Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and pictures from last week, including a discussion of post-Soviet literature, the lowdown on this year’s Man Booker international finalists and a whole heap of comfort reads (which suddenly seem more necessary in the light of the weekend’s terrible events in Paris).

RedBirdFlies has embarked on ambitious project to read the writers longlisted for this year’s International Booker

So after a book of non fiction essays Tales From the Heart and a fictional biography of her grandmother Victoire, My Mother’s Mother, I then went on to read Maryse Condé’s novel Segu, something of a minor classic of historical fiction set in the early 1800’s within the family of a nobleman, which follows the four sons as they leave Segu and encounter all manners of places, people, perceptions, faiths and practices outside those they are familiar with.

I also read Marlene Van Niekerk’s Agaat, which floored me and took a while to be about to gather my thoughts and write something about. A talented writer and thinker and a challenging read.

Thanks, RedBirdFlies. I also read them all, and am particularly delighted to see someone else recommending Segu, which was first published in French in 1984 and was my discovery of this year. My favourite Van Niekerk novel is Triomf, and you’re right she’s a challenging and worthwhile writer. I’m sad the International Booker is abandoning the lifetime’s work principle.

From two novels translated into English, here’s one that has migrated in the opposite direction. I suppose “l’Isle” would have seemed a bit abrupt as a title in French.

PaulBurns initiated one of those cut-out and keep discussions that are an irresistible feature of this forum (among other things it inspired a good Khrushchev joke from Swelter):

I have just ordered Ludmilla Ulitskaya’s The Big Green Tent. I’m quite excited about getting this book, as Ulitskaya will be the first of the post-Soviet novelists I’ve read.

But back to Soviet days - has anybody read work by Vassily AKsyonov? Recently I got intoGenerations of Winter and The Winter Hero? It’s a huge epic about a medical family surviving life in Stalinist Russia and quite compelling.

Aksyonov was forced out of the USSR in 1980 and I think he wrote the books in America in Russian. He had a visceral hatred of Stalin, because of what happened to his own family. His mother, whose name escapes me, but also a well-known Russian writer, spent years separated from her son in a labour camp. One remarkable scene I can recall, is of Stalin being relieved of a lengthy period of constipation. It is in turn, chilling, hilariously funny, and very, very crude.

7sisters found a welcoming committee to the Damon Galgut fan club after posting about her delight in discovering his work:

I first read ‘Arctic Summer’, his latest book about E.M. Forster’s ‘secret history’ and loved it. Such lyrical and truthful writing. Have since read two of his republished novels: ’Small Circle of Beings’ - basically about family in a very real hell on earth. A ‘difficult book - quite short, very condensed, but worth it. Also, have just finished Galgut’s ‘The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs’ - another ‘short book’- 142 pages, first published in 1991- shortly after the first free general elections were held in South West Africa.

Over on Witness, Tacitus49 was enthusing about a Gavin Maxwell classic about Sicily:

One of things I love most about this forum is when readers are generous and confident enough to allow us inside their reading experience in real time. djhworld revised their opinion of Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings upwards, while goodyorkshirelass revised hers of Rose Tremain’s 1998 novel The Way I Found Her downwards:

Completely absorbed I was happy to concur with the critics who described it as “Simply Magnificent”. Until, until.

Swept away initially by her exploration of the emotions of Lewis, a thirteen year old boy spending the summer in Paris who falls under the spell of a glamourous Russian novelist, I was convinced by her usual sure touch. All was as it should be, but then, but then. In the final section events took a different turn and I was unable, as one reviewer said, to be “beguiled by Rose Tremain into suspending disbelief”.

My “kitchen sink” approach to novels at fault? Who knows, but with the exception of the epilogue the final 50 odd pages left me disappointed.

Thanks to ID1541580 for pointing out one of the loveliest ever book jackets for Aesops Fables, in a Spanish translation by Júlia Sabaté Font .

Finally, 37 people contributed to conedison’s library of books to turn to when you need a bit of comfort. You can see all the recommendations here. And, ok, paulburns I give in: my own U-turn for this week is to allow you the Complete Works of Shakespeare after all.

Other useful links

Swelter recommends the work of conductor, musicologist and author Robert Craft, who has has died at age 92. Here’s his New York Times obituary.

NatashaFatale recommended a New Yorker essay against the death of the novel, as part of a conversation about what appears to have become known on this forum as “the Tim Parks school of criticism”.

And that’s all for this week. Martabausells is back from her Mexican adventure on Monday.

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.