Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Let’s start with a philosophical question from Kristina Wilde about Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series of novels: “Why do you need nine books of 800+ pages of willies and swords?”
When you’ve finished thinking about that, here’s another thorny problem from D1100766:
I am a book addict. I’ve even started to ‘sneak’ books in to my house. There’s a knock on the door. I race to answer it. ‘Oh, who was that?’ my other half innocently calls from upstairs. ‘Oh, no one’ I lie as I take in another brown cardboard package and hide it under a cushion until it can be squirrelled safely away to my study and added to the other captives as though it’s always been there. No charity shop is safe. I joke not. I actually work in a charity bookshop. Talk about feeding your addiction! My problem is, how do I read them all in what time I have left (I am in my early 50s so, assuming good health, I’m optimistically giving myself another 30plus years)? Should I tackle the pile by author? theme? literary movement? genre?
Luckily, lljones quickly provided a solution: “Just close your eyes and pick one. That’s what I do.”
Elsewhere - and as always - TLS has been graced with serious and substantial reviews. Lytton Strachey’s biography of Queen Victoria, for instance, was demolished by elliese:
An astonishingly quick read for all the overblown melodrama of Strachey’s prose (you’d think the book was a ‘sentimental novel’), the author’s total inability to drum up any kind of interest in the ostensible subject of the biography leaves you poking at it suspiciously. Was... was that it? Is there maybe something wrong with my copy? Did I pick up the abridged version?
Yes, no and no. Strachey’s just too busy falling over himself to lick Albert’s boots to give a damn about Victoria. Which, admittedly, is probably what she would have thought proper, but I resent picking up a book supposedly about a female monarch only to be confronted with several hundred pages of waffle about the men in her life instead. Melbourne, Albert, Stockmar, Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli: by the end of the book you feel like even John Brown got a better look-in than Victoria did. If you get a feel for her character, it’s through foreknowledge, throwaway half-sentences and quotes from her letters and journals; Strachey wastes no insight or thought on the Queen at all...
And here’s a more glowing summary of Mary Beard’s wonderful SPQR from MildGloster:
I ended up racing through Mary Beard’s SPQR, which I found illuminating, calmly measured and (evidently) compulsive. I think it’s really admirable to make ancient history — which is, one could argue, an esoteric subject — quite as understandable as Beard does, and, more than that, to explain with ease how relevant this past world is to our present one. Beard writes in her conclusion that though she no longer thinks we have much to learn ‘directly from the Romans’, she is ‘more and more convinced that we have an enormous amount to learn — as much about ourselves as about the past — by engaging withthe history of the Romans’, and this is exactly what SPQR does — she’s taught me an awful lot and I consider this one of the more enriching books I’ve read.
This too is a serious recommendation from nilpferd:
I’m just (sadly) coming to the end of Primo Levi’s wonderful The Periodic Table. There’s such a range of emotions in this short collection of vignettes that it really does seem as universal as the core elements which inspired it. The horrors of WW2 and the holocaust lurk behind many tales, yet Levi also has a wonderfully playful eye for human absurdity and a nice line in subversive punchlines...
Elements give an overall sense of structure to these tales but they are merely the seeds of a far more ambitious work. Human actions or characteristics seem to mirror chemical reactions and qualities; the material world is linked with the atomic world in wondrous fashion. (And it’s no surprise to learn that Italo Calvino was inspired by this book to begin his Cosmicomics.)
The Periodic Table is the perfect lattice for the memoir of an extraordinary life, filled with luck, hubris, self-deprecation, and tragedy.
Meanwhile, although I don’t like to contradict our readers, I do have to offer an au contraire to lucarelli:
Not sure if this will be of much interest to people but i have just started reading From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra. It is about the Asian renaissance and explains Asia in a way that is unfamiliar to a lot of us in the west. How Asia modernised, intellectually, politically and socially with the effects of colonisation and how everything changed with the Japanese defeat of Russia.
Incredibly interesting and i think very important to understanding today and the role Islam has, further still why India and China are what they are now.
That sounds fascinating to me.
Talking of fascination, Helen Dunmore continues to exert her grip. MsCarey says:
I’ve been very impressed this week by Helen Dunmore’s Exposure. This is a hugely understated novel about Cold War espionage set in 1960. Not quite a thriller, not an aspiring John le Carre, but Dunmore’s distinctively different take on belonging, betrayal and post World War II history. There are the usual themes of class, divided loyalties and sexuality but it’s the way that Dunmore builds her story from the rendering of individual lives that makes the book wonderful. Each character in the drama is beautifully done and it’s the subtle, complex writing of people which stands out. I had a couple of reservations but on the whole Dunmore doesn’t put a foot wrong.
Gore Vidal also made a few appearances on last week’s thread, but few have been as impressed with his novels. BaddHamster’s comments exemplified the general sentiment:
Still trudging through Gore Vidal’s ‘Burr’, and I’m just about ready to throw the towel in. It started well, and the immediate post American revolutionary period is a very interesting one (especially given the current election shenanigans), but Wolf Hall it ain’t. Mr. Vidal was obviously a very smart fellow, but I’m afraid I’ll have to get my American origin stories elsewhere.
Before we close, one more big question to consider from Oranje14: “Is life too short to read The Goldfinch?”
Interesting links about books and reading
- Remember those studies suggesting reading makes you a better person? They might not have been right, after all.
- Penguin Random House have started a Season Of Stories - free stories from top writers.
- What do you do when you find out someone else is writing the same book as you?
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!
