Welcome to this week's blog. Here's a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

david hornby has his hands full with a classic:

Moby Dick: The Whale. Having only recently realised the connection between Melville and the brief but successful whaling phase of the port of Liverpool, I decided it was time to read the "modern classic". I should say that the film with Gregory Peck gave me nightmares from the age of 6 to 12, so time to be brave!

Obviously the first line is as instantly recognisable as "The clock struck thirteen...". But I am really taken by the contemporary feel of some of the prose set against more period style.

laidbackviews shared a discovery which sparked the interest of many:

Bowed to temptation after hearing readings from R4's book of the week after putting Linda Cracknell's Doubling Back on the holiday pile. Interview with Mark Stephen on Radio Scotland made it a certainty I could wait no longer.

And a fine read it is too, with the rhythms of walking giving the flow of words; journeys in others' footsteps; journeys of return. Richly deserves the plaudits on the cover and who am I to disagree with Gavin Francis, Raja Shehadeh, Robert Macfarlane and others.

ItsAnOutrage2 said:

I'm back to reading one book at a time, thank heaven; I can't cope with too much consciousness all at the same time. Iain Banks's A Song of Stone is the first of his that I've read outside the 'Culture' series, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a hard-edged story but his prose is poetry and he sometimes uses its gentle rythms, I suspect, to wrong-foot the reader. More when I've finished it.

robert1950 shared his eclectic three reads of the week:

mal4mac shared:

I'm reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck at the moment. It's a wonderful novel, both a page turning "thriller" and a serious piece of literature. Some critics have accused it of being too heavy handed in the Cain and Abel parallel, which I find ridiculous. I think it uses that parallel very well, giving the novel great psychological depth, and introducing great tension - I keep on wondering when the murder is going to happen! (It it does, the parallel isn't exact...) I think the novel suffered from being published in the middle of the modernist boom - it's not stream of consciousness, and as easy to read as the Guardian. So not for those who like a Joycean puzzler, but certainly for those who like Dickens or Tolstoy.

Reading Somerset Maugham's Short Stories collection in situ made LizCleere feel like the cat that got the cream:

Finally, we're happy this is the place where self-confessed bookaholics find solace.

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.