Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
PatLux was surprised by other readers’ reactions to a painfully candid memoir:
I have just finished Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? and was so moved by her honesty. It has left me with much to on which to reflect about relationships in my own family, how our upbringing affects us and about people I know who are adopted. I often find it interesting to read Amazon reader reviews AFTER I read a book and many people on the UK site speak of the humour in this book. I did not find any of it funny. In fact to me it is achingly sad. What do other readers think?
Bonbonbonbons wrote:
I’m halfway through A Confederacy of Dunces, which I’ve had recommended to me on a few occasions as “the funniest book ever”. It’s certainly one of the funniest novels I can remember reading, though Woody Allen’s Complete Prose is probably still the funniest book I’ve read.
Any other suggestions for books that could qualify as “the funniest book ever”?
AlleinAllein arrived at Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by way of what sounds like a slapstick routine:
I didn’t decide to start reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I decided to read Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. Only, when I went to pick it from the top of my to-read pile, it all fell over and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the book I managed to grab while everything else hit the floor, knocked over a lamp and smashed the bulb. I didn’t think of it necessarily as fate bringing me to the next book I need to read but rather that I really, really do need to make this pile manageable. I know I’ve said it many times before but this is the Come To Jesus Meeting I’ve probably needed and I’m going to not buy any new books at all until this pile is eradicated. Honest.
shortstop6 was reading a novel by Australian author Candida Baker:
A subthread developed about books as “comfort blankets”. Chris James said:
The news has been so relentlessly depressing the last few days. I stared at my bookshelves and picked out Max Hastings’s Warriors. I first read it probably eight or so years ago, and opened the first page. At once I was gone. I know Hastings is a bit of an upper-class twit, but his military history books are unparalleled (imo). Warriors describes individuals in campaigns over the last 200 years in little short [factual] stories. His writing is so concise, and so accessible, it captures my imagination. At once I’m filling in the blanks of what it must have been like to be in Napoleon’s Grand Army or at Wellington’s side in Belgium in 1812. Just what I need to appreciate how lucky I’ve been to live through 50 years of peace in Europe. What books do you return to when 2014 just gets, well, a bit tedious?
MsCarey replied:
For me it’s more important to have comfort reading on my shelves than books I will only read once. I have a large stock (Barbara Pym, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Wodehouse, Angela Thirkell and various children’s books) but I have reread them all so often that they now only work occasionally. I got really depressed by the international news over the last couple of months and have tried a few different things with varying levels of success.
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.
And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.
