John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Martyn Rady, The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power, Henry Treece, Hounds Of The King, Roberto Bolano 2666

2666 leaves me with just one more of the '100 essential novels' to read that I started all those years ago. It's a great big wodge of a book which has been staring at me from the book pile on top of the chest of drawers since before lockdown started. I decided not to attempt it or the other remaining book, William Gaddis' The Recognitions during lockdown, as life is hard enough! as many critics have said, it can be seen not as one book but as five separate books, and all stood alone as reads that gripped me and kept me interested. the exception was the core of the novel, which at times turned into a list of horrific murders of women in Northern Mexico. hugely ambitious though, and it has made me want to read more of his work. On the others, yet another book about the Habsburgs and that glorious lost mitteleuropa they represent, of ceremony, inefficiency, polyglotism, open borders, railways, regalia and refusal to adjust to the modern world. Steinbeck's East of Eden was an epic, I love reading his work and this may be the best. I'll have to reread The Grapes of Wrath. At home, the mismanagement of COVID means the UK now has the highest death rate in the world and we are in a 'mockdown' when we are all meant to stay at home, but people are still working, kids are still going to school and shops are still open. 

John Le Carre, Smiley's People, Bob Mortimer & Andy Dawson, Athletico Mince, John Masefield, The Box Of Delights, John Kampfner, Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country, Stuart Turton, The Devil And The Dark Water, Paul embery, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class

 More Holiday comfort reads as the post-Brexit trade deal is ratified and COVID cases continue to increase. Le Carre passed away over the period too, a superb writer who has been pigeon-holed as a 'spy writer', when in reality he has much to say about the state of post war Britain. 'Athletico Mince' was a cash-in spinoff from a very funny podcast featuring Bob Mortimer. It started as a football podcast, but quickly evolved into something much bigger and funnier that uses football as a jumping-off point for a series of grotesque characters. Roy Hodgson is a Warhammer obsessive, Harry Kane a pompous leader of a rubbish kids' gang, Peter Beardsley a tragic halfwit constantly abused by his poached egg-obsessed missus. I find myself laughing out loud at the absurdity, but really it's just two very funny blokes mucking about. 'The Box of Delights' was the purple pim and just right for Christmas Day, and then I've just finished Paul Embery's fascinating book. I agree with much of it, and how the Labour Party has abandoned and even come to despise many of the people who it should be representing, the economically left-wing but socially conservative working class. I do despair of the Labour party, and its obsession with minority issues like misgendering and shutting down of anything that questions the socially liberal orthodoxy.  The big question is whether the Labour Party, with an almost entirely socially and economically liberal PLP and overwhelmingly middle-class membership can ever reestablish its connection with the people it should be representing. As long as the unions back the party, I'll stay a member, but I'd happily jump ship for a viable alternative. I'm hardly a social conservative myself, but recognise that's a legitimate viewpoint for millions of people. The party doesn't speak to them, and it doesn't speak to me either. i find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with so much that Leanne Wood of Plaid and Caroline Lewis of the Greens say, and very little of what the leadership of the Labour Party say at the moment (Back Boris' awful trade deal, reopen schools as a priority, don't tax the wealthy more).

Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

 What a Christmas comfort read, just right amidst all the chaos of COVID restrictions and our shambolic government changing the rules at the last minute. I didn't savour it as I should have. My original plan was to read in real-time, starting as the novel does on the 20th December. But Helen wanted to watch the Strictly final, so I read and read a bit more. It's a shame as I raced through it rather, it is familiar territory after all. It will be a strange Christmas this year, but we'll make the best of it. I've just broken the 500 miles run target I set myself, which I'm v proud of given that I took 6 months off after the Surrey Half. I've lost 10kg over this year, cycled more than ever and if I make it to 552 miles over the next 10 days then will have run the furthest ever too. 5 miles a day though including Christmas. . . 

David Abulafia, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, JP Donleavy, A Fairytale of New York, Magnus Mills, Tales of Muffled Oars, Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

 'Started with a mega-history of the world from the perspective of the oceans, and it was nice to read more about the Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific and the trade and navigation of the Indian Ocean before getting on to familiar territory as the europeans explode out from the Med and Atlantic. 'A Fairytale of New York' was on my reading list purely because of the name, and it was a bit of a let-down. couldn't really get into it, wasn't at all funny as I had been led to believe. The latest Magnus Mills has been published through amazon and was like reading a printout, but was the usual Magnus Mills enclosed world or pubs, meetings, routing and surrealism with an anonymous narrator. Read in a day, a real treat. Finally, Laurie Lee's memoir of his travels in Spain. I thought it was about his wartime experience, but it ends as he ships out of Spain just before the war starts. In the real world, I'm becoming increasingly disillusions with the Labour Party. The Leadership's scorched earth policy to destroy the left of the party is seeing many good people suspended or expelled, and their timid policies and abstentions are thoroughly dispiriting. The awful shadow minister for schools, Wes Streeting, is supporting the government's policy of keeping schools open above all else when it is obvious that it is leading to an increase in cases. How can it possibly be that 2 people cannot meet in a house or pub or garden but 2000 kids and staff can spend six hours a day in the same building?   They seem to have reverted to the 'Tory lite' approach of 2010-2015. I'm not sure who they think they will attract, but they are losing committed Labour members like me. I stuck with it before Corbyn, but having seen how the right sabotaged and undermined the left, I'm in no mood to bite my tongue any longer. i think I'll stay in the party so  I can use my vote, but nothing else. 

Ned Palmer, A Cheesemonger's History of the British Isles, Stephen Lawhead, Hood, Alexander Watson, The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl, John le Carre, The Honourable Schoolboy, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

 'Hood' was recommended by Lucy Mangan as a comfort read, a retelling of Robin Hood set in Wales.  Didn't grip me though, The dialogue was so clunky and cliched. 'Have at thee, thou varlet!' After that though, 3 gripping reads. Yet more on Eastern Europe and the twilight of the Habsburgs, a Le Carre and the new book from Colson Whitehead, a jarring tale of abuse and the dilemma of how to react to the authority of evil and oppression - oppose and suffer or accommodate and survive. I'm a coward, no doubt I'd take the latter. In the world outside books, a vaccine has been developed for the virus and the roll out started yesterday. We are all still distancing and the kids have had to isolate again following cases at school, but there is light at the end of the tunnel now. Unfortunately the light just means we can see the car crash that is Brexit.

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Michael Frayn, Towards The End Of The Morning

 As I was reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, all the relentless exploitation and bad faith behaviour of the European settlers seemed to mirror contemporary politics and power struggles - and pulled into focus that 'the White Men' are so often on the dark side, and that the version of history we tell ourselves where we are the good guys is so far removed from reality. There's a few groups on both sides of the Atlantic pushing back against BLM and a more balanced view of history in schools and wanting to return to expounding the glories of the white man's mission to civilise the world. Craziness. 

Agatha Christie, Death In The Clouds, Magnus Mills, Three To See The King, Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass: Crossing The Lines That Divide Us, John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur And His Noble Knights, Agatha Christie, a Halloween Mystery, Daniel Levin, Nothing But A Circus, Ali Smith, Winter, Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet, Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, Eamonn Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, Junichiro Tanizaki, A Cat, A Man, And Two Women, Sam Selvon, The Housing Lark, Owen Jones, This Land: The Story of a Movement, Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man, Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, Keith Roberts, Pavane, John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Robert Dallek, Franklin D Roosevelt: A Political Life, Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist, Saul Bellow, Herzog, Peter Sarris, Byzantium: A Very Short Introduction, Jerome K Jerome, Three Men In a Boat, John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Still in a Steinbeck fanboy situation at the moment. 'The Winter of our Discontent' was superb. Unlike so much else of his fiction, it's set on the east coast in  a whaling town, where the scion of a once prosperous puritan family has been reduced to working as a grocery clerk. He's honest, happy and poor. Throughout the book a string of circumstances open up opportunities to him to enrich himself and be the person in town he is expected to be given his name. So he takes advantage at the expense of those that trust him, gains the power and money he has never craved but which he has been tempted by, and in the end, once it has been revealed that his son, following his example, cheated to win an award, he commits suicide. A candidate for the Great American Novel as the dream turns sour?

 'Three Men in a Boat' was a comfort read, and remains as joyful as ever, just what was needed as we enter a second lockdown. Our government continue to manage the whole thing ineptly, using it only as an excuse to enrich themselves and their chums. Public health, safety and the welfare of the economy don't even seem to exist in their calculation until they are forced to show some consideration by public opinion. In the meantime, Labour are doing well in the polls, but have chosen the Kinnock approach of bashing, marginalising and blaming the left as a precursor to electoral victory. It's horrible, and leaving aside the cynicism and realpolitik of it all that should render such a move reprehensible anyway, it's a strategy that seems doomed to me. The vast majority of Labour members and Labour voters are left wing. They want public services to be run in the interest of the community, not profit, they want the wealthy to pay their fair share and they want the government to be responsible for housing, education and health rather than leaving it to the marketplace. The people advising Starmer don't seem to agree and are wanting to present a future Labour government as non-ideological and just a more competent management team than the Tories. OK, this might attract the very small Change UK liberal, educated, wealthy remainers back to the party, but it offers nothing to the millions of voters who need a Labour Government and the hundreds of thousands of Labour members who want real, socialist change. Honestly, I'd be ok with just one thing. Keep the internal market in the NHS, continue privatising government agencies, keep academies and private schools, keep Trident, keep allowing the wealthiest to avoid paying a fair share of tax, but build decent public sector housing. Or leave housing to the failed market and do one, just one, of those other things. That's all I'd need to be enthusiastic for a new Labour government. 

Amongst all the other books, 'Piranesi' and 'Lud-in-the-Mist' stood out as fantastic novels in two senses. Susanna Clarke +must+ have read Lud-in-the-Mist before writing JS&MN.