Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
The pending arrival of winter set caminoamigo off on some comfort reading:
Tender is the Night
...because the winter will be long and I just want to spend some time on the French Riviera. That's OK, isn't it?
MsCarey has put “all life on hold” while she reads Patrick Leigh Fermor’s “utterly stupendous” A Time of Gifts by:
I’m stunned at how good it is. I’m feverishly turning the pages as I would a thriller. Just in case there is anyone out there more ignorant than I (difficult), I will add by way of explanation that the book is the account of the 18-year-old Leigh Fermor’s walk across Europe in 1933/4. An absolutely mesmerising description of landscape and its impact on the culture and history of Europe, it reinforces at every turn that there is no better way to explore than by foot. And I’m not sure if there is a better companion than Leigh Fermor. [...] The result adds up to an erudite, funny, entertaining and extremely moving portrait of Europe between the wars.
MajorWhipple praised Beryl Bainbridge’s emotional storytelling:
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
I'm ashamed to say that it's my first Bainbridge but on the strength of this book set in Victorian Liverpool and the Crimean theatre of war it certainly won't be my last. An astonishing ability to portray the emotional workings of the human heart and what drives people to continue when faced with the most appalling horror and carnage.
R042 finished William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying:
Very, very good indeed. Perfectly awful people depicted in a way that made their real depths of awfulness come clear. Those final chapters with the girl looking for a doctor, and then the revelation of who she is – and before that all the rationalisations for everything that Anse gives – were quite exceptional. I really cannot wait to read more Faulkner, but I need something cheerful now. Reading too much grimness in one go lessens its impact.
TimHannigan asked if anyone had read a novel set in their own home-place?
I suppose I don’t mean just, say, being from Yorkshire and reading a novel set in a generic and general Yorkshire environment. I mean reading a book set in your immediate habitat, describing individual shops and houses, individual bends in the road even, all of which you know as well as your own living room... I’ve just read – finally – Patrick Gale’s Notes From an Exhibition, set in Penzance and surrounds.
It was a curious experience. At first I found it faintly embarrassing; I would cringe a little at each mention of a local street name, though I don’t for the life of me know why. I was also, naturally, hypersensitive to inaccuracy, barking blimpishly at the printed page : “Queen Street, not Queen’s Street!” And “The cinema wasn’t partitioned into three screens in the 1980s!”
Over to 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.
And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.
