  - pages of extracts from Herring Inventories and medieval Flemish exchange rates.

'White Teeth' was on the 100 essential novels, which surprised me as I hadn’t realised quite how highly it was rated in the US. It's a love letter to London though, Dickens for the 20th Century.

'A Man Called Ove' was lovely and life-affirming, reminded me of Harold Fry. There were some sniffy reviews from critics who are expecting bleak existential angst from Scandinavian authors. It's not too sugar-coated though, it has its fair share of tragedy and rage against the failings of the Swedish social democrat model. It's the story of Ove, who tries his best to maintain his principles and values in a society that is changing, corrupt and doesn’t share his beliefs. The cast are there to reinforce his prejudices - the muslim wife, the husband who cannot repair anything, the cyclists who leaves his bike in a restricted area. . .

'Brave New World' was an indulgence - it was never going to share revelations about THFC, but if you read between the lines there were a few interesting comments about current players. What a time to be a Spurs fan. We're in the CL and outplaying Real, Juventus and Man Utd while Arsenal are imploding with their fans calling for Wenger to go. It won't last, so right now I'm just enjoying the moment.

'Crime and Punishment' was slogged through. I'm not clever enough to understand all the philosophising about guilt and its effect on the human psyche