Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
First up, EstelleMoon, who has had a disappointingly fulfilling experience:
Well, as much as I’d like to say I’ve been reading something esoteric and obscure, no, I’ve been reading something incredibly popular. And as much as I’d like to say that the popular thing is overrated and bad, no, in fact, it turns out it’s incredibly popular and incredibly good.
I’m talking about Elena Ferrante. I finished My Brilliant Friend a couple of days ago, and I’m now about 100 pages into Volume 2 of her Neapolitan Quartet, The Story of a New Name. They’re so vivid and rich when it comes to detailing this beautiful, frustrating and profound friendship between Elena and Lila, full of love, full of competition, full of resentment, full of life. But they’re also a portrait of a community, of a country coming from fascism, they’re about the urge to break away from the stifling world you grew up in, they’re about masculinity, about family, about politics and so much more – but all these heady themes emerge in the best way possible – ie, organically, through the story and the lives of Elena and Lila.
Oh well. Elsewhere, julian6 has enjoyed Mario Vargas Llosa’s early book, The Time of the Hero:
This account of the daily struggles and cruelties at a military academy in Peru has sharply etched characters and wonderfully economical descriptive work. Llosa plays with time sequences throughout, moving back and forth, slowly drawing out the painful life journeys of his characters. It is clear-eyed, unsentimental and unfailingly honest, showing its vulnerable, petty, vindictive but not entirely irredeemable protagonists in a raw uncompromising light. The translation brought out the fluency of phrasing, the choice vocabulary. These narrators - for there are many viewpoints in this work, as well as third person - know their world intimately. I was drawn in from the beginning. The sympathy that emerged was never pleaded for or crudely awakened. There is nothing cheap in Llosa’s vision - it is a naked portrayal of diminished lives caught in an unforgiving web of poverty, prejudice and pitiless power structures.
A second reading of Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman has impressed Ieuan:
Very similar to War and Peace (which was its inspiration – and of similar length and complexity). The manuscript was confiscated by the KGB upon writing and Grossman was told it couldn’t be published for ‘at least 200 years’. A copy was smuggled to the west in the 1980s and published here. It was hailed a masterpiece and (IMHO), it is.
The Power by Naomi Alderman gets a nod from koelner:
I just finished reading and it absolutely blew me away. I didn’t necessarily agree with how things developed (ie that it would really work out like that if it happened in real life) but it was just so clever, especially the letters between authors at the end. I finished it and immediately had the urge to write an essay on it like back when I was in school. I mean, I didn’t, but there was just so much to think about and comment on and discuss. It really fired my imagination. It would be such a good book to study at school. Really enjoyed it.
Meanwhile, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene has worked for scoopster35:
Greene puts you exactly in his world – peasant Mexico, in this case – with no fuss, no flowery prose, just hard, clear, vivid writing.
RedmonT recommends The End of Vandalism by Tom Drury:
It’s hilarious. Rare indeed that I laugh out loud from a book but I have done several times already. There’s something tragic about it, too.
Here’s paulburns on Richard Flanagan’s Death of a River Guide:
During an expedition down the Franklin River in northwest Tasmania, Aljaz Cosini, the expedition’s guide, drowns in an attempt to rescue a punter who has fallen into the raging rapids. As he drowns he recalls not only his own life, but the lives of several generations of his relatives, one of whom is a Tasmanian Aborigine. (For those who don’t know, Tasmanian Aborigines are a different type of indigenous people to the mainland Indigenous Australians), and another a convict, whose relatives are ashamed of the ‘convict stain’. At the same time, Flanagan writes in detail and lovingly of travelling down the Franklin River (not the safest thing in the world to do) in a journey beset by tragedy. This is a fine, beautifully written book.
Finally, batterseaexile has revisited an old favourite:
I am reading Harry Potter again, this time with my grandson. He is the same age his mum was when the first book was published,when we found it in the library, well before it became A Thing. He pleads for another chapter each time we finish one. ‘You can read this yourself,’ I said. ‘Yes, but it’s funner having you read it so I can imagine it in my head’ he said. Wonderful.
Books are magic, aren’t they?
Interesting links about books and reading
Who is the most Instagrammed writer of all time?
Tina Turner’s book choices are not like the ones you usually see in the By The Book section in the New York Times.
An interview with the great Anthea Bell when she was 80.
Reading groups are radical.
If you’re on Instagram, now you can share your reads with us: simply tag your posts with the hashtag #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection in this blog. Happy reading!
