Emerging from the shock of getting back to work after a week on holiday, I've not had chance yet to catch up on my economics reading. Meanwhile as light relief, here are some brief reviews of my holiday reading.

I've written on this blog in the past about the affinity many economists have for detective fiction and science fiction. Last week I fitted in two books in the former genre. The first was Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens, another page-turning and intelligent historical romp linked to classic fiction following The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. The second was Barbara Nadel's River of the Dead. I had high hopes of this novel, featuring an Istanbul-based detective, as I tend to like crime fiction rooted in a particular place, whether it's Donna Leon's Venice or Sara Paretsky's Chicago. But I'm afraid it was badly written and oddly unspecific about what Turkey is actually like.

For non-genre fiction I turned to Paul Murray's Skippy Dies, set amongst adolescent boys in a Catholic boarding school in Ireland. Hilarious and tragic, a terrific novel with vivid characterisation. And also Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, about Europe's great 20th century tragedy but about modernity, and love too. In some ways comparable to Iain Pears' Dream of Scipio, an aslant perspective on the Holocaust, but all the more powerful for it.

Then, just to prove my brain was still working despite long hours by and in the pool, non-fiction. David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries is exactly what it says, his reflections on cycling in the different cities he tours, with some interesting thoughts about technology, markets, livelihoods and other matters. And Harold Evans' My Paper Chase, a fascinating and inspiring autobiography by one of the all-time great newspaper editors.