Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, Yanis Varoufakis

I loved this, I've folded over so many pages it would have been better if I'd folded over the ones which didn't have something to remember on them. It is straight forward, left leaning and written with a passion and lightness which makes it easy to absorb the ideas and understand the way the economy works in practical terms. It is also unusual in the Varoufakis points out the problems with the economy and then provides ideas for solutions, or multiple ideas for different ways of doing things. It should be required reading in high-school maths classes all over the world. 

They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie

 

This was exactly what I wanted to read just before Christmas when my head was full of work and I had no room for anything else. It is completely how you would expect, some views are dated but it is a brilliantly satisfying mystery novel. 

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

I had a lot of curiosity about this book, having heard so much about it and having seen the film 'Capote', about Truman Capote researching this book. 

Capote expertly tells the stories of the murders of the Clutter family, it's impact on the town and the lives of the murders Perry Smith and Dick Hancock. 

I am not sure how much of the stories of the men's lives are true, though they seem very plausible and unromantcised. Capote seems to get to the bottom of what was a completely incomprehensible crime, the family were murdered apparently for no real reason and with no real thought by two lost, cruel and unthinking, unfeeling men. For this reason the murders were so shocking, the town and the US at the time were searching for an explanation, and it seems that the explanation there is is completely unsatisfactory. It goes against everything common sense and culture tells us.