Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Some seasonal cheer from beerbart, who has been reaching for Simenon:
The darkness creeps up on you this time of year. Before you know it it’s pitch black at 4pm. Anyway. It’s the perfect time to reach for a Maigret. The last of my current 3 for 2’s from a bookshop near Victoria: The Misty Harbour. Boy is it misty. There is also foul play in the air as a dockworker is shot, sent to Paris to recover and then poisoned on his return. 35 pages in: the flog is cloying, the morning coffee spiked with brandy and the pipe smoking is never ending. Classic Simenon then.
David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet finale: 1983 is also right for the time of year, says writeronthestorm:
I’ve waded through decades of filth and corruption to get to this point. Incredible writing. It’s very bleak, leaves you feeling bleak and gives you a bleak outlook on life - it really does put me in a bit of a mood when I have a sustained reading session. Thankfully, I can acknowledge it’s the book’s fault and snap myself out of it - fair to say it’s a perfect read for the melancholy of autumn/winter.
Christabel Bielenberg’s memoir The Past is Myself has scared BrendaTwisse:
A terrifying account of how quickly and easily Hitler grabbed power from the ruling elite of the Weimar Republic. People weren’t interested in politics and many thought Hitler was a “clown” … Bielenberg provides plenty of insight into what it was like to live in the Third Reich as an opponent of the regime. What particularly comes across is how exhausting it must have been to be constantly on guard against making a thoughtless comment, and the need to be wary of every new acquaintance.
Malcolm Nance’s The Plot to Betray America, about Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, has had an unsurprisingly similar impact on Ammonium:
About the greatest scandal to affect America, by a counterintelligence professional who has, like myself and many others, watched with horror as our democracy was undermined in plain sight with the eager and degrading collusion of 40 percent of its citizens and the Republican Party. The goal, to turn the US into a kleptocracy like Russia, is well underway … the story won’t be over for many years; what is done now will never be forgotten.
EM Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front (translated by Brian Murdoch) is a keeper, says allworthy:
I often wonder what books will be still around in 50 years time. Fairly sure this one will continue to remain with us. Such a beautiful book, exquisite prose to describe such destruction with rare glimpses of colour: butterflies and cherry blossom. This is a young man’s story that captures how a generation become dislocated, live in a permanent no man’s land, where they have no ties except to each other. Remarque almost slips in the horror; it becomes matter of fact. Paul Bäumer becomes a hollowed shell as he loses everything matter. A wonderful novel that still feels a terrible warning - how the young can be betrayed by their elders.
Time to cheer things up: David Mitchell’s autobiographical Back Story made euroneej laugh:
It is quite simply the funniest book I have read recently … I woke my wife up several times with involuntary outbursts of laughter, and it left me with the unusual desire to hope for opportunities to recommend it to anyone needing cheering up. Brilliant and absorbing, it has disarming authenticity and an endearing openness, while managing to keep the author’s most private life private.
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout has impressed Larts:
The really good thing about Olive, Again is the writing. It is straight out of the top drawer, sharp, succinct and well observed. The stories have an authenticity that drew me in, the dialogue is pithy and characters well-drawn. The way Strout shows action and thought is really marvellous. An excellent collection.
Finally, a mystery. A London Library copy of Lorna Moon’s Dark Star has intrigued interwar:
The library has owned the book since 1929, but when I took it off the shelf the Date of Issue slip pasted in the front showed evidence of only one previous borrower, in the late 90s. This points to one of two possibilities: 1) no one borrowed it before that time or 2) so many people borrowed it that the fully stamped slip was removed. I find both of those improbable, but the fact that the volume has been rebound and the rebinding is worn strongly suggests the second as being the case. Anyway, in September 1997 someone borrowed the book and returned it - get this - in September 1999! What on earth were they doing with this rather slight novel all that time? Furthermore, on page 71 a flower has been pressed (now fragile and flaking) and from that point to page 127 there are frequent pencil lines (only down the margins, thank god). I can’t help trying to put together a story (also pretty fragile and flaky) behind the evidence, such as it is; this happens a lot with London Library books.
It sounds like a story in and of itself…
Interesting links about books and reading
Virginia Woolf was “not averse to the occasional hatchet job.” A wonderful essay on Woolf’s writings for The Times Literary Supplement by Francesca Wade.
“I still have not died”: Margaret Drabble on learning German in her 70s.
“Sadness once struck me as terminally hip”: Leslie Jamison on the cult of the literary sad woman.
There are treasures to be found on the Public Domain Review.
The final frontier by Michael Chabon. (Hat tip to ChronicExpat)
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!
