Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from the last week.
Charles Portis’s True Grit is “turning out to be an excellent choice for forgetting about the current pandemic”, says BrendaTwisse:
It’s pure escapism. Mattie Ross narrates the story from memory, when as a tenacious 14-year-old girl she set off into Indian country with a boastful Texas ranger and a whisky-drinking US marshal to catch her father’s killer. The language cleverly places the action in another time and place. Under normal circumstances the unlikely trio would never have got on, and there’s a lot of humour in their interactions. There can’t be many who don’t know the story, maybe not from the book, but having seen John Wayne or Jeff Bridges in the role of Rooster Cogburn. It doesn’t matter that I know the ending, the pleasure is in the reading.
More welcome distraction for FrogC who is reading Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell:
Combines the pleasures of good historical fiction with those of fantasy. Her feel for early nineteenth century language is excellent, down to the spelling of surprize, chuse and sopha. And the narrative voice feels just right, too, with a gentle, Austenish irony about it. The magical content veers between the delightfully whimsical – Strange is warned not to conjure up a rain of frogs on the French army because they would only eat it – to the unsettling, the nightlong fairy dances that exhaust some of the characters. I’m about a third of the way through, and not really sure where the story’s going but it’s proving a welcome distraction.
Another kind of consolation from kmir, who has been reading Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights:
Not sure if it’s just my jittery state of mind or if the book is genuinely excellent, but I’m surprised the book hasn’t received more acclaim … Okay, I think I’ve realised that I’m more drawn to the tone of voice in books than to the plot or maybe even to character. Yourcenar’s perfect steady and calm voice, in which you can almost hear the breathing; Breece – and this may just be my bad memory – for his gnarled, condensed, gritty sentences that hide a shadow meaning; or Fermor for his … what? … flow, exuberance?; or Paley’s wise and humane manner of speaking, so to speak…
The book is ‘about’ – that horrible word – what is lost, washed away to see but also, perhaps, the idea that you cannot destroy a ruin and that sometimes, when the light is right, something of the old structure of our lives returns.
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich has impressed greenmill:
An American writer leaves her middle-class life to attempt to survive in the minimum wage world of house cleaners, waiters in cheap diners and Walmart sales assistants. By turns dispiriting and hilarious, it paints a vivid picture of the squalor and desperation experienced by millions of Americans trying to survive on $6 an hour (in 1998), many of whom have to hold down two or even three jobs just to keep their heads above water.
On the first day in her first job (in a diner) she walks into the kitchen to find the cook throwing frozen steaks against the wall and yelling “fuck this shit”. Turns out the morning cook had forgotten to take said steaks out of the freezer before he clocked off. It goes steadily down hill after that.
Desperate stuff. Important subject.
Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer has worked its magic on LeatherCol:
I think it is probably one of the most exciting and moving stories about gay desire and dynamics that I’ve read. Profound and passionately erotic and goes without saying, beautifully written.
Kazimierz Brandys’ Warsaw Diary 1978-81 is “essential cold war reading”, says AbsoluteBeginner76:
Brandys writes in a concise, intelligent and insightful way about Poland and his memories of Poland before 1939. The section I just read concerns the visit to Warsaw of the Pope in Summer 1979. Brandys is not Catholic or a believer but observes the nation coming together around one of their own and their Catholic heritage. Young people walk under his window at night in earnest chatter, a large cross stands on Victory Square and he notices the regime are suddenly invisible, uneasy, watching from the shadows. He observes the features of the Pontiff from afar on the giant screen. He muses on the act of describing something, not showing or naming and then spends a paragraph describing the facial features of Jean Paul in beautiful simple language ....
Many of you have also been sharing tips that fall outside our usual literary remit, but feel important and reassuring right now. There have been ideas for staving off boredom, for ensuring sanity, for survival and for spreading kindness. You’ve also been checking in on each other. All this is welcome. It makes me feel better and I hope it does the same for you. While the Botheration remains ongoing, I’ll occasionally highlight a few of these posts up here. Like the following splendid idea from PatLux:
I love visiting art galleries and over the years I have accumulated loads of beautiful art books that I bought in gallery shops. I tend to look at them on the journey home and then they sit on my shelves for years. I have decided that each day I will remove one book from my shelves and leaf through it. This will doubtless bring to mind memories of not only the paintings but also the trip to the city where the art gallery is. Before I do that I am going to lift my spirits with a scoot through my book of Janet Fish’s beautiful paintings. I love how she paints glassware.
Finally, some excellent advice on reading Charles Dickens from interwar:
I long ago came to the conclusion that one must never analyse Dickens: just sit back and let those sentences, that energy, those images, roll through your brain. Even better than caffeine.
Those sentences are among the things that will help us get through this – and make doing so feel worthwhile. I’m glad we’re all together here, tending the flame.
Interesting links about books and reading
“Everything was different in 1920,” says Nicholson Baker on 100-year-old literary sensations, “and yet nothing really has changed.”
The US book industry is bracing for a “newly ominous future”.
Charles Nicholl on the disappearance of Arthur Cravan.
“Everyone in the industry is in the same mess. Well, good company, if you ask us.” Melville House’s message to readers will possibly make you cry, but will certainly give you hope.
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!
