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

SharonE6 praised Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda:

Just my kind of book – beautifully written with characters I care about. It’s quite heartbreaking. I also love the feel of the paper and the cover (it’s the paperback version). It makes reading a really pleasurable experience. I think I’ll judge this as a worthy Booker winner and I’ll definitely be reading more by Carey.

Continuing the talk about Hilary Mantel, of which we’ve had a lot lately, tyorkshiretealass wrote:

Just (as in literally, on-the-bus-home just) finished Bring Up The Bodies and really, really enjoyed it. As I said on last week’s thread the world Mantel creates is so rich and so completely immersive that you want to stay in it forever, even as it all rolls towards the inevitable. It’s also been really interesting to see the shift in Cromwell that comes all at once, and yet you suddenly realise it’s been building up all along. Utterly, utterly brilliant.

Meraymi Ibrahim shared:

Recently I found out about Irish slavery in the Caribbean and I have had to find out all about it. To Hell or Barbados is not an easy book to start on, however it is incredibly informative and you really feel for those who were involved in such a brutal time. Not only does he describe what it was to be Irish but also an African slave who lived among the Irish on the plantations, which makes you piece together parts of African American slave history too.

I’m now halfway through the book and keep it with me so I can have a sneak peek whenever I get the chance. It has opened my mind up to a part of history I regretfully say is not taught in school. Sean O’ Callaghan really grips your attention with this fact-based interpretation of history.

AggieH started a discussion about books within books:

My heart always sinks when the character in one novel clings to another novel. On previous experience: the greater the literary pretensions of a main character, the lesser the literary quality of the book.

Swelter replied:

An interesting comment, which got me thinking back to fiction I’ve read in which characters are reading other books. I can’t really think of any where such reading gave a character literary pretensions which I felt was supposed to gain my admiration. Some examples that come to mind:

EnidColeslaw_ has a “rainbow TBR pile” to tackle:

Lighting up the shelves with the rainbow treatment. More than half of them are still unread ... Let’s get cracking.

Welcome to sarahevb, who reported:

Almost finished Popco by Scarlett Thomas, a writer who is underrated and little celebrated. The absorbing story concerns Alice, an appealing and complicated heroine, who works at Popco, a toy company, developing new products. The book is crammed with interest – maths, code breaking, Pirates, homeopathy to mention but a few. It explores globalisation, gender issues, love, family and friendship. It has the most vivid portrait of teenage group dynamics I’ve read since Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. It was written in the early’90s so it’s interesting to see how technology and social media have developed since then. A wonderful read.

Interesting links about books and reading

• Life Writing: Zadie Smith on diaries and how she came to realise she doesn’t want any record of her days.
  
• The 2015 Visual Guide to Translated Fiction: a helpful page to help you navigate the multitude of titles that will be released in English this year, classified by language. Thanks to AggieH for pointing it out.
• You’ll Never Write About Me Again: Italian journalist Livia Manera Sambuy, the author of two documentary films on Philip Roth, writes about her friendship and conversations with the writer. With gems like: “Why I wasted my time with books and women is a mystery.” In The Believer magazine.

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.