China Mieville, The Last Days Of New Paris

'New Paris' is  a city rebelling against Nazi occupation, where an explosion of such force has resulted in art manifesting itself as living organisms. So lobster telephones are biting people, the sky is obscured by sharks and more seriously, monstrous creatures roam the boulevards. The Nazis are fighting back in league with demons from hell. Bonkers. Just Bonkers. I rather enjoyed it though.  We're flying to the US in a few weeks, so Helen and I have been spending most of our evenings working out logistics and booking rides and restaurants for Disney World. It's mind-bogglingly complex. I've been reading an 'Unofficial Guide to DisneyWorld' which was 800 pages+ long. I think we're more excited than the kids (I am, anyway). Just have to remember that it’s not about an efficient checklist of seeing everything, it’s about having fun, and most kids that go to Disney say the best thing was mucking about by the pool at the resort.

Jean Manco, Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings

Had to gloss over large parts where the book discussed genetic mutations between DH3a1bn and DH3a1bnx and how it could be due to an influx from AB1jyt34 at a later date. The conclusion seems to be that the peoples of Europe were far more mobile in prehistory than has previously been supposed, and that there were some mass migrations where indigenous people were mostly replaced rather than a change in culture or technology being relective of a static population adopting new methods or beliefs, or the changes being accompanied by an elite rather than significantly altering the genetic makeup. Of course, all of these models have been true at one time or another

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle, Jake Arnott, The Fatal Tree, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime And Punishment, Guillem Balague, Brave New World: Inside Pochettino's Spurs, Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove, Zadie Smith, White Teeth, Elizabeth Gee Nash, The Hansa , Jo Nesbo, The Son, Richard Ford, The Sportswrite

'The Sportswriter' was yet another mid 20th Century book by a white, middle-aged East Coast man about an introspective, prosperous white, middle-aged East Coast professional man and his (ahem) struggles. I should be the core constituency for this sort of stuff, but it just leaves me cold. Nothing seems to happen and I struggle to feel any sympathy for the protagonist. My heart plunged when I got to the end and realised it was part 1 of a trilogy.

'The Son' was Nesbo by numbers - grisly deaths in the seedier parts of Norway and a police procedural with dysfunctional detectives. Still enjoyed it, but they're just being churned out like episodes of Midsomer now. 'The Snowman' has been made into a film starring Michael Fassbender. It's meant to be terrible, but it might be ok for an evening's viewing, even for the mountain scenery alone.

'The Hansa' was a history of the Hanseatic League - I picked it up as Mum and Dad are going on a tour of the Baltic soon and I thought it might be a good pop history for Mum, but it was a wee bit too dry  - pages of extracts from Herring Inventories and medieval Flemish exchange rates.

'White Teeth' was on the 100 essential novels, which surprised me as I hadn’t realised quite how highly it was rated in the US. It's a love letter to London though, Dickens for the 20th Century.

'A Man Called Ove' was lovely and life-affirming, reminded me of Harold Fry. There were some sniffy reviews from critics who are expecting bleak existential angst from Scandinavian authors. It's not too sugar-coated though, it has its fair share of tragedy and rage against the failings of the Swedish social democrat model. It's the story of Ove, who tries his best to maintain his principles and values in a society that is changing, corrupt and doesn’t share his beliefs. The cast are there to reinforce his prejudices - the muslim wife, the husband who cannot repair anything, the cyclists who leaves his bike in a restricted area. . .

'Brave New World' was an indulgence - it was never going to share revelations about THFC, but if you read between the lines there were a few interesting comments about current players. What a time to be a Spurs fan. We're in the CL and outplaying Real, Juventus and Man Utd while Arsenal are imploding with their fans calling for Wenger to go. It won't last, so right now I'm just enjoying the moment.

'Crime and Punishment' was slogged through. I'm not clever enough to understand all the philosophising about guilt and its effect on the human psyche

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, James Dickey, Deliverance, Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan 1897-1945, Fiona Mozley, Elmet, Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays, Richard Huscroft, Tales from the Long Twelfth Century: The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire, Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Reread Foot's Bevan for the first time in 20 years, I think, and was surprised by how unsympathetic a character he was, despite Foot's hero-worship. It must be me that has changed, but he no longer comes across as a brave, principled crusader, but as an egotistical, destructive polemicist. I loved 'A Gentleman in Moscow, which centres around a Russian aristocrat caught up in the aftermath of the revolution and trying to make the best of things while under house arrest in a fading grand hotel for 40 years. A lovely, sweet story of a true gentleman coming to terms with a world profoundly different to that he was born into and had taken for granted. Was dreading a sad ending as he gets dragged away to a gulag, but the author contrived a beautiful, believable way for the Count to end up happy ever after

EL Doctorow, Ragtime, Glyn Parry, The Arch Conjuror of England: John Dee, Andrew Caldecott, Rotherweird, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, Alan Johnson, Please Mister Postman: A Memoir

Snuck the latest Asterix in there somewhere, too. 'Ragtime' was the first of the '100 essential novels' that I've read in a long time that I either understood or enjoyed. Written as a knowing attempt to write the Great American Novel, what I liked about it was that unlike so many of the novels I have read on the list, it wasn't purely the east coast, wealthy intellectual elite with no real problems writing about themselves (Roth, deLillo, Updike. . .). Instead it was a more real vision of the American Dream - by the hard work and application of others, people born into riches can become even richer. Just when I think I'm back on top, along came Pynchon, which nonplussed me for 170-odd pages.

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, Steven Runciman The Fall of Constantinople 1453, William Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury, Gerard Reve, The Evenings, Tim Marshall, Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags, Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

Loved the first book of the new 'equel' to His Dark Materials, although I did get a little lost as it became increasingly mystic and dreamlike as they journeyed down a flooded Thames Valley. Reminded me a lot of 'The Dark is Rising' for these very reasons - I also struggled to follow that at first as the deluge swept away the earthly world and replaced it with something stranger. Really glad I took the time to reread the first three books, and 'The Amber Spyglass' in particular made a lot more sense the second time round- not sure if I read it more closely, or whether I'm just more comfortable with metaphysics and theological debate now. In between, 'The Sound and the Fury' and 'The Evenings' passed me by; yet more classics I do not understand.

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day, James Baldwin, Go Tell It On The Mountain, Douglas Murphy, Nincompoopolis: The Follies of Boris Johnson

I've decided to change the fiction/non-fiction strict rotation for a bit. The backlog of fiction has been growing and growing, so from now it will be fiction/non-fiction/100 essential novels fiction until the balance has been restored. Two easy reads bookended the protestant brimstone patriarchy of Go Tell It On The Mountain. Nincompoopolis was devoured; I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find the words to describe my loathing of Alexander Johnson.