The last one of his books I hadn’t yet read and as engrossing and thrilling and page turning as ever. A Jane Whitefield novel. In this one she marries Carey – well hell I’m not going to spoil it for you. Enjoy.

A fabulous and most enjoyable book. I won’t spoil any of the plot twists but I found it the best of his books. Read it.

A study in pain – the writer in neck pain and guilt at his Portnoy success, can only shag women and take increasingly powerful drugs, which leads him to overreact against a critic of his work. Not a complete success or as good as this next which was one of my books of the summer:

Starts off brilliantly with a geological history of London, and then the Celts and then the Romans, but by early medieval times it is getting a little draggy and slipping into the Mustava type of history (it must ’ave been a fine sight). I will dip and return next summer.

Laughter and the Twenty Million. The Book of the summer. Essential reading. Shamefully the crimes of Stalin don’t get the same publicity as those of Hitler. Perhaps his propaganda was more effective, for thousands cried when this monster finally died. And it’s one of those great death scenes – like Robespierre’s – where you are so on the side of Death. He killed more of his own people than anyone in history, and he killed anyone close to him especially those who lived near him (like wives) or came from his own region (Georgia.) The cold white hot anger of Amis as he exposes this humorless monster makes this a brilliant must read. It should be required reading in schools, instead of all that Scarlet Letter bullshit.

The retelling of The Man Who Never Was. I kept putting it down as he keeps delaying the story. In the end it’s too discursive or he fails to write grippingly enough. Disappointing. Still might dip into the end parts as it is such a great yarn.