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

First up, MildGloster with a generous take on Paul Auster’s 4321:

Really, really long but also really, really easy to read (intellectually — physically it’s actually difficult to hold up sometimes).

It is the story of Archibald Isaac Ferguson, told in four differing ways — a What would happen if… ? Varying choices made: by his parents, other family members, friends, and of course by himself; a case of what would happen if he’d lived in different areas, different houses; if his parents had earned this sort of money or that sort of money; if he’d met these people or those people, if he’d gone to Columbia or won a scholarship to Princeton or if he’d not gone to college at all and headed to Paris to educate himself. And so on.

It’s a good concept and it’s a good story (or stories). It’s also unlike anything else I’ve read by Auster, in that it’s so long and traditional and realist; it’s basically Dickensian, if Dickens had been born in postwar New Jersey and was Jewish and liked sport — no abstraction, no cleverness: all sweeping social landscape. Not what I’d expect from this writer, definitely, but also not unwelcome and not unenjoyable.

Another writer born in New Jersey has been occupying conedison:

When Philip Roth died I somehow managed to unearth my 60+ year old, dog-eared (make that bassett hound-eared) copy of Goodbye, Columbus and re-read it just before each page turned into confetti in my hands and I remembered why I liked him so much all the way through Letting Go, When She Was Good and Portnoy’s Complaint - the 1960’s. It took Our Gang, The Breast and The Great American Novel - in other words, fully three more of Philip Roth’s books before I accepted a much needed parting of the literary ways. It’s hard to give up on a writer you liked from the very start - sort of like falling out of love, but not wanting to accept that absence of feeling. In the beginning I found Roth to be demonstrably alive - his prose crackled with energy. But for me it was a case of diminishing returns. I know there are Book People here who loved his work - fine with me - he had no need of my further approbation. Philip Roth wrote one of the funniest novels I have ever read - I can pay him no higher compliment.

Elsewhere, JamesLibTech has enjoyed Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera:

It’s as if someone took Eurovision and mashed it up in a shaker with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, some psychotropic drugs, and a twist of lemon. Very funny and some rather oblique references to other sci-fi classics (and less-than-classics, like the Star Wars Holiday Special). It doesn’t read QUICKLY, however. There’s a lot of detail about the various alien races and it tends to slow down the main story some, but it’s amusing enough that it didn’t bother me.

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is a “truly remarkable book” according to writeronthestorm:

The author traces two parallel lives, her own and that of a convicted child molester & killer. It’s how these lives intertwine that the author balances superbly well. Unfortunately, although the book is absorbing and beautifully written, it is a tough read due to the subject matter. It is deeply personal and frank. If you can cope with that, I highly recommend it.

The Inimitable has made another welcome appearance. This time Ellie Rose has been reading Dombey And Son:

I’ve read quite a lot of Dickens, relatively, mostly because I took a course on him at uni - but every now and again I’m reminded how much I haven’t read and I decide to tick another one off the list!

Reading a Dickens novel is a relaxation experience like few others, I think: you know exactly what kind of thing you’re going to get, and even in his “lesser” novels you can settle down happy in the knowledge that you’re very much in the presence of a true master.

This one is no different - okay, the plot might be standard Dickens bildungsroman, but who cares when the writing is frequently laugh-out-loud funny (my partner keeps giving me strange looks from across the sofa for breaking out into undignified snorts at any mention of Captain Cuttle’s hook) and the characters so tightly drawn?

Finally, Tom Mooney recommends Siddartha by Herman Hesse:

What a wonderful, inspirational book. I have been trying to read some of the books which have been gathering dust on the tbr shelf for years and am so glad I picked this up. It is well overdue a revival in popularity, it will inspire every reader in a different way. This was my first Hesse - where next with him?

It has to be The Glass Bead Game, doesn’t it?

Interesting links about books and reading

• Toni Morrison, née Chloe Ardelia Wofford, regrets giving herself her famous pen name.
• Margaret Drabble surveys the work of Muriel Spark.
• On the sustainability of book stores appealing to Twitter for help when their sales are low.
• The latest article about Jonathan Franzen we all have to read.
  

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