Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including essential reads about race in America and non-challenging books for those times when real life is challenging enough.
Vieuxtemps bought The Complete Works of Primo Levi for, in every sense of the expression, a big splurge:
It’s a three-volume, 3,000 page hardback set (“Boxed, like Proust!”) published by Liveright. It weighs eight pounds. The individual volumes are beautiful, and it is almost a shame to open up the books and start the pawing. This set has everything; novels, stories, essays, and poetry, with a bunch of different (Italian to English) translators. I am so excited to have taken the plunge, as I haven’t read most of Levi’s work. I’m going to take my time reading this, and not mow through it. Sipped, not gulped. I’m starting with the poetry.
katcalls just finished The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny.
It’s the latest in her 10+ strong Inspector Gamache series. For those not familiar, the books are murder mysteries generally based in and around a small town in the Quebec Eastern townships called Three Pines. The murders are investigated by Chief Inspector Gamache, who is the head of the homicide department for the Quebec provincial police.
I’ve now read all of the series. Most are pretty good. Two or three are quite excellent. Their greatest achievement, however, are the characters Penny has built over time. Three Pines is populated by characters which are rich in detail and depth and who evolve over time. I look forward to reading what they are up to next.
Are they challenging? Absolutely not. But sometimes when real life is a challenge on its own, a nice easy sit down with a fuzzy novel and a cup of tea is just what you need.
stevegreenman gave a new meaning to the term “fat cat”:
Lords of Finance: The bankers who broke the world
The description on the cover tells us that if we want to understand the origins of the economic world we live in we should read this book, so that's what I'm doing. It's the story of the reasons for the great economic collapse in the late 1920's and the world war that resulted. It turns out that whether we realise it or not we're all still living with the consequences of the decisions made by a small group of central bankers and the politicians that relied on their judgement almost a hundred years ago.
The book is brilliantly written, and like all good historical writing brings the period, the personalities, and the mayhem resulting from their actions vividly to life. Highly recommended.
ID1100766 has “just emerged from the wreckage of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts”:
Never having read anything by the author before, I had no idea what the expect; to say I was shocked is an understatement. Is West’s world one of total nihilism? Is he a parodist having a (very grim) laugh at American religious fervour? Chapter titles such as Miss Lonelyhearts and the Lamb and Miss Lonelyhearts Goes on a Field Trip sound like something from a Ladybird Book (which it very much isn’t!) Saying that, I thought it was hauntingly – and brilliantly – original. Makes an interesting contrast with John Steinbeck’s stories of Depression-era America.
fingerlakeswanderer praised Claudia Rankine’s Citizen:
I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. If you read just one book about race in America (and I hope that you read more because we need all the help we can get in talking about this open wound that may someday heal), this is the book I’d say to invest in. Rankine is a poet, and it never did clear up for me whether I was reading a series of prose poems or flash essays. It doesn’t matter; Rankine manipulates language like a poet. I’ve always been envious of the poet’s ability to make language sing. I’m still stuck in Flaubert’s world of banging pots, but Rankine manages to capture the beauty of that wide open American sky against which the bodies of black men lie in silhouette.
Interesting links about books and reading
- The writing life of a young, prolific poet: the New Yorker on London poet Warsan Shire.
- Finding What’s Lost in a Video Game Inspired by Haruki Murakami: currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, a “2-D point-and-click adventure game” inspired by 20 Murakami short stories. In Hyperallergic.
- The Strange Case Of The Woman Whose Skin Was Turned Into A Book: “When a poor Irish widow died in 1869 at the age of 28, she probably never imagined what would happen to her flesh.” Cringe. In Buzzfeed.
- And two great links from Brain Pickings: Ursula K Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means, and The Artist and the Anguish of the American Dream: Zadie Smith’s Love-Hate Letter to New York, on her 40th birthday.
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.
If you’re on Instagram and a book lover, chances are you’re already sharing beautiful pictures of books you are reading, “shelfies” or all kinds of still lifes with books as protagonists. Now, you can share your reads with us on the mobile photography platform – simply tag your pictures there with #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection here.
And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.
