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

Let’s start with an enjoyable question from HulloHulot:

How do folk feel about how text is oriented on spines?

Personally, I find the convention in the UK of the title starting at the top of the spine and running down along its length slightly weird. It might make sense on the level of an individual book, but as you browse rightwards along a shelf it means you’re reading a listupwards rather than down and I find that feels like… Well, like crossing your legs the other way.

I mention that question especially because of the fantastic answer provided by simplicitydrifter:

The way I learned it at library school, the UK convention works well for putting a pile of books right side up on a table and then being able to read the spines easily as they would also be right way up.

I feel a bit hesitant about leaving this reply as it doesn’t really give a very intellectual impression of the sort of knowledge we librarians acquire during our Very Important Training does it?

Who knew? Not me, anyway, but I’m glad I do now. I’ll be trying to impress dinner guests with that one soon.

Elsewhere, I was very taken by this review from WebberExpat:

Well, I’ve finished Stoner in a rush. Maybe it finished me. What a kick in the ribs that book was. Magnificent, but gutting.... Stoner was the true antagonist, a man swallowed up by his own lonesome passion, walling himself off from the rest of the world pretending that his work will give him the fulfillment he craves. It won’t and doesn’t...

The worst part of the whole book was the abortive qualifying exam for Walker. I’ve sat in on those failures, where the self-assured winner crumbles into a heap of blustering obfuscation and confusion. It’s even more horrific in real life, and Stoner is the only one, dammit, who does his duty as a professional and a teacher. That sonofa&%*...

Next on tap, James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late, which, by the looks of it, ought to be another happy happy joy joy of a book.

Keep that whisky handy is my advice for the Kelman. And talking of whisky, paulburns has been reading one of the lesser-known books by one of the drink’s most eloquent fans:

Finished Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration. A short novel set in an alternative history where there was no Protestant Reformation, not much of a Renaissance and not much of Scientific Revolution in the 17/18C, and the Catholic Church dominates everywhere except in the Schismatic New England in North America. Set in 1975, the joy of the book, apart from its being very well-written, is in the details of the alternative World Amis has created.

More sober were a couple of glowing recommendations courtesy of julian6:

A couple of superb works I read recently: Eventide by Kent Haruf - lovely measured sentences - sensitive and moving on small town America and the great John Updike’s collection Licks of Love, also incorporating Rabbit Remembered. This final episode of the Angstrom family was as magisterial as ever. The finely observed realism - shows complete mastery of observation and an unfailing curiosity about the world - its social strata - its complex human geography. All this is achieved with cadences and sentence structure of such peerless beauty and repose. I was also disturbed and enthralled by Dave Goulson’s A Buzz in the Meadow - a great exposition on the world of insects and the threats they face.

There was also some fine talk of “mixed pudding” from Vesca:

The latest Cambridge University Press translation of Sophocles’ Antigone. I’m sure it’s highly accurate and great for study (which is the point, as I’ve just started an MA with the OU) but for general reading - reading for pleasure - I would advise anyone to avoid. You’d barely know it was meant to be poetry and little emotion is coming through.

The Rose and The Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott (which was the name Agatha Christie used when not writing murders). It’s an odd book - part fairy tale I think, but set in what was a contemporary setting when it was written (just after the second world war). The hero, if he is a hero, is jarringly prosaic and self-interested. The heroine, if she is the heroine, is wandering about in a white dress listening to the horns of elf-land faintly blowing. The narrator is looking back on events - so actually talking from a future that hasn’t happened yet, which adds yet another lightly-sketched-in layer. The background is the general election of 45 and Labour’s promise of post-war reforms versus loyalty to Churchill. So a real mixed pudding, which oughtn’t to hold together as well as it does.

Continuing the ambivalent strain is this hilarious review from pearcesleftfoot :

Conclave by Robert Harris: Dry. As. A. Bone.

If you’re into seemingly endless lists about Cardinal X from Wherever and Cardinal Y from Somewherever and such wonderfully descriptive writing such as ‘A bishop, an African’ then this is sure to be your thing.

(Happily, Robert Harris also got some respect in the comments that followed. Selling Hitler was said to be excellent.)

Finally, short and to the point from exraf64:

Nausea, Sartre. I’m planning P G Wodehouse next week to recover!

Any week that features PG Wodehouse is likely to be a good one. I hope yours contains similar delights.

Interesting links about books and reading

• Penguin Random House have a new SF website: Unbound Worlds.
• An astonishing story about getting a lot of ill-gotten-gain by gaming Amazon’s algorithms.
• A proposal for ‘better living through bibliotherapy.’ (Hat tip to kmir.)
• Alas, the famous Eleftheroudakis bookstore in Athens is closing.
• Look out for National Bookshop Day on 8 October.

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.

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