Sometimes when you read a book, you think I got the gist, and put it aside. This is one of those, from the slightly ungainly title, to the sex lives of the less than famous, (with the exception of Graham Greene) this illustrates the truism that in war it’s more than the gloves that come off. What it does paint is the extraordinary image of London in the blitz, where every night more and more of the city went up in flames. The fact that the inhabitants reached for each other in those long terrifying nights could be attributed to DNA or just the fact that terror, loss and death makes you want to fuck.

Last year a nice Norwegian journalist who was interviewing me gave me some Norwegian books so that I might know a little more about Norwegian writers. I could hardly know less, so it was a most kind gift. I enjoyed this beautiful story about a son and his mother and his life and her death. The quotation is from a poem by Mao. This is a line from the book. “It was like it always is with time, that it can slip through your fingers when you are not looking.”

A sweet little book which will whet your appetite for the real thing. A major fan of Auden’s shares his feelings and his favourite poems and his best thoughts.

I finished this which I had started in June and was struck by how well he finishes his books, not something all novelists can do, but something vitally important in the detective thriller. His terrain of the Hollywood cops and the Hollywood moon that sets the denizens of Hollywood buzzing is exactly his own. He has carved out this territory and nobody does it better.

The Life and Death of a British Emperor. I’m slowly working my way through this. I was always fascinated by the Fall of Clive. This history is a little slow but I haven’t abandoned it, since I want to see how it turns out.

Well this is 1984. Actually more like 2084. For those of us who feel I-People are akin to a cult here is the novel of our anxieties. What does it mean when we share everything on line, on camera, on email and twitter? Is this a sinister or a useful human social development? Do we get closer to others, or further away from our real selves? Mae is the Winston Smith of the book, who gets a job at the Silicone Valley online giant The Centre. Her moments of rebellion, solo kayaking, and furtive sex with a mysterious watcher, are used as examples against her. Carefully advised by her counsellors, she learns her lesson, outing herself in a series of Orwellian contradictions. History too is rewritten, as camera and digital data is re-interpreted. So yes it’s a great idea, but I got the feeling that for once the film might be even better. Perhaps it’s the character of Mae who rarely becomes more than a cypher or perhaps we get it too soon, we quickly understand the irony of freedom becoming repressive, and hate the intrusive nature of this Maoist world, where self-criticism is used to keep the individual in line, so that the book seems overlong as it slowly works out its paradoxes: how working at The Centre transforms a bright intelligent young woman into a workaholic vessel, how it affects her relationship with her parents and former lover, how her world view is polluted by the shining guidelines of the Company, where everything is free, and nothing has any value. Where cameras follow you for every waking hour and you must be careful what you think, and you must communicate all day or feel the sting of social criticism. Big Brother is watching you. Dystopia Ltd.

Another from the interesting New Yorker writer. Interesting insights and observations. I’ve used the word interesting twice which alerts me I am trying to cover up the fact I found some parts a little dull….