Welcome to this week’s blog: hope you’ve all had a glorious week of happy reading? Let’s take a look at what we were all sharing and talking about last week.

We had a couple of wonderful, meaty reviews, including Vogelmonade’s review of The Factory Girls by Leslie T Chang and AggieH’s review of Kærlighed and The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik.

In reply to conedison’s call out for the books people wished they could read again for the first time:

Sara Richards: [...] After much thought, The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. But there are so many books I truly love it’s like asking me to say which of my children is my favourite one.

tyorkshiretealass: The Child in Time [by Ian McEwan] is mine – it was given to me by an English teacher when I was 14 and was one of the first “adult” books I read (we were given an extract of it in a practice exam paper and I wanted to keep going).

MrsPots: All of Angela Carter, but in particular (and in this order, if I could only choose one): Heroes and Villains, The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus, The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, The Passion of New Eve, Fireworks and The Bloody Chamber.

PatLux made a very interesting point about the ties between life and literature:

[...] Just yesterday there was an article in the Guardian about a violent act caused by India’s caste system. This brought to mind Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable which I have read twice and recommended to many people over the years. Today there is a Guardian article about solar farms which reminds me that I have McEwan’s Solar on my charity shops finds pile waiting to be read. I would be interested to hear of any other links between Guardian articles and literature this week.

EnidColeslaw replied:

Funny you should say that, the much talked-about “essay” written by Kathleen Hale about her experience stalking a reviewer reminded me a bit of McEwan’s Enduring Love, although the setting is quite different and hopefully Hale doesn’t suffer from the same syndrome as the stalker in the novel. In another world, perhaps there would be a McEwan for every Guardian article.

Vesca sent us a picture of the David Lodge titles they are currently reading and followed it with some observations:

I’m currently reading Small World by David Lodge, which has been sitting on my shelves for ages unread – I’ve got no memory of buying it, but I must have done because it’s second hand and no-one else buys me second hand books.

Realistically if I hadn’t read Changing Places last week and had some interest in seeing what happens next it would probably have sat unread forever. It’s funny, but there’s a sort of underlying grimness to the humour that I’m not enjoying at all.

Meanwhile, in the world of non-fiction, Oranje14 is delving into the dirty world of tabloids:

I finished Nick Davies’s Hack Attack which leaves you open-mouthed with astonishment at the antics of the tabloid press, politicians (that’s you Jeremy Hunt!) and (especially) the police. It’s an excellent book and should be required reading for anyone ever tempted to use the phrase “tin-foil hat” in a CIF post.

As per our Reading Group, many of you are currently nose-first in various Kafka titles: if you are interested, we hosted a webchat with poet, essayist and prolific Kafka translator Michael Hofmann on Thursday: you can read what he had to say here. Do post a question for him ahead of time, or sit in on Thursday for what is sure to be an interesting discussion of the politics of translation.

If you would like to share a photo of the book – or books – you are reading, or film your own book review, please do. Click the blue button on this page to share your video or image and we’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. May all your books be good ones!