Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Michael Frayn, Towards The End Of The Morning

 As I was reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, all the relentless exploitation and bad faith behaviour of the European settlers seemed to mirror contemporary politics and power struggles - and pulled into focus that 'the White Men' are so often on the dark side, and that the version of history we tell ourselves where we are the good guys is so far removed from reality. There's a few groups on both sides of the Atlantic pushing back against BLM and a more balanced view of history in schools and wanting to return to expounding the glories of the white man's mission to civilise the world. Craziness. 

Agatha Christie, Death In The Clouds, Magnus Mills, Three To See The King, Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass: Crossing The Lines That Divide Us, John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur And His Noble Knights, Agatha Christie, a Halloween Mystery, Daniel Levin, Nothing But A Circus, Ali Smith, Winter, Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet, Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, Eamonn Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, Junichiro Tanizaki, A Cat, A Man, And Two Women, Sam Selvon, The Housing Lark, Owen Jones, This Land: The Story of a Movement, Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man, Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, Keith Roberts, Pavane, John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Robert Dallek, Franklin D Roosevelt: A Political Life, Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist, Saul Bellow, Herzog, Peter Sarris, Byzantium: A Very Short Introduction, Jerome K Jerome, Three Men In a Boat, John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Still in a Steinbeck fanboy situation at the moment. 'The Winter of our Discontent' was superb. Unlike so much else of his fiction, it's set on the east coast in  a whaling town, where the scion of a once prosperous puritan family has been reduced to working as a grocery clerk. He's honest, happy and poor. Throughout the book a string of circumstances open up opportunities to him to enrich himself and be the person in town he is expected to be given his name. So he takes advantage at the expense of those that trust him, gains the power and money he has never craved but which he has been tempted by, and in the end, once it has been revealed that his son, following his example, cheated to win an award, he commits suicide. A candidate for the Great American Novel as the dream turns sour?

 'Three Men in a Boat' was a comfort read, and remains as joyful as ever, just what was needed as we enter a second lockdown. Our government continue to manage the whole thing ineptly, using it only as an excuse to enrich themselves and their chums. Public health, safety and the welfare of the economy don't even seem to exist in their calculation until they are forced to show some consideration by public opinion. In the meantime, Labour are doing well in the polls, but have chosen the Kinnock approach of bashing, marginalising and blaming the left as a precursor to electoral victory. It's horrible, and leaving aside the cynicism and realpolitik of it all that should render such a move reprehensible anyway, it's a strategy that seems doomed to me. The vast majority of Labour members and Labour voters are left wing. They want public services to be run in the interest of the community, not profit, they want the wealthy to pay their fair share and they want the government to be responsible for housing, education and health rather than leaving it to the marketplace. The people advising Starmer don't seem to agree and are wanting to present a future Labour government as non-ideological and just a more competent management team than the Tories. OK, this might attract the very small Change UK liberal, educated, wealthy remainers back to the party, but it offers nothing to the millions of voters who need a Labour Government and the hundreds of thousands of Labour members who want real, socialist change. Honestly, I'd be ok with just one thing. Keep the internal market in the NHS, continue privatising government agencies, keep academies and private schools, keep Trident, keep allowing the wealthiest to avoid paying a fair share of tax, but build decent public sector housing. Or leave housing to the failed market and do one, just one, of those other things. That's all I'd need to be enthusiastic for a new Labour government. 

Amongst all the other books, 'Piranesi' and 'Lud-in-the-Mist' stood out as fantastic novels in two senses. Susanna Clarke +must+ have read Lud-in-the-Mist before writing JS&MN.