Andrea Camilleri, the Track of Sand, Stephen Biddulph, Raising Boys

Another Montalbano, and the normal wonderful escapism. I think I enjoy the books more than the series, even with its beautiful locations and the pratfalls of Catarella. 'Raising Boys' was more parenting advice, and of course I'm the parent who neglects their children to read a book on why it is important to pay attention to your children. . . .

I've just had another letter published in The Guardian. I think it's my 5th. One on the US Constitution happily preventing a Schwarzenegger or Kissinger presidency, one on the Hay festival (May 2009), one on the morality of private education (October 2009), one on David Davies' choice of a song condoning drug use on Desert  Island Discs, and now one more on sloppy writing:

I saw nine tautologies in your article (Has M&S gone too far with its pre-cut avocado?, G2, 27 April). Every time I read “pre-peeled” or “pre-diced” I shuddered, and by the sixth paragraph a nervous tic had developed. A “pre-peeled banana” is a peeled banana. A “pre-sliced avocado” is a sliced avocado. “Prepared sandwich” would be bad enough; it’s obviously been prepared, as it exists. To go one stage further and call it a “pre-prepared sandwich” is just pre-preposterous.

David Sawyer

Woking, Surrey

It was  pointed out the next day on the letters page that 'nervous tic' is itself a tautology. . . .

It's a pretty good hit rate, I think every letter I've submitted has been published except one, which was about the names of the tube stations at the western extremities of the Piccadilly Line. There had been a discussion on the letters page about tube station trivia (the only tube station that contains none of the letters in the word 'mackerel'? St John's Wood), and how it was possible to go through 10 stations in a row all beginning with the same letter (Hounslow East-Hounslow Central-Hounslow West-Hatton Cross-Heathrow Ts 1,2,3,-Heathrow T4-Hatton Cross-Hounslow West-Hounslow Central-Hounslow East). I wrote in that it was ironic given that locals like me were unable to pronounce the letter 'H' at the beginning of words; ''Ounslow East, 'Ounslow Central, 'Ounslow West. . . '

Joanne Parker Britannia Obscura: Mapping Britain's Hidden Landscapes

This was a strange one. Read it in 24 hours, a collection of chapters about different landscapes in Britain - caves, ley lines, canals and so on. It didn't really flow, I didn't understand the thread holding them together and so it felt  disjointed to me. I had my interview to be a cub leader last night, I'm getting sucked in. . . 

PG Wodehouse, The Drones Omnibus

Should be dipped into occasionally, not read cover to cover, as what should be a delightful  little slice of humour becomes a heavy meal of fat uncles, bets gone wrong and failed pursuits of eligible young gels.  I didn't do that though, I slogged on and on. Not sure it was Wodehouse's best efforts, I certainly didn’t get the same delight as Wooster or Blandings; I remember how much I loved Mr Mulliner as a teenager, maybe I should try them again. They were more like Psmith, which left me cold.

I had to stop and think at one point, when a passing reference to events in the '50s made me realise that the events were supposedly set in post-war England, despite the ambience and references being of Wodehouse's mixture of Edwardian England in the long summertime and an England of the '20s and '30s where the First World War hadn't happened.

Frits Barend & Henk Van Dorp, Ajax, Barcelona, Cruyff: The ABC of an Obstinate Maestro

This is a collection of interviews over the decades with Cruyff by two Dutch pundits, and has been sat on the shelf for years. Finally reading it was prompted by two factors: his recent death, and Freddie's burgeoning interest in football superstars. He's been watching the 'Football's Greatest' series n You Tube about great footballers and really enjoying it, particularly the showboating personified by the 'Cruyff Turn' or his audacious penalties. He's supporting Barcelona at the moment too (during Tottenham's best ever league season in MY lifetime too, let alone his! Does he not realise??), so that adds to the attraction of Cruyff. He even read a very short chapter about how JC started hanging around at Ajax's De Meer stadium aged 6 helping his uncle, the groundsman

At the moment we've busy collecting the panini stickers for Euro 2016. How strange to see glossy pages about Albania, Wales and Northern Ireland. Not sure whether this expanded European championship will be a good idea or whether it will mean some RWC style tonkings. Maybe someone will do a Japan though. .  . .

Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, Stephen Biddulph, Raising Girls, Mark Haddon, The Red House

'The Power Broker' lived up to the hype as one of the great political biographies. Moses is practically unknown over here, I'd be interested to find out what level of awareness there is about him in the US these days. 1000 pages of how to attain power, how to use it, how it corrupts and the hubristic fall of an imperial court.

'The Loved One' slipped by, made me smile a few times, but nothing to justfy its billing as one of the great 20th century comic novels. Not a patch on Scoop.

I should have read 'Raising Girls' a long time ago. Being a self-help manual, there's plenty of truisms, common-sense and anecdotes to support an argument, but there's enough in there to make you stop and think about how you behave towards young girls. I don't always deal well with Libby when she is refusing to comply with requests, and it's a good reminder that she responds well to love and encouragement rather than being summarily dismissed to her room.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road, Michael Frayn, The Tin Men

Two fiction books in a row? What is happening? 'The Tin Men' was read as some light relief a third of the way through Robert Caro's magisterial biography of Robert Moses, which weighs more than Bibs. 700 pages to go, including a world war and a state-wide  freeway building programme, as well as the inexorable descent into corruption of an idealist faced with the realities of power. 'The Road' was a very good read, set in a dystopian future where America is a wasteland, and a father and son are trying to survive and escape to a better future. The love and sacrifice of the (unnamed) father for his (unnamed) son was choking. Helen's having a read of it now. 'The Tin Men' is over 50 years old, but seemed so relevant - programming computers to carry out roles traditionally performed by humans, including producing novels, newspapers and resolving ethical dilemmas, and the boredom and ennui of office life. 

David Carlton, MacDonald versus Henderson: The Foreign Policy of the Second Labour Government

Back on home territory here! This was originally a phd thesis from the sixties, examining an aspect of the second Labour government that gets forgotten with all the domestic financial issues. Snowden still features as a bogeyman, insufferable in his intransigence and all-powerful in his domain as Chancellor, conducting his own foreign policy and diplomacy. If I'd read this 20 years ago it would have helped my own MA dissertation, I'm sure. Reading it reminds me that it's still 20th Century UK political history, particularly of the left that is where I feel most comfortable and knowledgable, despite all the forays into 18th Century politics, and the American Revolutionary period, and the Habsburgs and mitteleuropa, and the Byzantine empire and the Levant.