The Hand that First Held Mine, Maggie O’Farrell- TOTAL tear jerker, quite lovely
The Passage, Justin Cronin- best post-apocalyptic vampire saga, like, EVER
The Privileged- Yeah, hm, was a bit overhyped for this one
The Big Short by Michael Lewis- Stunning STUNNING stuff on the financial crisis, absolutely amazing, a must-read
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, Alex Bellos- great, I kept annoying people by announcing bits of it, in the manner of people reading Freakonomics
Nothing to Envy- oh the most harrowing non-fic about North Korea, utterly utterly heartbreaking.

Okay, normal service must resume soon, no more beach days and paddling :( Edinburgh Book Festival also a brilliant laugh, thanks to those who popped in! (Hello Heike!) and looking forward to Wigtown

That doesn’t stop me, however, reading a lot around the topic. One of my favourite books of all time is Genius, about Richard Feynman, a boy from Far Rockaway who simply saw the world differently from everyone else. Unusually in Feynman, the world found someone who could communicate its oddities and bridge the gap between his world, of particles that move forwards and backwards in time; of subatomic miracles- and ours.

Most of these men, however- and they are, overwhelmingly men- don’t truly have that facility (I made absolutely no headway, NONE with A Brief History of Time) , but their lives are still fascinating. Two other wonders of the gender are The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography of Paul Erdos (discovering last year I have an Erdos number of only 2 made me EXTREMELY happy), and I have just finished Dr Graham Farmeloe’s wonderful, Costa-winning biography of Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man. As Terentius said, ‘nothing human is alien to me’, but these men, drifting through life with one suit and a plastic bag, living entirely in the cosmos of their heads, are certainly on the very far side. Farmeloe stops short of insisting that Dirac was clinically autistic- Dirac literally never spoke unless engaged in a direct question on his works, but by any definition the two tendencies seem to go hand in hand, which is why Feynman was such a one off. (Oh, how I would have loved to have met him. But what could I have asked him? It would have been like trying to talk to a tiger).

I did once write a physicist as a romantic hero- Finn in Talking to Addison is a string theorist, but he didn’t prove quite as popular as I’d hoped. I think he’s still my favourite out of all of them, apart from David in Class. Who is also an academic, now I come to think of it. Hmm!

And now I am, predictably, reading Alex’s Adventures in Numberland. It is nirvana for the non- maths geek wannabe maths geek out there.

I don’t want to offend, but the idea that God is busy helping posh blokes to the top of Everest, or helping Jennifer Lopez have hit records, whilst simultaneously killing 20,000 Liberian children a year from diarrhoea I find completely and utterly abhorrent in every way. Same as everyone who ever says, ‘well, everything happens for a reason’.

Anyway, rant over. I wanted to revisit one book that I thought was amazing at the time, about a woman and her sister who’d ended up in the concentration camps and had been saved by the power of prayer. In retrospect, assuming they were converted Jews, I was quite insulted by the idea that if you’d only accepted Jesus you’d have survived the holocaust.

Well, I was totally wrong. The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom, is a sadly under-read these days classic. Corrie and her family were protestant watchmakers in Haarlem, and when the Nazi invasion came they never blinked, hesitated or considered for a second closing their doors or turning away their jewish friends and colleagues. Corrie, an unmarried middle aged woman who lived in the house in which she had been born and by her own admission, had never done anything unusual or spectacular in her whole life, became the centre of a network of nazi resistance, funnelling jews to safe locations, and at one stage hiding 13 in their own tiny home. She was the one who stood up and said ‘no’. It’s an utterly astonishing, entirely humbling read. When she meets one of her guards at the very end, you want to shout and scream on her behalf. I’m so glad it was in my school library; it should be in every school library on earth.

ps quick update on reading Wallace ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’- when we got to the bit where Charlie gets the bar for his birthday, and it DOESN’T contain a golden ticket, Wallace’s eyes went wide as saucers. He Simply. Could. Not. Believe. It. He had literally been hanging over the book in joyous anticipation whilst Charlie opens the bar, a huge preparatory smile on his face, when Dahl pulls the rug out.  The second time Dahl pulls the same thing, he was much cannier to it. Then the chapter where he finally DOES find the ticket- which comes to quite an abrupt end- Wall, normally a very amenable child, simply grabbed my hand and refused to let me close the book until I’d read on. He couldn’t wait. As Mr B pointed out, I’m having as much fun with this is as he is.

Anyway, the first was Little Lord Fauntelroy, as I remembered loving it and it’s what my mum calls Wallace, from when he had a full head of glorious golden curls as a toddler (now a thick mop of unruly brown). This story, of an angelic poor American child taming a crusty English Earl was a huge hit in its day. Now it might be seen as the absolute height of emetic high Victorianism and their cult of the perfect innocent child. Fauntelroy is SO perfect, So loveable, SO amazingly well-behaved at all times that it staggers the senses and completely belies any real children in existence. It’s fallen out of fashion recently, and it’s very easy to see why; I don’t think I’ll be reading it to Wallace- to whom, anyway, I am reading something I always dreamt of being able to do as a parent. I think you can probably guess it from this line alone: Wallace sat completely still on the bed, eyes wide, not even daring to breathe, as I read, very quietly,

“Nobody ever goes in… and nobody ever comes out.”

“But… but WHY?” said Charlie Bucket and Wallace, simultaneously.

“That will have to wait till tomorrow” said I and Mrs Bucket simultaneously. Dahl really was, in the end, the best.

And the second I shall do tomorrow.

Anyway, it was splendid, about the ending of a marriage; beautifully written, dreamy, accurate and painful. It pulls a mean trick about 4/5ths of the way through which is unnecessary and should have been taken out; the quotidian truths the novel contains are diminished by a tragedy which feels out of place and a little unfair, but the rest of it is absolutely great. It went well with my new Lisa Jewell proof, After the Party, which is about a bad year in a marriage and is similarly elegaic, delicate and true with feelings. One can’t help but feel if men were writing these extraordinary contemporary accounts of everyday lives, people would be throwing them ticker tape parades. Tant pis!

Spring did spring here in France, but is beating a temporary retreat today. Michael-Francis and Delphie are having a snooze and Wallace is wearing his father’s motorcycle kit and hanging around the door saying ‘WHEN ARE THEY COMING? SOON??’. Waiting twenty minutes for your friends to turn up is quite a long time when you’re only JUST five.

YES: Race of A Lifetime, almost a follow up to Primary Colours, the fabulous, gossipy, fascinating story of Obama, Hillary, Palin, Edwards and McCain racing for the White House in 2008. It’s just incredible- as Obama himself said at one point, ‘this would be a fascinating story, if you didn’t have to live it’. Even makes you feel sorry for Palin, dumped into a world she didn’t understand and frantically missing her baby. It’s an absolute classic, and how fantastic that a story this good gets writers who can do it justice.

NO: I won’t put the title or the author’s name as it’s a horrible thing to google yourself and come across something unpleasant, to which one would say, don’t google yourself, to which one would also say, HA!

Anyway, if you loved Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, do not be tempted to pick up the recent sequel. If you didn’t or haven’t read it, I can’t even imagine how incomprehensible it would be to you. An utter disaster of a book.

Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout I bought on a whim (I do this a lot- you know what it’s like when you’re in a bookshop or browsing Amazon. You walk in thinking, wow, look, they have TONS and TONS of books, how amazing, then you realise that you have either read everything, or it’s absolute pish, or you just don’t like the sound of it (’a man, confronting his own mentality and mental state, begins a dangerous affair’… you know the type of thing), and I don’t even go near the fantasy section (yes yes, calm down Terry Goodwind fans). So often I find myself so desperate for reading material I buy stuff almost at random. I did that with this book, but it is actually wonderful and, it turns out, won the Pulitzer last year. It’s a collection of short stories linking this woman, Olive, who gradually realises certain things about herself, late in life. But it’s more the absolutely accurate description of emotions it contains, and the fully 3D recognisable people who make an impact. I loved it. But it did make me simply not want to get old.

The Old Boy’s Network by John Rae, shouldn’t work- it is very very short diary entries over thirty years that he spent as a headmaster at Westminster, the famous public school. Yet it gives wonderful snapshots of life at the very top of the ladder; naughty boys, unhappy boys, startlingly clever boys; and weaves a wonderful picture of the interconnectedness of the British elite. I suspect twenty years ago it would have made me furious. As a historical document of time passing though- with what I always romanticise as the master’s dilemma; the teacher always gets older, the pupils never do-though, it is entirely fascinating.

And incidentally two recommended books if you really are interested in the end bits: Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Ampthill, and The Last Cigarette by Simon Gray. We all know that, if we are terribly lucky, old age is coming; it’s nice to think too that there is some wit and humour and understanding there too.

On the other foot completely, I am ADORING Race of a Lifetime, the story of how Obama won the White House in 08. It is full of passion and clever ruthlessness; change and youth and hope and vigour, and the writing is, thrillingly, up to the amazing story.

In the meantime three corkers: Dan Rhodes is a friend of mine but I think- it was a long time ago- but we became friends because I went to a reading he did with another friend of mine, Matt Thorne, and he was totally brilliant so I suppose we became friends because I liked his work. Anyway, his new book, out in April, is called Little Hands Clapping and is totally brilliant, spooky, fun and he has such a clear voice. I’m also loving Set This House in Order, by Matt Ruff, which everyone else has probably read already- I thought would be gimmicky- it’s about two people with MPD- but is actually great and so gripping you forget how difficult it must have been to write. It’s not an easy read- mind you, since I had children, anything that even hints at cruelty to children I find unbearable- but it is excellent.

And the best thing I’ve come across recently, which was so amazing I’ve pressed it on everyone- it was published in 2004 and was supposedly a bestseller, but I’d never heard of it till an aquaintance recommended it to me. It’s called The Long Walk, and is a memoir about a young Polish office who escapes from the Siberian gulag. It is heartbreaking, breathlessly exciting, compelling, readable and, most of all, utterly true. Anyway, I gave it to my mother who was looking for something to read over Christmas and she stared at it with a look of utter shock on her face and said, ‘I know! And he goes through the Gobi desert and they have to survive on snakes and…’ and she told me the entire thing. And do you know what; the book wasn’t published in 2004 at all, that’s the reprint date. In fact it was written in 1945, just after it happened, and my mother had read it in 1956- she remembered exactly, because she knew she was twelve years old- and, more than fifty years later, recalled everything about it. Isn’t that amazing?? Except it was even more shocking for her, because back then they didn’t know what a terrible monster Stalin actually was.

Anyway, my husband came in the other night and said ‘where’s that book you’ve been going on about? I’m ready to read it now (he’s just finished Kitchen Confidential) but he was too late:  my mum nicked it and took it home. I think she’s allowed.

Happy New Year! xxx Ooh, and you can follow me on Twitter now, I’ve got the hang of it and really like it. I’m just @jennycolgan. ALthough if you don’t watch UK tv you’ll probably find it a bit confusing…

Meltdown