Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

Brooke Sherbrooke shared her cheerful discovery:

Life is difficult, reading dark literature is my norm, all of it can send me into a funk. So, I’ve taken a side-step in my TBR pile, and am just finishing up David Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.

No author has ever made me laugh out loud like Mr Sedaris. He is irreverent and of my vintage so I fully engage with his references. And, this is not to be missed, he writes very well indeed. Some of the stories are from his life and point of view, some of the stories are penned by fictional characters with entirely different points of view.

Silly, sarcastic and poignant. Just what I needed to pull me up for March.

Lisa34, in contrast, was enjoying reading about the darker side of life [see picture, left]:

I’m a big fan of Val McDermid and I’m fascinated by forensic science so I am LOVING this book. She explains each branch of forensics clearly with relevant case examples where each has been used. Forensics would definitely have been my career choice had my Chemistry teacher not told my mum I should stick to art!

Albertine67 shared:

I’m lucky that my library is starting a reading group devoted to literature in translation (called Found in Translation, if you see what they did there ...) Its first meeting is next week, and while at that we will have a chance to put forward suggestions for books, we’ve been told that the book for April is Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck. I must hang my head in shame as neither the author nor title is familiar to me. I’m sure, however, that one of you will know it. Just wondering what anyone who’s read it thought of it?

To which AggieH responded:

Oh my. Visitation. Hope they serve stiff drinks at your book club. Lots of moments that required me to pause, close the book physically and sit still, thinking and trying not to think, before taking a breath (which I had to catch first) and continuing.

It’s beautifully written, unusually structured and quite oddly shaped. It felt at once expansive (social, cultural and political history, WWII, post-war Europe, Soviet Europe) and claustrophobic (individual lives, small lives, under beds, in cupboards, in solitude by a tree).

I was certain I didn’t need to read another book that conveyed the Holocaust. I was wrong. There’s a girl under a bed, a girl I wish was still under the bed but isn’t. And there’s a girl who walks for two minutes in an extraordinary, excruciating, exquisite passage that haunts me still. And there’s a women, later, in a cupboard, who confused and confuses me. And there’s a gardener, who moved me greatly. And none of that makes any impression or sense without supporting quotes, but I don’t want to quote here and spoil it.

ENMWombat is in the middle of rereading Jane Eyre [spoiler alert]:

I’d forgotten how exciting and gothic the book is. Also I was sure Helen Burns, Jane’s friend at Lowood, died after being made to stand out in the rain for hours, but this doesn’t happen in the book. She dies of consumption. I think I must be remembering one of the many dramatisations I’ve seen. I think the book transcends them. I remember Michael Jayston as a particularly appealing Rochester but have never seen any actor who fits Bronte’s description. Sad to say, her description calls up Gordon Brown for me . . .

laidbackviews left quite an unusual comment, but no less deserving of being highlighted:

Five minutes ago I finished a book. I’m not ready to talk about it. But this community deserves to know what it is. It ticks a few boxes, in an unusual genre, for me.

Female author; in translation.

But it’s a fictional account, though based on reality. And it’s boy-meets-girl.

They meet. Look back. And move forward. I’ll leave the rest to you to explore.

This Place Holds No Fear. Monika Held. Read it.

Meanwhile, on Twitter ...

Interesting links about books and reading

• A Childhood Without Books? “What if social media had existed when I was a kid? Would I have ever learned to write anything longer than 140 characters?” So opens this essay by Stephanie Rice, wondering what her life would have been like to not have read books when she was a kid.
  
• Joyce Carol Oates on inspiration and obsession – and her thoughts on living a productive and creative life: going back a little, we found this joy of a podcast from the New York Public Library with the recording of a recent lecture by the author.
• Holy Writ: Confessions of a Comma Queen is a fascinating account of Mary Norris’s career as copy editor at the New Yorker, and her evolving thoughts on language and style.
• Rapt: Also in the New Yorker, those who have read H is for Hawk will be excited to read this piece about Helen MacDonald’s training of a goshawk while dealing with grief after her father’s death – and those who haven’t will be surely feel urged to do so by this piece.

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.