Junot Diaz, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Not the book I was expecting, about a young Hispanic nerd in NY. That's how it starts, but it soon expands to cover the tragic history of a Dominican family in the 20th Century and the horrors of the Trujillo regime. Really enjoyable and learnt a lot about Dominican history. It was William's 4th birthday at the weekend and we had a big party. He's a real handful at the moment. It's lovely as he's talking far more and loves to sing and mimics his brother and sister. He wants to go 'geocachin' all the time, despite not really understanding it.  Hard to believe he starts school in September, he seems so young!

Next Erlendur - Arctic Chill

China Mieville, The Last Days Of New Paris

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind, Lucy Mangan. Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, Cyril Hare, An English Murder, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Elizabeth Drayson, The Moor's Last Stand: How Seven Centuries of Muslim Rule in Spain Came to an End

My holiday reading for the US. Gone With the Wind was breathtakingly racist, and the most alarming thing was the insouciance with which Margaret Mitchell and her characters just accepted the superiority of well-bred whites and that slavery was beneficial to all. It was still a gripping read though, and I ended up sneaking off most nights after the kids had gone to the bed to read a few more chapters while overdosing on free root beer and cakes at the Resort Food Hall in Disney World. Helen also had to tell me off for reading about Sherman's March to the Sea when I should have been watching the Orca display at Seaworld.

I'd read anything by Lucy Mangan, I've been a fan of her articles in The Guardian for years, and when she writes a book about childhood reading that's just the nuts. My responses to each chapter generally fell into one of two categories. A) I had read the book and nodded along enthusiastically with agreement or B) I had not read the book and stuck it straight on my Amazon wishlist so I was no longer missing out. One book she raved about, 'Private: Keep Out', is now out of print and battered second hand copies are changing hands for £700!

Cyril Hare's 'An English Murder' kept me diverted on the plane back via Iceland. It was a corking, classic english murder mystery. I was going to ask Alan if he had read it, but we weren't able to meet up in NY unfortunately as Alec was unwell. 'Blood Meridian' was unremittingly violent and I lost my way at times. No doubt a truer version of The West than Hollywood's, but I prefer the humour and verbosity of Deadwood over unending barbarity and depravity. Finally, a defence of Boabdil, the last Moorish ruler of Granada. His story is such a tragic one, it's no wonder it has inspired so many paintings, books etc. Makes me desperate to go back to Andalucia.

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived In The Castle

A nice slice of chilling American Gothic centring on a reclusive oddball aristocratic family imprisoned in their stately pile following a hideous poisoning. Really enjoyable, I was forever sneaking a few extra pages when I got a chance. We're off to the US on Wednesday, so have just started 'Gone With The Wind', the first few chapters of which are outrageous in their faux-nostalgia and blinkered view of the antebellum south. Let's see how it continues. . .

Frank McLynn, The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revoloution, 1381-1926

As a historian, McLynn can be a bit partial and iconoclastic. He takes aim at quite a few shibboleths of English history. It’s hardly new to hear Henry VIII and Churchill denounced, but McLynn is very disparaging about Elizabeth I and Edward III, our perfect queen and perfect king - which makes an interesting change. It was a bit blah for me until the home ground of the 1926 strike was reached. McLynn was in no doubt that it was a truly revolutionary moment, and if the TUC hadn’t caved then the opportunity was there. Of course, as he himself states, the TUC never wanted a revolution and weren't prepared to go there. It's chilling to remember the state's response to the strike though - the black propaganda of the British Gazette, the encouragement of fascists to violence, the willingness for the military to shoot strikers. The General Strike was not intended by the strikers to bring about revolution, but the response of Baldwin's Government and its supporters showed that they thought that a possibility and they were prepared to kill ordinary British working people to avoid that. To Save The Nation. It's easy to draw parallels with the state's approach to striking miners at Orgreave and to anti-capitalist demonstrators more recently.

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Still processing this a bit, the horror of what slavery does to the human psyche is something so beyond my experience it's difficult to digest. To murder your own child so they wouldn't have to endure life on the plantation - how horrifying. A book to recommend.

How do  I segue from that to our holiday in just over a week? I'm torn between some light reading or taking a great big tome that has been sitting there a while. Hmmm. In the meantime, Libby has become a fixture at cubs, despite being a year too young. I found a spare scarf and woggle, and she is now known as 'Black Six'. Daddy's Little Enforcer.

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