Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage & Other Stories

Another from the scratch-off list of 100 essential novels, and the first novel to present a realistic view of warfare apparently (except War and Peace?), but it didn’t grab me and the formal Victorian language did not make for an easy read. I'd be hard put to tell you much of what happened as I skimmed through.

Teresa May has just called a General Election, which will entrench her majority and give her a mandate for hard BREXIT, grammar schools, NHS cuts and all manner of other awful things. Donald Trump is about to bomb Korea and it feels like the end of days with two trigger-happy 'strong men' in charge of the two military machines that could obliterate human life. What a horrible, horrible time.

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (Penguin History), Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Brendan Behan, Borstal Boy, Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Peter Furtado (ed) Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged, Margaret Attwood, The Handmaid's Tale, Simon Bradley, The Railways: Nation, Network and People

Have left this too long again, I can hardly remember reading 'Religion and the Decline of Magic.'  Three more 'classics' in the list for me to scratch off on my wall chart. 'The Handmaid's Tale' was chilling, and with Trump in charge it's becoming a more possible future. It's even more worrying when you realise (late in the day if you’re a slow learner like me) that a world where women are subjugated and not free to make their own decisions isn't a dystopian vision, it's true of most of the world historically and geographically. Still. Tottenham are second in the table and the wisteria is about to bloom, so we might as well enjoy the small things before the impending apocalypse.

Peter Ackroyd, Revolution: A History of England Volume IV (The History of England) , Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse, Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, Robert Byron, The Road To Oxiana, Alan Partridge, Nomad, Cary Elwes, As You Wish, Jo Nesbo, Phantom

I just didn't understand why 'To The Lighthouse' is considered such as classic. Nothing about it stood out to me, other than the tale of an over-privileged family who can't even be bothered to learn their servants name. It's a tragic sign of my own lack of empathy, insight and critical ability, but I'm going to have to do some research to understand more. To be fair, I felt very similarly the first time I read The Awakening, and it was only after consideration, re-reading and discussion with brighter minds that I understood it. More effort needed, Sawyer.

Norse Mythology was as entertaining as expected, Neil Gaiman had a lot of fun with the meatheaded Thor and the mischievous Loki. The Road to Oxiana, another classic, was another of those wonderful early 20th century travel books (Bell, West, Leigh Fermor) where a ridiculously clever upper-class Brit travels the world armed only with massive self-confidence and an incredible network of contacts in the local ruling classes. It's a bewitching world, was it really like that once?

Loved Nomad and Phantom, some nice easy reading, and in between As You Wish was a sweet memoir of the filming of The Princess Bride. That's 3 soft reads in a row though, need to up my game with the next pick. .  . .

Else Roesdahl, The Vikings, Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Fredrik Ekelund, Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game, Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, Fraser MacAlpine, Stuff Brits Like, Johan Cruyff, My Turn, Francis Spufford, Golden Hill

Ahh, a nice simple standard history of the Viking age to ease myself into the new year, and then a work of fiction based in the Highlands that has been shortlisted for the Booker.

Halfway through this clot of books, I received a scratch-off wall chart of '100 Essential Novels'. It came from New York, so has a very American bent, so I'd only read 24 of the books and there were about a third I'd never heard of - Pale Fire? Under The Volcano? Wittgenstein's Mistress? There's a list to complete though, so I'm on it. God of Small Things read (didn’t really understand it, kept getting it confused with Midnight's Children as I'm not very bright), and To The Lighthouse and The Handmaid's Tale on order from Woking Library.

James Morrow, The Last Witchfinder, Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling, Hilary Mantel, The Giant O'Brien. Neil Hegarty, The Story of Ireland: In Search of a New National Memory, Kate Atkinson, A God In Ruins, Eric Foner, Reconstruction, Paula Hawkins, The Girl On The Train, Peter Ackroyd, Civil War, Karl-Ove Knausgaard, Some Rain Must Fall, John Julius Norwich(ed) The Great Cities in History, Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children, Neil Forsyth, Delete This At Your Peril,??, Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Melvyn Bragg, Now Is the Time

3 months without an update, although so much has happened, the election of Donald J Trump as President in particular. I can hardly remember some of these books, and there is at least one work of fiction between 'Delete This At Your Peril' and 'White Trash' where I can't even remember the name. I do worry about my short-term memory, I struggle to remember so much. We played Scattergories over Christmas and my mind went blank under pressure. I still do ok on the crossword though, so hopefully I'm not deteriorating too much.

My running is though, I hardly did any in 2016 and am struggling on Park Run now - my current times are comparable with when Freddie first did it two years ago, and his friend Abel is about 5 minutes faster than me now. Not sure what has happened, it could be psychological, it could be that I'm playing Pokemon Go as I run round now rather than using Runkeeper. . .

Today is the first day back at work after the Christmas Break. Work has been good in 2016, although my role has changed completely and now its basically admin work. The pay is good, the day goes quickly and I get out of work on time though, so I've no motivation to move to a more challenging role. There's so much uncertainty about Vodafone Group with Brexit coming up, so who knows what could happen. Were living relatively frugally and paying off the mortgage, so hopefully we'll be ok.

Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

Expanded on one of my favourite works of history, David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed. Rather than considering just the 4 British folkways in developing the nations of America, Woodard looks at the other elements  and how they developed - French and Hispanic influences, for example, and how Yankeedom mutated into 'the left coast' on the Pacific. Very readable, and a great explanation of the divides in US culture today; very pertinent with the mass, inexplicable support for Trump (well, inexplicable to the Yankees, which apparently includes me)

PG Wodehouse, The Mulliner Omnibus, Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger, Tor! The Story of German Football, Roald Dahl, Danny The Champion Of The World

Wodehouse's prescription was to only read 2 or 3 stories a day, which is why it took so long. He was right, what should be a delight easily becomes a slog through keen curates, game debutantes and blumptious Hollywood producers. I can remember reading a Mulliner omnibus when I was 17 or so, and at the time, mostly enjoying the few paragraphs at the beginning where Mulliner is holding court in the Angler's Rest before the story begins - the same still holds true.

I read Danny The Champion Of The World as Freddie was reading it for school and I wanted to talk to him about it. He seems to be slowly taking to reading now, having acquired a taste for Harry Potter (We, and more specifically, Helen, read it to him rather than him read it himself), and Roald Dahl. I'm not sure I've read it before, and think I can remember being put off as it seemed a very wordy book when I was in Primary School with no pictures. I can’t remember when I made the leap to being a voracious reader, but I hope it happens for Fred.