Max Egremont, Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, Alan Bennett, An Uncommon Reader

Was convinced I must have read Forgotten Land already, but it wasn't on my shelves!  The groundwas  covered in Norman Davies' Vanished Kingdoms and Anne Applebaum's work though, so maybe that's why it seems so familiar. Managed to avoid straying into a romantic yearning for a lost Prussia while explaining the motives of those that do. A bit chilling in places when reminded that there are still Germans who refer to the old DDR as 'Mittel' rather than 'Ost' Deutschland. It's interesting to speculate on what the future holds for the Russian half of East Prussia; ethnically mostly Russian now, but an enclave with Belarus and more in between. Will it stay in Russia? Move towards Germany? Become an independent Republic of Kant?, 'An Uncommon Reader' was a cracker; I read it in one session on the exercise bike laughing out loud when the Queen asks the Cabinet if they've ever read Proust.

Just getting ready for Christmas at the mo; after his birthday and all the parties Fred has been in a present and party cake frenzy since late November. In the last entry I said he didn't seem that interested in story books, but Helen bought him some Horrid Henry which he has loved. 

Rose Tremain, Merivel: A Man of his Time, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Clive King, Stig of the Dump

Merivel was a nice bit of throwaway historical fiction set in the Restoration. A class up from Simon Scarrow. Naturally I agreed with every word of The Spirit Level, even the  bits I didn't read or didn't understand, because it reinforces my prejudices about inequality being a BAD THING. Similarly, all the rebuttals of it are WRONG as they are politically motivated. Obviously I'm joking to an extent, but it does show how little we use facts (or I do anyway) to form our opinions, and how much we use them to back up already formed prejudices. Luckily of course, Reality has a Liberal Bias. Stig of the Dump was fab, wish I'd read it when I was 8 when mucking about in rubbish dumps and making camps and hunting squirrels would have been the best way to spend a summer holiday . Have tried to interest Freddie in a book rather than a picture book, but he doesn't seem ready yet. Also of course, I so rarely do his bedtime as Libby is so insistent on me looking after her. Apparently she spent all of yesterday telling Helen that she liked everyone except Helen. 'Like Bea. . . Like Daddy. . . Like Luke. . . Like Gemma. . . Not Like Mummy, Mummy not sleep with me, Daddy sleep with me'. Helen bribed her with chocolate last night to stay in her bed. It worked, and I had the first whole night's sleep in my own bed for weeks. The precedent has now been set. . .

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return Of Sherlock Holmes, Ken Livingstone, You Can't Say That: Memoirs , Simon Scarrow, Sword & Scimitar, Tom Fort, A303: Highway To The Sun

Some easy reads for a change! Nothing about Habsburgs, Scandinavian murders or cartographical inspiration. Reading Sherlock again made me think of all the classic detective fiction I have never read - nearly all Agatha Christie's, Maigret, Peter Wimsey. Maybe that'll be a them in the future. There's still a load of Inspector Montalbano to read though, and I promised myself to read more Van Veeteren. . . Maybe it is time for a Kindle so I can read while putting Libby to bed! At the moment I'm in the room with here for up to an hour. I don't mind as I can sing songs to her and browse the internet, and sit down for a bit. I do wish she would let me sing something other than the Thomas & Friends theme tune or 'The Wheels On the Bus' though. I'm not even allowed to riff on a theme. Any deviation  from wheels/round, wipers,swish, mummies/chatter, daddies/say "don't do that" is immediately met by a forceful 'NO!' from Lib and any hopes of her settling are gone as she sits up ramrod straight to protest the indignity of being forced to listen to incorrect verse.

Ken's memoirs were as subjective as you'd expect, but politically I can’t think of much where I disagree with him other than Foreign policy. I'm not as ready as him to accept the Spanish claim to Gib, the Argentinian claim to the Falklands and the Palestinian claim to the Holy Land; but that probably reveals my Little Englander tendencies rather than being an internationalist. On everything else - economics, education, transport, health. . . I'm with Ken, a s shining example of an electorally successful unashamedly populist unashamedely left wing politician.  'Sword & Scimitar' was set in the Great Siege of Malta, and was formulaic tosh. I went to see Simon Scarrow talk at Woking Library and found him very engaging, so thought it might be worth a read. The Great Siege is crying out for a great novel or, even better, a great film. Finally, the A303; an ode to a road. It was a fun read, but seemed incomplete; the A303 starts nowhere just outside Basingstoke and finishes with a whimper as a side road in Somerset. All the way through it seemed as if it was the story of part of a journey rather than the whole journey from London to the south west. Maybe the A30 for a companion piece?

Morrissey, Autobiography, Jean-Yves Ferri, Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo and Didier Conrad, Asterix & The Picts, Jerry Brotton, A History Of The World in Twelve Maps

There's been a lot of alternative covers for Moz's autobiography floating around, see here http://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2013/oct/16/morrisseys-autobiography-15-alternative-front-covers

My favourite was the one that read simply 'Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me MeMe Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me  Johnny Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me'. Skirts over the time of The Smiths, and more time is dedicated to the court case and how Moz was the victim of the biggest injustice ever witnesses in a court of law. Mostly score settling and myth peddling, but the early chapters on his childhood are written with beauty and Moz's normal disregard for truth. 'Asterix & The Picts' is the first book produced without the sole involvement of Goscinny and Uderzo, but since the death of Rene Goscinny the stories have been iffy anyway, even if the illustrations remain faithful. Anthea Bell is on translation duty again, but it didn’t seem to have the same amount of genius punning and ambitious landscape/cityscape pictures of the early books.

It's getting dark by 4 o'clock now, but we're still cycling back with lights blazing. I'm really keen to keep it up although it's a logistical ballache. Helen can't really cycle down in the morning now she's expecting so I have to drop the bike at Gemma's first thing in the morning before heading for a run/the gym.

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.