The Interpretation of Murder – Jed Rubenfeld. Utter tosh. Finished it because my wife told me it had a good ending. She was wrong.

Mortal Causes – Ian Rankin. The sixth in the Rebus series and it feels like Rankin's finally getting into his stride. Thoroughly enjoyable.

A History of Britain: 3000BC-AD1603: At the Edge of the World? - Simon Schama. Almost finished this. It had been sat on my shelves for years, but I was inspired to read it by Schama's recent TV History of America. It's an excellent overview of medieval British history. Bringing back happy memories of A-Level history with Messrs Sparrow and Peters in the mid-80s!

Waiting for the Barbarians - JM Coetzee. Very bleak and apocalyptic but beautifully written. Life and Times of Michael K is also a very good early novel.

Duma Key - Stephen King. Well, this was going rather well until my wife managed to lose it. Can't decide whether to buy another or not but it is a return to form.

The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers. Early spy novel from the turn of the 20th century about a German invasion of Britain and how two amateurs sailors foil the dastardly plot. Some slow parts but intriguing.

Quartet In Autumn by Barbara Pym. In the mid-1970s, four single people in their 60s (two women, two men) work together in an office doing something the nature of which we're never told. The two women retire, then one of them dies. (Genuinely!) the funniest book I've read in ages.

New Grub Street by George Gissing. A variety of people struggle to make a living at writing in the 1880s. Radio 4 fans: characters include Edwin Reardon and Jasper Milvain. Another character conceives of a magazine called 'Chit-Chat', which will contain 'bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery... Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost.'

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly. A political singer is imprisoned by the Burmese authorities. Worthy but hard-going. Afraid I gave up on this.

Andy B - if you haven't done so, you need to read P Hamilton's Slaves Of Solitude now - I reckon it's his best. I also really enjoyed Headlong, although (perhaps inevitably) the ending was a disappointment, and kind of a cop-out.

1) The Diabolical Liberties of Uncle Max - Cyril Kersh

Picked up for £1 in the local Oxfam bookshop; literary beginnings and familial guilt in early 1970s Jewish Westcliff on Sea. Not as much fun as it sounds.

2) Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

More familial history, this time in a magic-realist contemporary Japan. Wonderful, which is slightly odd as I can't stand the South American magic realists.

3) Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book

I was in Dublin for a friend's wedding the other weekend and called ahead to reserve a copy of this from Gaiman's signing at Easons on O'Connell Street. I'm glad to have it as an artefact but found the book slightly disappointing - a boy is raised by ghosts when his family a murdered.

Currently:
Nightmare at 20,000 feet. Richard Matheson, collection of short stories which, the blurb tells me, was very influential on Stephen King. Title story was filmed for the Twighlight Zone. Not normally my bag at all, but these are very imaginative and quite effective on a winter's evening.

Previously:
The Progressive Patriot. Billy Bragg. Hmmm. Pretty good once he'd warmed up, but on much safer ground when talking about music, the effect of the war on his neighbourhood etc than on the big historical picture.

Before that:
The Book Thief. Markus Zusak. Recommended by the good lady. Excellent, despite being a Richard and Judy recommendation - set in wartime Germany, narrated by Death, who has a habit of telling you what's about to happen a couple of chapters down the line.

[ Headlong is a smashing book - must go back and read that again...]

Three Men in a Boat the other day and I was soon literally crying with laughter. But then I lost it somewhere in my house and for the life of me I cannot find it anywhere. If I don't find it soon I'll have to go out and buy it again.

J G Ballard - Empire of the Sun: Reread for the first time in 20 years. A brilliant book.

John Dickie - Cosa Nostra: interesting history of the Sicilian mafia, with a few longeurs.

David Bellos - Jacques Tati: deeply average biography of a fascinating man. Virtually no insight into either the man or his films. Avoid.

Currently
Stealing The wave- Andy Martin.(About Big Wave surfers Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo)
Hammer Of The Gods- Stephen Davies( The story of some Unknown rock band.Wonder what happened to them)
Basket Case- Carl Hiaasen (rock star found dead then the usual Hiassen shenanigans follow. Brilliant as always)

Neal Stephenson - Anathem
I'm 600 pages in and now very worried - there are only 350 to go and, Andrew was quite right, you just don't want this to end. Umberto Eco replicated as John Buchan in a parallel universe.

Heather Pringle - The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust
A terrible airporty title for what is actually a well-researched and well-told tale: that of the Nazis' expeditions all over the world in search of support for the "science" and "history" (scare quotes never more appropriate) that they bolted onto their demented theories of race, myth and mysticism. What leaps off the page isn't so much the evil of Himmler and the SS as their breathtaking philosophical mediocrity and intellectual incompetence. The whos, hows and wheres of the Holocaust have been well documented, but this book goes a long way towards explaining the most perplexing question of all: the why. And although the parallels with Kansas school boards are not explicit, they're certainly there to be drawn.

Jerry White - London in the 19th Century
A brilliant biography of the city (a metropolography?), ranging from the architectural - why Regent Street has a curve at the end of it and why the Embankment had to be built (answer in both cases: to address some rather pressing shit-shifting issues) - to the sociopolitical (from real-life Artful Dodgers and Henry Higginses, via Spitalfields dosshouses and Limehouse opium dens, to the Queen in her counting house). Probably the most important book yet about the wonders, warts and inner workings of the world's most important city during Britain's most important century. But principally it's just a cracking good read.

Now the OU studies are complete.

Recent favourites

Shakespeare - by Bill Bryson. It's quite surprising how litte we know about Shakespeare but it's still more than we know about most of his contemporaries. Written in Bryson's usual informative-with-jokes style.

A scandalous man - novel by Gavin Eisler. Tells the story of a disgraced Thatcher-era cabinet minister and weaves between the 1980s and the London bombings of 2005. Excellent read.

America - Stephen Fry (no relation). I'm a sucker for anything this man writes and this goes a little deeper than the associated TV series (it would be hard not to).

The design of everyday things - Donald Norman (original title - the psychology of everyday things). A long rant against poor design (car controls, door handles etc) by a cognitive psychologist. Written before the iPod, obviously.

I am currently in the midst of re-reading the Smiley trilogy by John le Carre having waited until I got my hands on hardbacks (so much better to read than paperbacks) and the first being the last one I got.

So almost finished The Honourable Schoolboy - 2nd in the trilogy. A corking set up but from memory it loses its way in the last couple of chapters so I'm hoping for a clearer head this time. It's odd that the BBC never filmed it when they did the other two but I suspect the overseas setting in Hong Kong, Laos et al would have made it prohibitively expensive. It is let down for me by having a lead character who is introduced in the previous book but seems to have changed fundamentally. When finished on to Smiley's People.

Previously Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Absolutely wonderful read and so well put together linking different time threads in a coherent way. You have to concentrate and occasionally I have to re-read a few pages to remember why we are where we are.

Before that The Ghost by Robert Harris. Rubbish potboiler only redeemed by having a character as a very obvious Tony Blair. I have enjoyed all of Robert Harris's previous books but this seemed like absolute tosh in comparison to his previous book which was based on the life of Cicero - difficult to realise it was the same author.

On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks. I loved this book, although I don't think it's too highly thought of. It contrasted nicely with On Chesil Beach (which I think was in my last list) being set for the most part in the couple of years prior to McEwen's book but concerning itself with sexuality and society's mores with the bonus of a presidential race as a backdrop in which Kennedy started as a no-hoper.

As used on the famous Nelson Mandela by Mark Thomas in which he contrasts New Labour's ethical foreign policy with political expediency and the sham of arms control. There are a few japes along the way, and it's pretty enjoyable.

Crash by Jared Diamond. I'd just started this and then went and left it on a train. What I'd read was pretty interesting as Diamond examines the reasons for various societies/ civilisations collapsing at various times also I think he contrasts them with societies that prospered. I'll have to buy another copy to find out.

BTW Diz, don't you think the end of The Honourable Schoolboy is like a kick in the guts? You're right about Jerry's character changing between the two books. The guy in Tinker Tailor doesn't seem capable of carrying out the role foisted on him in THS.

Talking of Sebastian Faulks, I just read his James Bond exercise. I was, if you'll pardon the pun, neither shaken or stirred.

Words and Music by Paul Morley - at times brilliant and at other times quite unbearable. A lot of guff about various people like Wittgenstein travelling to some make believe city in a car with Kylie Minogue (best skipped) and then there'll be great insights about music. Ultimately worth it, if rather too much Eno worship.

Exile On Main St: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield. Hair raising stuff about the procrastination (mainly due to waiting for Keith to come round after taking smack) and craziness during the making of their classic album. Compelling and an eye-opener. It was worse than you might think.

Monsieur by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. A rather slim but perfectly formed little French novel from 1986.

If David Hepworth can get all protective about his Randomiser, then I can get protective about my Literary Randomiser. It was my idea! And there's a natural rhythm about these things - you cant just randomise when you feel like it, you'll break the natural cycle. You need to give people a bit of time to get through some new books and the wind needs to blow in the right direction.

I'll let this go this time, but if I see anybody else literally randomising I will send the boys round.

and i cried.