Patrick Radden Keefe, The family that built an empire of pain. The New Yorker, October 2017. This is the Longform version of this story. Apparently the link I posted first doesn’t work – apologies. Just click on the title of the story in the Longform page. This is a long but fascinating story from the New Yorker about the family that developed and marketed Oxycontin.

Finally finished Danubia, by Simon Winder. This is an extremely entertaining history of the Habsburg Empire. Sounds impossible? Give it a go. The author seems to have read everything on the subject, travelled inexhaustibly, enthused endlessly, and organised an empire of material better than the Habsburgs could (with very few exceptions) manage.

Nicole Krauss, Forest dark. About half way through this; most accomplished and intriguingly autobiographical. I am liking it more than Lincoln in the bardo, which was … interesting (“noice, interesting, different”) … but more in concept than in execution. So why didn’t this win the Booker? That’s enough meanness for one day!