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

Let’s start with a request from Susan Dunne:

I would like a reading project for 2017. My 2016 one was to read all of Shakespeare - nearly done it. Best reading project was reading the whole of Dickens - so good made me wonder why anyone ever bothered to read anything else.

I myself am working through Dickens on audiobook. I’m currently on Oliver Twist - so not very far in. But it’s already brought me hours of delight. I’ve also been steadily reading everything by the Terry Pratchett. And a few years ago I listened to In Search Of Lost Time, which was just glorious. Regular readers of the comments here on TLS will also have been enjoying Yosserian’s progress through Proust’s great masterpiece, and will know just how rewarding it is.

At the time I’m writing these notes, the only other suggestion on the project thread is “all of Jeffrey Archer”. That made me laugh. But also made me think there must be a better project out there... So please do furnish suggestions.

Another thread that arrived earlier last week provided a lot more names. This was a suggestion from judgeDAmNationAgain that we should list authors “we would like to give thanks for?” Our favourite judge said:

For me, I would give thanks to George Orwell, John Steinbeck and Michael Crichton for cementing my lifelong love of reading at an early age - and Dick King-Smith, who started it all off...

The first comment from interwar was indicative of the charm of the whole thread - and, if you’re anything like me, rich in the nostalgia of also being that child:

I’d thank Hans Christian Andersen, whose ‘Snow Queen’ woke something up in my imagination when I was only five, and Dickens, who bowled me over at ten or eleven (and for ever after). Also Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, R L Stevenson and Twain at about the same age and Conrad, Wilkie Collins and - yes - Dostoevsky, to whom I turned in my teens. I was the kid other kids’ parents pursed their lips at because I was too bookish (‘I prefer my children to be out playing tennis,’ said one mother), so I’m also grateful to my own parents who were too busy reading to notice!

I could just as easily quote all the other posts that followed.

But there wasn’t just gentle gratitude on last week’s forum. Some of us are still finding the going hard in 2016. “I can’t seem to shake this feeling of dread and my reading has really hit a brick wall... what to do?” asked Kemster. I wish I knew the answer. But I hope this is a good place to come for solidarity and sympathy. And MsCarey at least found some solace in art:

Giving up on reading entirely and wanting some form of comfort, I took myself off to the charming House of Illustration in London, a small public art gallery which is dedicated wholly to the art of illustration. It is currently showing an Edward Ardizzone retrospective and Ardizzone was my favourite illustrator of books I read as a child (although, on checking my bookshelf I found that he had illustrated surprisingly few of them). To this day, I am made happy when I catch a sight of his distinctive black and white line drawings emphasised by that very particular cross-hatching. The contents of the exhibition were a mixed bag; I had not known that Ardizzone had painted and drawn too on a much larger scale and had also been a War Artist during the WW2. These items, although done with transparent sincerity, were not of the quality of his book illustrations, for me, at least. The book exhibits though were as wonderful as I wanted and I felt that magic of a child utterly transported by a newly-discovered book. So, books have comforted me this week, just not in the way I expected. I had to go looking for it.

Another good idea came from pearcesleftfoot, who has been reading a classic of resistance:

I finished Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada earlier this week. Very much a slow burner but absolutely worth persevering with. The small acts of defiance displayed by the Kampel’s are heartbreaking in both their simplicity and ineffectiveness and help raise questions about the importance of being true to oneself regardless. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

Not coincidentally, resistance will also be the topic on December’s Reading Group, so do please drop in there if you’re looking for a book to help you keep on keeping on – or have a recommendation.

Finally, a nice quick tip from FreethoughtRules:

Nearly finished The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford this week. Highly amusing and full of insight into the lives of the Mitfords. Trying to decide if I want to read the sequel next, Love in a Cold Climate or take a break from fiction before I start a book I bought of Christmas stories including A Christmas Carol.

Since FreethoughtRules has broached the subject, has anyone else got some good Christmas recommendations? (Or, alternatively, if you’re feeling humbug, why not give some anti-recommendations. I read The Confederacy Of Dunces once upon a yuletide and most enjoyable it was too.)

Interesting links about books and reading

• The Shakespeare & Company newsletter is a monthly reminder that our civilisation still produces good things.
• Here’s a chance to listen to a recent conversation with John Berger.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s father produced some rather splendid sketchbooks.
• Great insider blog from Melville House about crashing a book onto the US market.

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. Happy reading!