Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week. There - and I suppose it had to happen at some point - an important question was raised by SydneyH: “are there any dog people on here? Or are we all stereotypical cat people?”
There is a literary connection. SydneyH said he was asking because he had just “helped a woman outside the library to avoid a very harmless dog. I guess it got me thinking about amusing stereotypes regarding introverts and their cat ownership.”
What a minefield! Are book readers introverts? Are introverts cat-lovers? Can a dog ever be entirely harmless? Questions I dare not answer. Although I hope the picture at the top of this article redresses the balance somewhat in favour of dogs. The “too damn needy” animals received some harsh coverage on last week’s thread.
On an altogether more serious note, Jessica Lucy Beckitt recommended the Nobel Prize winning Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices From Chernobyl:
It’s devastating, though in a very quiet way. Even the more graphic parts of it don’t come across as gratuitous or stomach-churny. Sadly I don’t speak Russian, so this might not mean anything, but Keith Gessen’s translation seems to really capture the integrity and the steadfastness of the speakers in a way which stops it from feeling sentimental or cheaply shocking. In fact the main message of the book is how devastation often happens unobtrusively whilst people are driving to work or making sandwiches, and isn’t fully understood or appreciated for months, even years, afterwards. I keep having to put it down and make a cup of tea so I can have a think. Brilliant.
Continuing in a highly literary vein, there were several references to the joy of reading Proust. Yossserian has also been reading around the great genius:
Slowly reading Maurois’ Quest for Proust, and enjoying it very much. Maurois meanders with purpose, sometimes doubling back, as he tries to explain and layer his understanding of Proust and his work. I also feel I have space and time to go off and read up more: so I’ve read a little of Swann’s Way, and some of Proust’s Miscellaneous Writings which he references a lot - also translated by Gerard Hopkins - written mostly if not entirely before he started À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu; and about episodes which he occasionally presents somewhat enigmatically – like a duel. I don’t know whether sometimes he’s maintaining a certain sense of delicacy over Proust’s homosexuality and leaving people to read between the lines (this was written in the 50s), or whether that’s unfair, and not all was known at the time. Anyway, its great - I’m finding it quite exciting.
Elsewhere, Kemster told us that the film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is gathering steam, with Brooklyn director John Crowley slated to helm. This news prompted Kemster to say:
I hope he doesn’t balls it up, The Goldfinch is a desert island book as far as I’m concerned. Just a beautifully measured meditation on loss, grief and coming to terms with your shitty lot in life. A superb bildungsroman, I still pine for Theo and Hobie.
I didn’t see Brooklyn so have no frame of reference but this requires a very special touch.
There followed an epic thread about successful film adaptations from novels. Nods went to Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, The Remains Of The Day, Mary Poppins and the movie-version of Catch 22.
We also saw a fine new entry in the TLS Marilynne Robinson “adulation club” courtesy of Patlux who found a haul of books in a local recycling centre:
One of them was a pristine copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. After reading her Home a couple of years ago and being disappointed and annoyed by it I had decided not to read any more by her. Over the years so many people have been singing her praises here on TLS so I thought that since it was free I would give it a go. I have to say that Housekeeping has completely altered my opinion of Robinson. In it her writing is so poetic and the themes and layers of meaning are subtle and beautiful. I kept re-reading gorgeous paragraphs, I wept a few times, I hand-copied in my notebook some of her passages which have resonance for me and I am about to pass it on to my sister whose name (in reference to a song) kept cropping up in the book.
Now that the school holidays have begun, it’s been a particular pleasure to see holiday reports appearing on TLS. laidbackviews has been on a Scottish tour accompanied at first by James Salter:
Raced through Salter thanks to a night of thunderstorms; nervous wait on standby to get squeezed into last space on ferry; and a beautiful smooth crossing of the Minch. Really enjoyed it so thanks for that one.
Bookshops at both Stornoway and Ullapool and big shout out to the latter. Found another Robert Atkinson, a wee gem of 85pages of derring do from the 30s. Due to the subject matter it couldn’t be published at the time and indeed he only wrote it up from his notes in later life, flowing ll the smoother for that. A Stag From Rum is a cracking tale.
Off now to the promised land with Jonathan Raban and Old Glory and that is going down very well so far, despite my past failures with Raban.
But watching too many eagles soaring in the glens and on the heaadlands. Happy reading.
Eagles! I’ll be hoping to read more descriptions like that over the next few weeks.
Before then, thank you for all the lovely tributes to Marta Bausells. AggieH spoke for many by saying:
Au revoir & thanks to @MartaBausells, under whose lovely stewardship TLS has remained so entirely good-natured* that it’s as if the TLS blog doesn’t realise it’s on the internet.
Praise indeed! I hope I haven’t spoiled things too much by bringing up the dog and cat question...
Interesting links and books about reading
- Enjoy this gorgeous gallery of Penny Dreadful covers on the excellent Dangerous Minds website.
- Following on from the Len Deighton discussion last week, I recommend having a snoop around the Deighton Dossier, a very fine fan site.
- On the subject of tributes to writers, I’m yet to see a better one than this wonderful guide to Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece, Under The Volcano.
- Finally, The New York Times invite you to test your book smarts by doing The Strand bookstore quiz. (I’ll post my score in the comments.)
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!
