Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

 All these wonderful books that I read and don't write anything about or take time to pause and digest, but the one I pick is a corporate entrepreneurial self-help guide. Not something I would voluntarily read, as it serves a practical purpose and reading is an esoteric activity that should be enjoyed for itself, not because of any tangible gains or improvements as a result. Reading is to be enjoyed, not applied to the real world. There is part of me that wants to do a good job though, and if this helps then hey-ho. The reason I read it was because my company have introduced a 'Spirit Day' which each of us should use for development and well-being. I was sceptical of this, but I must admit I really enjoyed a day of very few emails and no meetings when I could concentrate. It also appears to have inspired me to start writing again, even if just a few sentences. I've broken 1000 miles for the year (running) and just had a PB in the GSR and the Surrey Half, so I'm feeling fit and healthy for a change. I've also stopped drinking, which undoubtedly contributed to that wellbeing too. Will be back on it by Christmas no doubt, and in the meantime am eating far too many sugary and fatty snacks.

Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England, Colin Dexter, The Riddle of the Third Mile, John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal, Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre, Paul Lay, Providence Lost: The Rise & Fall of Cromwell's Protectorate, Kingsley Amis, The Alteration, Heather Cox Richardson, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, Colin Dexter, Last Seen Wearing, Norman Davies, Beneath Another Sky: A Global Journey Into History, John Le Carre, Call for the Dead, Matthew Strickland, Henry the Young King 1155-1183, James Meek, The People's Act of Love, Jonathan Mullard, Pembrokeshire: A Natural History, Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, Ysenda Maxtone-Graham, British Summer Time Begins. Jasper Fforde, The Constant Rabbit, Charles Spencer, The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I's Dream, Helen Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, William Souder, Mad At The World: A Life of John Steinbeck, Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club, Raynor Winn, The Wild Silence, Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning, Paul Preston, A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain, Mick Herron, Slough House, Joseph Roth, The Hotel Years, Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain, James Dugan, The Great Mutiny, Colin Dexter, The Last Bus To Woodstock, Lawrence Wright, God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down, Cat Jarman, River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads, John Le Carre, A Small Town in Germany, Lauren Johnson, Shadow King, The Life and Death of Henry VI, George Sanders, Lincoln In The Bardo, Robert Burchfield, The English Language, John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle

 'My love affair with Steinbeck continues, and 'In Dubious Battle' made me look into my soul and find a coward there, I think. It's the story of union organisers in California trying to agitate and raise a strike among the exploited apple-pickers of the valley and coming up against every type of violence, intimidation, double-cross and abuse of power possible from the Growers Association and their allies in local government, the police, the press. I can't imagine the pressure of how striking would  cause men to starve, risk their lives, their livelihood, their families' lives and everything they have for something incredibly unlikely to be successful. I think I would have caved and not had the courage. It was a riveting read though, and I was right there in the valley facing the dilemmas with the men. It's Steinbeck's most overtly political and 'red' book, but it's not at all ideological. Just about decency and the working-man deserving to profit from the fruits of their labours.  At home, Libby is the first in the family to test positive for COVID-19, she's at home now and bored out of her mind. Helen, Freddie and I are all vaccinated, but William is likely to get it too. we've had to cancel our trip away at half term and bastard Alton Towers won't refund me

William Gaddis, The Recognitions, Debbie Stowe, Romania, Malorie Blackman, Noughts & Crosses, Heather Cox Richardson, How The South Won The Civil War, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the emergence of a new moral barbarism, Louisa May Alcott, More Little Women, David Graeber, Bullsh*t Jobs: The Rise Of Pointless Work And What We Can Do About It, Colin Dexter, The Dead of Jericho, Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, Mikhail Sholokov, And Quiet Flows The Don, Alan Palmer, The Baltic: A New history of the region and its people, Colin Dexter, Service of all the Dead, David Hackett Fischer, Historians Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought, Elizabeth Knox, The Absolute Book, John Steinbeck, Once There Was A War. Colin Dexter, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, Helen Carr, The Red Prince: John of Gaunt: Duke of Lancaster, Alan Garner, The Owl Service, Max Adams, The First Kingdom:Britain in the Age of Arthur, Paul Kingsnorth, Beast, Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, Colin Dexter, The Secret of Annex 3, Janet M. Hartley, The Volga: A History of Russsia's Greatest River, John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold, David W Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, And Language, Scott Innes, Galactic Keegan

 After slogging joylessly through The Recognitions to complete the 100 Essential novels, I wrote the starting piece to what I thought would be my thoughts on all those great books, but it was not to be. That was months ago (as can be seen from the list of books above), and since then I haven't written at all. It's been a bit of a mix - some predictable comfort reans like Morse, Steinbeck and straightforward historical narratives, but also some more challenging Russian Literature and the bizarreness of 'Galactic Keegan' . already I have a new '100 Books Bucket List', hence Black & White and Little Women. 60 out of 100 read, but thank god there are no more impenetrable  doorstops like The Recognitions. Scanning the list the most challenging remaining reads are going to be Ulysses and War and Peace, but there are some nice things there too like Roald Dahl's Matilda and a Harlan Coben thriller.

At home, I'm in a new job and am now officially working from home. I'm not sure how long this will last, as my job can be done from literally anywhere in the world, and as my team are all based in Germany and Romania having my role in the UK makes little sense. Sooner or later I think redundancy will come calling, but for now I'll make the most of it. We are over a year into the pandemic, and currently a bit worried about a third wave due to our incompetent government. most of the population in the UK has been vaccinated though, hopefully that will help.  The children are all back at school, William's reading is progressing, but he does seem rather too proud of all the detentions he gets for not listening in class. I think he has suffered more than any of us with lockdown as he got into a routine of just staring at the TV. All three of them spend too much time on the screen, but then so do Helen and I. . . 

William Gaddis, The Recognitions

 Four years ago I bought a scratch-off wall chart of the ‘100 Essential Novels’. Today, the last entry, ‘The Recognitions’ by William Gaddis, was scratched off with a 20 cent coin. Back in January 2017 it was probably it was just an impulse purchase, a simple click or three while scrolling and swiping idly away at the iPad. Since then it’s consumed a fair chunk of my free time, and the ‘100 essential novels’ have been read on trains, in the garden, in bed, in the viewing gallery of Woking Pool, sheltering from the heat in Florida, sheltering from the rain in Wales and sheltering from my family and responsibilities more than a conscientious father should. Most of the reading has taken place while putting in a token half-arsed spin on various exercise bikes in the gyms of the Thames Valley.

There were three parts that appealed to me about the wallchart, none of them intellectual or overly complex. The first was simple and one of the more basic human desires, to collect and categorise shiny things. Collecting is fun, marking off progress is fun and having some tangible way to display one’s progress and achievements feeds the ego. Making sense of a senseless world through categorising and labelling gives us all a sense of control. How incredible it would be to have ‘done’ the 100 essential novels. To be able to believe we had ‘completed’ literature. Nonsense of course, but a comforting thought for the collectors among us, whether butterflies, Pokémon, stamps, stickers or worthy literature.

The second part was also ego-driven (there is a theme developing), and my shame at considering myself a bibliophile, but aware there were huge gaps in my knowledge of literature. Generously, this could be seen as a noble impulse, the desire to improve and educate oneself, but I suspect it had more to do with deep-seated insecurities at not being able to join in when confronted with genuinely clever people who can effortlessly and joyfully expound on the centrality of Natasha’s dance to War and Peace, and how it explains the quintessential soul of Russia. As I write this, it occurs to me that (with two exceptions to the rule), I don’t know anyone that +could+ explain the significance of Natasha’s Dance and the chances of A) meeting someone that can and B) meeting them at the moment they are doing it are as likely as finding a very particular piece of hay in the unending wheatfields of Tsarist Ukraine. So there’s a very good chance I’ve spent a fair portion of the past four years preparing for an event infinitesimally unlikely to occur, and doing so while neglecting to perform far more necessary activities such as picking the kids up on time, putting the bins out and fixing the leak in the airing cupboard. Sorry, Helen. And to compound my negligence, ‘War and Peace’ wasn’t even on the list, so I’m still fecking clueless about Natalya Ilyinichna’s pas de châle.

Lastly, and even more simply than the first reason, I enjoy reading. My earliest memories are of going to the maternity ward at Hillingdon Hospital when my youngest brother was born and being excited not because of the birth of our Kev, but because I could climb up on the bed and Mum would read me Asterix. We didn’t have many books at home, and the only time I can remember Dad reading something that wasn’t the Daily Express sports pages was when he was on jury duty and took a copy of Spike Milligan’s wartime memoirs with him to stave off the boredom of sitting through a case of harassment and accidental exposure at Isleworth Crown Court. So it’s not an inherited love, and I remain unremittingly jealous of those lucky enough to have grown up in houses brim-full with tottering stacks of paperbacks, with Radio 4 playing in the background and a broadsheet on the kitchen table. When I found out the family of a good friend named all their pet cats after Dickens characters I felt like I had finally found my people. I tried to get them to adopt me. I’d even have let them call me Pecksniff.

 

Owen Hatherley, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London, Michelle Paver, Wakenhyrst, David Hackett Fischer, Liberty & Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas, Magnus Mills, Explorers of the New Century

 'Writing this under duress as I am coming to the end of William Gaddis' The Recognitions, which will deserve an entry all to itself. There were some good reads in this batch, a history of Labour government in London written from the point of view of the left, a cracking slice of East Anglian gothic, and David Hackett Fischer's 'Liberty and Freedom' inspired by the jaw-dropping scenes in DC as Trump supporters with their own view of liberty and freedom attached the Capitol building, which should symbolise both. Very good on the clash of different views of liberty and freedom in the Us and how they have developed and clashed. then finally a Magnus Mills comfort read, the normal sparse surrealism in an enclosed world.

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).