Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Now spring is bringing back its ice-melting warmth here in the UK and xenium1 has been doing some cleaning and reconnecting with an old friend, George Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying:
Dusting and rearranging the books on my shelves was what brought me once more to pick up my favourite book of all time - Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I’m not sure if this will be the thirteenth or fourteenth reading of the tattered old Penguin paperback. Anti-hero Comstock & posh friend Ravelston are like old friends now and it’s always a pleasure to “meet up” with them again. I first read it when I was a little younger than Gordon is in the book and, like him, felt “rather moth-eaten” even back then. I’m still not sure, come the end, if I feel happy for him or not, but sure as hell always enjoy the journey on the way there. The only problem for me is that it’s quite a short novel & such an easy read that, each time I read it, I have to ration my time with it so as to extend the pleasure for as long as possible...
RobP has just finished Dodgers by Bull Beverly:
The plot is straight forward: Four gang members are instructed to travel from LA to Wisconsin in order to murder a witness who is to give evidence against their boss. However, using prose that is terse and bullet hard, Beverly creates a novel that is more than a tale of gangsters on a road trip but that explores an America that is alien to its inhabitants. I really enjoyed this book, becoming increasingly involved in the story of the protagonist, East, a young man starting to discover the person that he wants to be and the life that he wants to live. The sort of look that, once finished, you want to dive back in and read again.
Rosewater by Tana Thompson has wowed bluefairy:
Wow, this was a stunning book and one I wholeheartedly enjoyed. Set in Nigeria in 2066 (with flashbacks over the main characters life) it shows a world which has had an alien life form crash to earth in London. This alien life form released fungal spores into the atmosphere which in turn has changed some humans to be ‘sensitives’ and can ‘read’ the resultant xenosphere. Rosewater is a town which has grown up around an alien dome. It’s very well written, pacy and has engaging characters and concepts. Highly recommended and I can’t wait for the next book to be released next month.
Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis has delighted vermontlogger:
I’ve stayed away from most of Martin Amis, too much unrelieved intensity for my taste, but this was great - a raucous, hilarious novel set at the busy intersection of low-life criminality and tabloid voyeurism, the language buzzing throughout, and the last pages loaded with meaning. What a rip.
The Redeeemed, the final instalment in Tim Pear’s West Country trilogy has been a highlight for safereturndoubtful:
The highlight of my reading in the last few days has been the final instalment in his West Country trilogy, Tim Pears’s The Redeemed . In all three novels there are wonderful, memorable scenes; the images Pears creates of rural England in the early part of the century are powerfully evocative and a reminder that life could be tough and brutal, as well as the beauty in the nature that is described so well.
Having looked forward to this for a year now, and enjoyed it greatly, the only regret I have is that it may have been better to read them one after the other directly.
“A beautiful hardback edition” of Madeline Miller’s Circe has charmed RickLondon:
Miller is a born storyteller and like Mary Renault before her, really transports you back to the ancient world. This is a fresh, feminist version of the story, from Circe’s viewpoint, and even though I know the basic outline of the story and where it is going, I’m gripped.
“I’ve started reading Murakami’s Hear the Wind Sing,” says orie1227:
As its his first book (albeit only translated into English a couple of years ago), he’s included a really interesting introduction giving a bit of a summary of how he got into writing, and what his writing process is (or at least what it was in the early stages of his career).
What I found fascinating about this is he quickly found his writing style to be too expressive-almost as if he had too much to say-so he switched to writing in English due to his more limited vocabulary, before then translating it back into Japanese.
I’ve always really enjoyed his simple, clean, crisp writing style-opening a Murakami always feels a bit like a palate cleanser in my reading schedule-and it makes so much more sense now, knowing how he writes.
I’m not normally one for reading the intros in books, but thought that was worth sharing!
Yes it was worth sharing. All such comments are.
Interesting links about books and reading
A lovely big article by Margaret Drabble on Anthony Burgess.
“It is an excellent piece of writing.” An 1845 review of Narrative Of The Life OF Frederick Douglass.
Michael Hofmann on UK politics. Depressing, but so eloquently depressing.
The art of the twist ending. (Hat tip to Swelter)
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!
