Summer reading list

I'll be taking a short break here, so you'll be needing something to read. May I recommend...

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. Every bit as good as the critics say it is. Think of the Godfather, only with Thomas Cromwell as the consigliere and the Tudors as the Corleones. If you don't like this book, you need to find someone who can help you to unlearn how to read, because literacy is wasted on you.

Hackney, That Rose-red Empire, by Iain Sinclair. Sinclair may well be a bit nuts, in the nicest possible way. This paean to his home of the last forty years may or may not be factual -- "where it needs to be true, it is", Sinclair tells us. True or not, it's a wildly entertaining look at an eccentric part of London, with particular scorn for politicians who wilfully destroy local heritage, and special venom for everything to do with the London Olympics.

I'm only away for two weeks, and those books total well over a thosuand pages, so that should be enough to be going on with.