Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including disappointing book endings and couple pacts to read together.
UnironicBeard was feeling existential:
I was struck recently by the feeling of being detached from my own existence. (I sometimes get complaints from my wife that I’m detached from her existence too.) This led to my acquiring a copy of The Outsider by Albert Camus, which I’d read before but many moons ago. I’m possibly not the first to make such an observation, but this is a beautiful book which can be read on many levels – I’m reading it on a sort a mezzanine between enjoying the evocative imagery and puzzling over the pronouncements of the book’s Existential anti-hero, Meursault.
MsCarey has just finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman for her reading group:
A bit of an oddity (although maybe not if you’re a regular Gaiman reader, which I’m not) but by the end I was won round. It’s more or less a children’s book written for grown-ups and it delivers magic/fantasy and a terrific narrative voice in the shape of the seven year old narrator which feels absolutely authentic. I suspect it’s a book which divides readers and am really looking forward to this week’s reading group discussion. I predict bafflement and enthusiasm in a ratio of about 3:1.
fingerlakeswanderer touched on a familiar dilemma: whether or not readers should give up on books they aren’t enjoying:
I was disappointed in a book that I forced myself to finish reading. I don’t normally insist that I finish a book. I think life is too short to be spent reading bad prose, but I have also been thinking that I’ve become too lazy as a reader and give up on books too soon. I was reading Orient by Christopher Bollen, one of those big fat summer mystery books, and I had zipped through the first third of the book with no problem. Then it began to drag. Only my desire to know whodunnit was the reason that I slogged through about a hundred pages of going-nowhere story, and then felt rewarded when the last 200 pages went back to being a hoot to read. And then. The last forty pages annoyed the hell out of me.
[Spoiler alert] The murderer turned out to be someone that a reader could not possibly have guessed because there was one allusion to the existence of this person. It felt as if I had worked my way through 500 pages of prose to be told that “it had all been a dream” or “the murderer was a ghost” or some such BS ending. I wondered if the author had ever really known who had been doing the crimes.
fingerlakeswanderer went on to talk about disappointing book endings. Which has been the most frustrating for you?
In terms of endings that didn’t work I think another book I felt that way about was Gone Girl. I thought that book was great fun, but the ending was so ridiculous it made me feel stupid for having liked the book so much. I wondered where Flynn’s editor had been. Hadn’t the editor wanted to argue with her about her ending?
Am I wrong to think that a mystery has to have an ending that makes sense – or at least is plausible – in order for the book as a whole to succeed?
After his girlfriend abandoned their reading pact, reader Richard Craven is finding The Ambassadors “so bloody precious” – but is sticking with it:
We couldn’t help but be reminded of this piece from a few months ago, in which a couple agree to read the same book during a flight – suffice to say it doesn’t really work out. Have you ever read a book simultaneously with a romantic partner?
Interesting links about books and reading
- They Pretend To Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist: Asian-American poet Jenny Zhang wrote an excellent rebuttal to the “yellow face” controversy surrounding the Best American Poetry anthology. In Buzzfeed.
- 60 Novels: An Essential Reading List: Men’s Journal have asked a group of “expert” contributors – ranging from Chigozie Obioma to James Franco – to recommend great fiction. It’s not always clear who suggested each title, but an interesting list all the same.
- More lists: Salman Rushdie’s 6 favorite surrealist books include The Master and Margarita, The Bloody Chamber and Pedro Páramo. Thanks to SydneyH for the recommendation. In The Week.
- Drunk Confessions: “When a woman drinks it’s as if an animal were drinking, or a child,” Marguerite Duras once wrote, and this piece explores the clichés of the literary drunkard. In The New Republic.
- The Fiction Atop the Fiction: Did Thomas Pynchon publish a novel under the pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson? It looks like he didn’t, but that didn’t stop many a literary sites from writing think pieces about it. In Harper’s Magazine.
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.
If you’re on Instagram and a book lover, chances are you’re already sharing beautiful pictures of books you are reading, “shelfies” or all kinds of still lifes with books as protagonists. Now, you can share your reads with us on the mobile photography platform – simply tag your pictures there with #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection here.
And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.
