Book 126 - "Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction" by Sue Townsend

An elderly woman wearing a rabbit's paw brooch came in and complained that I had sold her Trainspotting by Irving Welsh as a Christmas present for her 76-year-old railway enthusiast husband.
She said, 'It's nothing but filth and Scottish words. My husband had to double his blood pressure tablets after reading it.'
I swapped it for Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.

Much more enjoyable than the last couple of Adrian Mole books. Adrian is now 34, working in a bookshop and no longer encumbered by children as Glen has joined the army and William is living in Nigeria with his mother. As usual his life is full of worries, starting with the fact that Glen has joined the army just as the second Gulf War is approaching. He gets entangled with the dreadful Flowers family, going out with badly-dressed, dollshouse-building Marigold while lusting after her sultry sister Daisy, and buying a loft apartment in Leicester's Rat quay doesn't go well either, as he is troubled by noise-sensitive neighbours, menacing swans, a rat infestation, and spiralling debts.

The funniest bits were when Adrian turned to his father for help in compiling a list of all the varieties of Mr Kipling's cakes, the letters Adrian writes to celebrities asking to interview them for the book he is writing, and a running gag about swans. But what am I saying? It's all funny (except the serious parts) and it even has a happy ending!

Book 127 - "Dead Babies" by Martin Amis

Well, we're sorry about it, Keith, of course, but we're afraid that you simply had to be that way. Nothing personal, please understand - merely in order to serve the designs of this particular fiction. In fact, things get much, much worse for you later on, so appallingly bad that you'll yearn to be back at the Institute, or even in Parky Street, Wimbledon, with that family you so loathe. It's all too far advanced for us to intercede on your behalf. Tolerate it. You'll turn out all right in the end. Now go and lie on your bunk.

A satire on the 1970s, with the love, peace and getting high of the 1960s souring into drug-addled perversion and violence during a weekend house party. Of the six inhabitants of Appleseed Rectory, five are students at London University and one is the editor of the university newspaper and they are an unpleasant, disfunctional household, at least two of whom have severe psychological problems. Four guests are expected for the weekend, a prostitute who is the ex-girlfriend of two of the household, and three strange Americans who act as catalysts for the catastrophe that envelops them all.

Did I like it? Not really, but it was hypnotic - like watching a car crash unfold in slow motion!

NB: No babies were hurt during the making of this book. The 'dead babies' of the title is a slang term seeming to mean something like 'old hat', but with a more vicious edge to it.