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

We saw an interesting discussion of short books triggered by a comment by LeoToadstool about Wilma Stockenström’s Expedition to the Baobab Tree. AggieH said:

The best short books are like a full-bodied spicy wine. They give you no choice but to drink slowly in small quantities over an extended period, each sip going to your head.

I thought I’d fly through A Summer Affair (UK translator Ewald Osers; DK translators Eva Andersen & Jiri Lichtenstein). It took me a week. It got increasingly dark, intense and pleasantly unpleasant.

TimHannigan added his own recommendations:

Two wonderful Very Short Books I’ve read in the last couple of weeks have been Tim Winton’s Land’s Edge and Asko Sahlberg’s The Brothers (trans. Emily and Fleur Jeremiah). The other nice thing about Very Short Books is you can add them to your TBR list without to much pain.

Alan Smith is reading American poet Amir Majmudar’s collection 0,0:

writersden is reading Iceland’s Bell by Halldór Laxness:

Very funny. Interesting to read about life in Iceland in the 18th century. I hadn’t realized the three parts had originally been published separately, though this explains the leaps from one character to another in different parts of the book.

Any recommendations for other Icelandic authors? I’ve already read some books by Arnaldur Indriðason, but I’m kind of tired of crime fiction at the moment.

Others recommended Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, Iceland Saga by Magnus Magnusson and more.

And, quite unbelievably if you ask us, Trevor Edward Walder mentioned the C word:

Anyone else got their Christmas/New Year reads tucked away yet? I love the thrill of knowing they’re on top of mum’s cupboard out of the way. Lovely.

Glozboy finished Don Quixote after commenting on it for two months:

It’s an absolute masterpiece, getting better and better as it goes on. The way the author plays with the medium, especially in the 2nd part, is a joy to behold.

I’m really quite sad that it’s all over.

Over on Twitter, Jo shared this concern:

Not the only one Jo: you’d be surprised how much sympathy you’d get in this space.

Finally, conedison’s offspring are not helping:

One of my kids was over for dinner last night and when he left I found two novels on my desk – The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Adam Resurrected by Yoram Kaniuk. This surreptitious book deposit is a kind of literary sadism because my kids KNOW how high looms my TBR mountain – they always seem desirous of turning my K2 into Everest.

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.