Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
We saw an interesting comment about sports literature by Oranje14:
I was reminded of a novel I read a little while back called In the Crowd by Laurent Mauvignier. It’s a really unusual book, a stream of consciousness telling of the events of the Heysel tragedy. It made me wonder what sports fiction anyone would recommend.
I’m currently reading a George Vescey’s history of baseball, and this seems to be a sport which lends itself to fiction, I’m thinking of sections of Delillo’s Underworld and The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.
Aside from David Peace’s excellent novels on Clough and Shankly, I struggle to think of any other decent football fiction. As for cricket, I’d really recommend Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka, an under-the-radar classic in my opinion.
Any more suggestions?
KIChildrensAuthor kicked off a conversation about The Woman in the Dunes:
Set in Japan (and translated from the Japanese), it’s about an entomologist who sets out to study insects that live in the sand – but is tricked by the villagers who live in the dunes. He thinks he has a bed for the night, but finds himself tasked with shoveling back the sand from the bottom of a 60-feet hole where he’s held hostage with the woman who lives there. If they don’t keep shoveling the sand dunes will engulf them and the village. It’s tense and it’s Sisyphean – right up my street! And my do I know a lot about the properties of sand now!
The Woman in the Dunes - by Kobo Abe
A 1991 paperback picked off my parents' bookshelves - see my post from yesterday. A fantastic and tense read..!
judgeDAmNation shared:
Do people here bother to read the introductions to “classic” books when reading said book for the first time? The trouble with these introductions is that they’re written by academics who assume that you’ve read the books already about fifty times (as they have) and so have no qualms in giving stuff away. [...] Now I generally either skip the introductions altogether, or read them after I’ve finished the book itself (although normally I can’t be bothered with all that guff once I’ve read the actual story) ...
You can the discussion here (with Great Gatsby spoilers galore, so beware if you haven’t read it).
laidbackviews tempted us all with this great-sounding read:
As I get close to the final few chapters of Cyrus Massoudi’s first book I find myself hoping that he may have more in the pipeline. He set off, a westerner with Iranian roots, to spend three years in the country and in the tales and legends he heard from the family that left in 1979. He returned an Iranian who happens to live in the west.
Land of the Turquoise Mountains. Journeys Across Iran is his account of those times. He gets just the right mix of history and of characters and sights to see. It really is one to savour as he takes us inside festivities and rituals that other western writers haven’t been able to access. We celebrate New Year, engage with Sufis, and head off to borderlands and ancient cities.
tinsleycollins reached interesting conclusions while reading Ben Elton’s Past Mortem:
We writers are told to always avoid clichés but I’m close to the end and it seems that he’s written nothing but; a smorgasbord of grisly murders, an equal number of suspects, a flawed police inspector hopelessly in love with his sergeant (female in case you’re wondering) who is hopelessly in love with someone else. He does however give us a very un-clichéd sex scene which is as graphic as it is off-putting and enough to tempt me to take a vow of celibacy. Should have been a real turn off (the book not the sex scene) but in fact in its own quiet way it’s brilliant. Effortless to read, and horribly compelling. I only have thirty or so pages left and can’t wait to get back to it later to see if my suspicions about who done it are correct.
It only goes to show that there really are no rules. If you’ve got the gift, and Ben Elton clearly has, you can get away with anything.
We couldn’t help but adore TimHannigan’s continuing struggles with his ever-piling TBR list. This time, his impossible doubts had him laying out a bunch of books on the sofa, standing with his back to them and throwing a coin over his shoulder.
If you would like to share a photo of the book you are reading, or film your own book review, please do. Click the blue button on this page to share your video or image. I’ll include some of your posts in next week’s blog.
And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.
