Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
To start, a quick, but unarguable endorsement for JG Farrell’s The Siege Of Krishnapur from ohehir:
I got it cheaply and finally felt obliged to read. It is as the New Statesmen blurb says ‘a masterpiece’; a word not used lightly.
Another short and sweet tip comes from Rex Bowan, on the subject of the short and perhaps-not-so-sweet Michel Houellebecq and his novel Submission:
A display of bravura novelistic skill and an act of absolutely sublime trolling. I don’t agree with Houellebecq about anything, but his books are tremendous.
I also enjoyed TOOmanyWilsons assessment of the controversial Frenchman: “Bad writer, good prankster, GREAT smoker.”
Setting aside cynicism, elliese declares unequivocal love for Eve Babitz:
You know those books that you buy with this tingle in your fingertips, knowing, just knowing, you’re going to love them, and then they sit on your shelf for a few months or more, waiting for the right moment and the right mood, and when you find it and finally start reading, there’s this thrill that goes right through you, because yeah, it really is that good? That’s “Eve’s Hollywood”. There’s no point talking about what kind of book it is - memoir or novel or whatever - that’s not what’s important. It’s her voice that’s important: this lazy, knowing, thoughtful voice, amused and rambling and graceful. Cat-like, which is really a nonsensical descriptor for prose, but it came to my mind and it won’t go away. Babitz is cat-like. And beautiful - very very beautiful.
Perhaps less happily, but still enthusiastically, tommydog has been investigating Frank McLynn’s biography of Ghengis Khan:
Fascinating in the way one might be compelled to watch a space shuttle crash or perhaps OJ race down an LA freeway in a Bronco.
This illiterate nomad established one of the largest empires the world has ever known; McLynn says the largest. But what a litany of slaughter of more sophisticated civilizations in China, the Islamic world and later Europe under his son after his death. Capture a city, slaughter the inhabitants (save some skilled workers and pretty girls who might be shipped back to Mongolia), plunder and then move on to the next target. Maybe leave a contingent behind after a battle to wait for the survivors to crawl out of hiding places, and then slaughter them.
McLynn takes pains to point out that Ghengis was not regarded as particularly bloodthirsty in his own time (he estimates that the Mongols might have slaughtered 37M people over a few decades), and that he proved to be very sophisticated in his thinking, administration of his empire and battlefield tactics and strategy...
Sometimes McLynn can be a tedious read, and I need a dictionary at hand as he’ll never use a two syllable word if he can find one with six, but I found this book fascinating.
On the subject of slaughter, Vesca has a poignant recommendation:
Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, which is rather sad. All those harmless, flawed people just trying to get on with their lives and about to be swept up in something hideous.
Sad indeed. But let’s end with endurance, and agoldenarm’s suggestion of 438 Days by Johnston Franklin:
The hellish suffering of two South American fisherman lost at sea after being caught in a vicious storm. One dies after about five months, the other drifts on for another ten months. Alone. On a boat a mere 25 feet long. Dieting on raw sea bird and fish. A few miles north of the Equator so in the Doldrums which are in themselves remarkably dull seas. Okay, so he survives but only just and had the fortune to be reunited with his long estranged daughter as a direct result of his jaunt. But even so... A survival story of remarkable proportions.
Interesting links about books and reading
- Be careful which books you pack for your next visit to Tajikistan.
- And if you go to Iceland, you can enjoy burning books under the light of the full moon.
- On the rivalry between the Oxford and Norton Shakespeare editions.
- “With Tommy and Tuppence, she hit on something different”: in praise of Agatha Christie.
- This is delicious: Reading Bill O’Reilly’s Old Novel About A Newsman Who Murders Several People After Losing His Job. (Hat tip to Swelter.)
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. Happy reading!
