Hello, and welcome to this week’s blog. After a fortnight enjoying ourselves at the Edinburgh international book festival it’s back to work in wellies this week - but anyone inclined to self-pity, as the rain sluices through the UK, should spare a thought for these librarians, facing heroically up to the task of setting the Napa county library to rights after the weekend’s earthquake.

Since MartaBausells is taking a well-deserved break, I’ll be holding the fort for a couple of weeks. For what it’s worth, I’m currently reading - and thoroughly enjoying - David Mitchell’s new Booker-longlisted novel The Bone Clocks (pace Mexican2, who is not so keen). If you’re in London, do come along to a talk I’m chairing with him next week. If you don’t live within striking distance, and have any questions you’d like me to ask, do leave them here and I will do my best to include them.

Meanwhile, on to the books you’ve been reading over the last week:

Callippides, a new TLS contributor, has been reading a topically-titled novel, though it’s actually about a doctor in southern Sudan.

Currently reading Something is Going to Fall Like Rain, by Ros Wynne-Jones - brilliant so far, I suspect there may be tears later...

jmschrei gestures at the challenge of exporting a novel, even if - like this debut from Irish writer Donal Ryan - it has won awards on one side of the Atlantic

I recently finished Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart. Although this book is finally available in North America it has garnered little attention. I feel that is a shame, the dialect is not difficult and the story has resonance with many communities hard hit by the the economic collapse. A beautiful, sensitive tale.

Bonbonbonbons has been reading in tandem:

Am midway through and savouring every page of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new graphic novel Seconds. It’s a cracker: funny, sweet and looks great. Alongside that I’ve just started Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Very interesting so far, especially as it’s both an area of history and an area of his life of which I was almost entirely ignorant.

ItsAnOutrage2 uncovered a little Neal Stephenson fan club with this candid description of his experience of reading Cryptonomicon:

I’m 30 pages in and enjoying it, but with 900 pages still to go it will take a while. According to the blurb, it ‘explores themes of power, information, secrecy and war in a gripping thriller’. Blimey.

There seems to be quite a lot of technical stuff about encryption which I personally enjoy, but I’m guessing that, as with most technical stuff in novels, you can simply ignore it and it won’t spoil the book.

SnowyJohn, meanwhile, brings good reports of Paul Kingsnorth’s Booker longlisted The Wake (which may lengthen the library queues experienced by elfwyn).

Started The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth. It’s impressive. The language is a pseudo Old English made readable to modern readers, and it is incredibly well done. I was fortunate enough to be forced to learn a bit of Anglo Saxon at University, and it’s interesting spotting echoes of Anglo Saxon and later authors. I’m not far in (it’s a necessarily slow read to start with) but he seems to making interesting use of dream sequences, too. The one thing I’m slightly concerned about is that the rambling, loosely structured narration is going to get on my nerves over time. Something thoroughly different and convincing, though.

judgeDAmNation, a stalwart of Sam Jordison’s reading group, is not so impressed with its latest selection:

I started reading The Persian Boy for the Reading Group, but sadly the novelty (or novel-ty) seems to have worn off now - while I quite enjoyed Fire From Heaven, nearly a hundred pages into TPB, the second of the trilogy and all it’s been so far is The Secret Diary of a Eunuch Aged 14 and 3/4, with a running commentary on which groups are going where and in what formation.

The advice from MsCarey is keep on going:

Just finished Funeral Games which is the third part of the Alexander trilogy by Mary Renault and I’m still gathering my thoughts. It may sound pretentious to say so but I’m barely existing in my own world and am still reeling from the spectacular fallout from Alexander’s death.

Finally, miasmadude reports an impressive book giveaway:

I gave away 1000+ books when I moved this year. To a local AIDS charity thrift store. I miss just a few, but I kept a thousand, so I won’t go crazy.

I am reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which starts out brilliantly and looks to be evolving into a Cryptonomicon-lite.

Next, I reread Shirley Hazzard two masterpieces, The Great Fire and The Transit of Venus. And Proust beckons from a high shelf, but he’s been doing that for years.

I haven’t included any photographs of your reading this week because a gremlin appears to have been at work on the picture library. But 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 attempt 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.