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

Let’s start with a question from MsCarey:

I’ve just started my reread of Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring for the Reading Group. I routinely say that The Beginning of Spring is my favourite novel, and I do love it to bits, but now I’m wondering about the whole concept of a favourite novel and wondering if it’s true. I absolutely love more than one writer and absolutely love more than one book by those same writers. TBoS wouldn’t be my first choice on every occasion so why do I maintain it’s my favourite? At the moment I can’t answer my own question.

The idea of a ‘favourite novel’ is pretty confounding. I certainly couldn’t name one. Some of you made a brave attempts though - and I enjoyed nosuchzone’s reasoning:

It’s a strange one. I habitually tell people my favourite book is Ice by Anna Kavan. There’s no question of the deep place it has in my regard and affection, but I dimly remember fantasising a Desert Island moment and plumping for that one, after reading that the publisher had made her lighten up the ending (it’s very dark as it stands, so goodness how the first draft went), and thinking I’d rewrite the ending myself, long evenings on the palm beach out there. And then it stuck....

Talking of islands, julian6 has been visiting Orkney:

Following the ebb and flow of the human imagination as effortlessly as it does the tides of Orkney - George Mackay Brown’s Beside the Ocean of Time develops a carefree narrative imbued with poetic sights and sounds. The life and writing of an Orkney youth in the early to middle twentieth centuy guides the books wayward course and leaves the reader time for personal musings undisturbed by the demands of the conventional novel. A prose poem of the finest vintage.

From “ebb and flow”, to “bending in the breeze” as Kayaki provides a lovely insight into Silence:

I just finished reading Shusaku Endo’s Silence. Bought the book years ago then promptly buried it on my shelf and forgot about it, only reminded to read it by Scorsese’s recent film.

This book resonates with me on many levels, spiritually, intellectually and opens up a much deeper understanding of the beauty and depth of this swamp. Raised a Catholic and having internally apostasised to Atheism, having lived in Nagasaki for 15 years, knowing some of the descendants of hidden Christians... My wife was born and raised here, she considers herself both Catholic and Buddhist although never baptised. She was educated in a Catholic High School in Nagasaki and read Silence as a teenager, the Nuns at her school banned the students from reading it...which of course meant she read it anyway. The traditional Catholics of Nagasaki were not accommodating towards some of the themes in Silence, that European Catholicism could not take hold in Japan, that early Japanese Catholics did not really believe in the Christian God but a pantheistic Sun God which resembled it and was adapted accordingly....

It was Ferreira of course who described Japan as a swamp... To most Japanese people though it would be more like a forest of bamboo, tall and strong, bending in the breeze, not impenetrable, but deeply layered. Someone standing in the middle of the forest cannot perceive where the forest begins and ends.

Now for a much-needed moment of hope from Tom Mooney:

Thank you, firstly, to the several of you on here who recommended Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Oh my, what a book. It is so beautiful, so understated. I loved it. Anyone looking for an antidote to the crap in the papers and on the TV at the moment should read it. It is a reminder that humans can be sweet and kind and real. I loved the book so much; it is simply superb.

Finally, I know this isn’t really a tip, a link or a suggestion - but it is a typically intriguing piece of writing from a beloved TLS regular, conedison:

I didn’t think anything could take my mind off Trump. I was wrong. When’s the last time you received a letter in the post? I don’t mean birthday/Christmas card - I mean an actual letter - stamp, address, envelope - words on a page devoted to what they’re doing, what they’re feeling... the whole nine yards? For me it had to be at least 25 years. That changed three days ago when I received a letter from someone who I last saw in the summer of 1966.

Linda and I were girlfriend/boyfriend - 1964-65. I’d taken her to my older brother’s farm in Iowa the first year that he owned it. Linda called him, took a chance that he was still there, still on the planet. Apparently, my brother offered Linda my telephone number, but she wanted my mailing address. She’s coming to London with her husband on Sat. the 28th and wants us, with our spouses, to get together. I wrote her back immediately saying, Sure. Let’s do it. Well, I’ll tell you, Book People, I am terrified. When I last saw Linda she was 19 and I’d just turned 20. Will we recognise each other...at all? Talk about taking the bloom off two roses - wow. I have lost sleep three straight nights over this.

We need to know how that one turns out...

Interesting links about books and reading

• More fantastic work from the EU in the interests of publishers and consumers.
• A 1926 profile of F Scott Fitzgerald: hope and doom.
• Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, President Obama on what books mean to him.
• The New York Times on the history of the literature of discontent in America.
• “It isn’t Trump as a character, a human type—the real-estate type, the callow and callous killer capitalist—that outstrips the imagination. It is Trump as President of the United States.” – Philip Roth on Donald Trump.

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!