Welcome to this week’s blog. Some of the most interesting comments in the last fortnight’s TLS involved rereading – or coming afresh to – 20th century classics.
conedison reminded me of the bracing pleasures of reading Doris Lessing, writing: “I found myself at odds with 60-year-old Sarah Durham - Doris Lessing’s troubled protagonist in her 1996 novel, Love, Again. Sarah falls into a turbulently unfulfilled lust/love with two considerably younger men and bitterly bemoans her fate at having lost her youthful allure.”
FlipH, meanwhile, raised cheers for Jan Morris’s The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage and Andrew Miller’s novel Pure, but has yet to report back on a latest attempt to get to the end of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. If you’re in need of encouragement, FlipH, Sam Jordison’s reading group columns are well worth a look, including this one on whether it’s OK to find such an overtly tragic novel funny.
Over on Witness, maryhagger was rediscovering Mary McCarthy:
But it’s not all old stuff. While we in the UK can only sit and wait for the latest novel from Haruki Murakami, due out in English in August, jamesgcole has stolen a march – by reading it in Dutch. Yes but what’s it like? Do tell.
As usual, several of you impressed with your ability to read several books at the same time. JournoKaty unexpectedly found George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones more fun than Bill Bryson’s At Home. She writes: “Although it is an interesting book, I can’t exactly say I’m enjoying it. And it’s so dense with fact and history that I find I’m not zipping through it the way I do with most books. It did, however, lead to an interesting conversation with my dad about toilets.” There’s surely a short story in that, JournoKaty.
John Alford, meanwhile, displays a taste for cracking titles, with a novella from a new French writer, just out in the UK, and a classic essay collection, which takes its name from one of the most successful celebrity profiles ever, published in Esquire way back in 1966. If you’re reading, John Alford, I’d be interested to know more about The Library of Unrequited Love.
Finally, a couple of weeks back we made an open thread out of a TLS discussion about whether happy marriage makes for good reading. Thanks to conedison and judgeDAmNation for allowing us to report your conversation.
If anyone has any other ideas for topics you would like to see busting the bounds of TLS, do let us know.
