William Gaddis, The Recognitions, Debbie Stowe, Romania, Malorie Blackman, Noughts & Crosses, Heather Cox Richardson, How The South Won The Civil War, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the emergence of a new moral barbarism, Louisa May Alcott, More Little Women, David Graeber, Bullsh*t Jobs: The Rise Of Pointless Work And What We Can Do About It, Colin Dexter, The Dead of Jericho, Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, Mikhail Sholokov, And Quiet Flows The Don, Alan Palmer, The Baltic: A New history of the region and its people, Colin Dexter, Service of all the Dead, David Hackett Fischer, Historians Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought, Elizabeth Knox, The Absolute Book, John Steinbeck, Once There Was A War. Colin Dexter, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, Helen Carr, The Red Prince: John of Gaunt: Duke of Lancaster, Alan Garner, The Owl Service, Max Adams, The First Kingdom:Britain in the Age of Arthur, Paul Kingsnorth, Beast, Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, Colin Dexter, The Secret of Annex 3, Janet M. Hartley, The Volga: A History of Russsia's Greatest River, John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold, David W Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, And Language, Scott Innes, Galactic Keegan

 After slogging joylessly through The Recognitions to complete the 100 Essential novels, I wrote the starting piece to what I thought would be my thoughts on all those great books, but it was not to be. That was months ago (as can be seen from the list of books above), and since then I haven't written at all. It's been a bit of a mix - some predictable comfort reans like Morse, Steinbeck and straightforward historical narratives, but also some more challenging Russian Literature and the bizarreness of 'Galactic Keegan' . already I have a new '100 Books Bucket List', hence Black & White and Little Women. 60 out of 100 read, but thank god there are no more impenetrable  doorstops like The Recognitions. Scanning the list the most challenging remaining reads are going to be Ulysses and War and Peace, but there are some nice things there too like Roald Dahl's Matilda and a Harlan Coben thriller.

At home, I'm in a new job and am now officially working from home. I'm not sure how long this will last, as my job can be done from literally anywhere in the world, and as my team are all based in Germany and Romania having my role in the UK makes little sense. Sooner or later I think redundancy will come calling, but for now I'll make the most of it. We are over a year into the pandemic, and currently a bit worried about a third wave due to our incompetent government. most of the population in the UK has been vaccinated though, hopefully that will help.  The children are all back at school, William's reading is progressing, but he does seem rather too proud of all the detentions he gets for not listening in class. I think he has suffered more than any of us with lockdown as he got into a routine of just staring at the TV. All three of them spend too much time on the screen, but then so do Helen and I. . .