Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
It’s hard to praise Georges Simenon enough - although two readers had a very good go. First, safereturndoubtful reviewed The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, a roman dur from the 1930s:
Explores psychology in the character of Kees Popinga, who is tormented by an inferiority complex, and craves notoriety through crime and playing games with the police, akin to his passion for chess. When he discovers that his boss is gone bankrupt and he is about to lose his own job and villa in the small Dutch town where he lives, Kees Poppingen, acting on impulse, boards a train for Paris leaving behind, with no explanation, his dull but comfortable life. Tremendous stuff.
And beerbart enjoyed Maigret’s First Case:
I’m not really a huge fan of police procedurals but these are wonderfully sparse, atmospheric reads of France and Belgium between the wars. (Or in this case, pre-World War One.) Simenon’s subtle observations of characters and locations really help create that authentic sense of place.
Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine has pleased bluefairy:
I really, really liked it - it was a wonderful book and I’m still thinking about it now. There were a lot of laugh out loud moments with some of Eleanor’s observations about people and life but at the same time there was heartbreaking sadness. The way Gail Honeyman explores loneliness and being an outsider is just masterful. I can’t believe it’s her debut novel.
And here’s an endorsement for Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn from captainlego:
What a fantastic read! So raw, acerbic, angry, erotic, vicious. It’s a rip roaring read and I am excitedly getting through the last few pages.
We’ve also had fantastic non-fiction recommendations. Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser has been diverting greenmill:
A biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder who is best known as the author of the Little House children’s books... Ingalls Wilder lived until 1957 having become famous and comfortably well off, but her early life, part of which was lived in a mud cave dug into a river bank, is an extraordinary tale of transition from extreme poverty and isolation to mid twentieth century affluence.
And MildGloster has been enjoying The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin:
It’s a travel book, I suppose, about Chatwin’s experiences in the Australian Outback learning of Aboriginal culture and their belief in ‘songlines’ or ‘dreaming tracks’, or “to the Aboriginals as ‘Footprints of the Ancestors’ or the ‘Way of the Law’”:
Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes — and so singing the world into existence.
It’s fascinating reading in so many ways, about something I knew nothing about. The idea of the songlines, of people being able to understand the land they live on through song, and to be able to navigate across the large expanse of Australia in the remembrance of these songs, is a concept I frankly find bewitching and beautiful.
Finally, Jembo Jembo alerts us to Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku:
Explores the physics of the universe, giving introductions to string theory, M theory, branes and other recent ideas in language that is neither too technical or involved to determine the interested layman. First out about a dozen years ago some of the hopes for the future he was then expressing have already come to pass. We might all be living in a hologram or be the bits of a gigantic computer programme but don’t let that put you off having a look at this bit of pop science.
Now that’s a thought...
Interesting links about books and reading
- Female writers and the art of the quip.
- This article about buying first editions of Karl Marx is worth it for the headline alone.
- The continuing story of books about Donald Trump selling in huge quantities.
- A literary love story.
If you would like to share a photo of the book you are reading, or film your own book review, please do. Click the brown button on this page to share your video or image. I’ll include some of your posts in next week’s blog.
If you’re on Instagram and a book lover, chances are you’re already sharing beautiful pictures of books you are reading: “shelfies”, or all kinds of still lives with books as protagonists. Now you can share your reads with us on the mobile photography platform – simply tag your pictures there with #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection here. Happy reading!
