Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including salvation in the shape of a book-filled box, books that get confused with the landscape and family scrapbooks.
LeoToadstool finished Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald:
Another one for the favourites shelf. I’ve read it being compared to Cold Comfort Farm [by Stella Gibbons], but I actually prefer it to that novel. A hilarious, pitch-perfect and very English comedy of manners (and errors), it is also a bittersweet study of ordinary men and women of an era – the Blitz – that is fast becoming lost to time, an era, to paraphrase one review, when the stiff upper lip began to tremble.
slovenia46 had a book-related joyful moment:
High temperatures render us MS folk helpless. So I spent the last two week-long Adriatic heatwaves in my room, in the cool from the A/C, reading. At one point I was down to a single novel and two non-fiction titles in the to-read pile when a box of 32 novels from my sweet son cleared Slovenian customs. I sang, “Heaven, I’m in heaven! And my heart beats so that I can hardly sp-e-e-e-ak!” as I unloaded the box. And then I began to read. And I read and read and read, surfacing only for meals. By happenstance I sandwiched a James Sallis (“Heaven, I’m in heaven!”) between two novels set in Stalin’s Russia – Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith and David Benioff’s City of Thieves, both excellent examples of Dr. Pemberton’s maxim “If you want the facts, read history. If you want the truth, read fiction.” And both, I must add, are superb novels.
julian6 has just finished Rachel Kushner’s “somewhat mystical” The Flamethrowers:
The art world of the 1970s – in America – is a fairly remote kind of subject, but its interactions with capitalism and the forces of economic and political power are gradually revealed through an exploration of the relationships of a disparate group of waifs, strays and ideologues – all in search of themselves. It’s a journey of ever increasing disillusionment as the book progresses. There are many undeniably stylish sentences and phrases, but is all a little too inward and narcissistic? Possibly – I think the jury is still out on this one.
Eduard Boada likes when a book merges with the landscape:
For me, the catalan word “pagèsiques” evokes the rural countryside, the peasantry and the woods that border the agricultural landscape. This book collects a handful of poems by Catalan artist and poet Perejaume. I had the pleasure of being able to read this book beside a river in the Pyrenees, surrounded by mountains of over two thousand meters; but also do it in urban and rural areas. In the photo the cover image merges with the landscape.
Was anyone else left wishing they could take fingerlakeswanderer’s class?
Interesting links about books and reading
- Out of Bethlehem: Continuing with the Joan Didion reads, this New Yorker piece is an excellent dissection of her work, her life and her politics.
- On the books, read and unread, on my shelves: a blog by Levi Stahl on book accumulation, recommended by Swelter.
- Here’s what we think of Jonathan Franzen’s new novel: three very different initial takes on Purity. And, in case you’ve been hiding in a cave this weekend (or not visited the Guardian or the literary internet), our interview with him in which he says more than a few controversial things.
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On the intense power of literary friendship: “Writing can be a lonely profession, but when you meet someone whose mind you trust, whose opinions you adore, and whose brain you’d like to smash into yours until they form a single powerful thinking entity, it’s not so bad.” American writers Alexandra Kleeman and Kathleen Alcott on how they met at a party and have, since then, traveled, walked many miles and eaten many sandwiches together.
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.
