Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
First, an intriguing post from Rex Bowan:
I finished Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. I read it in a one-man post Trump and Brexit protest, as I had read, and I think it is right to say, that it is a great anti-nationalist text. It was a breezy little read and I recommend it highly to all readers.
Somehow, it seems just right that I have no idea how to take that. In a way, it would make less sense if someone posted something I fully understood about Finnegans Wake.
Luckily, most other posts were more straightforward last week - although Tom Mooney did provide an intriguing mystery:
I found a little cracker of a book this week, which seems to be an almost complete unknown. East Bay Grease by Eric Miles Williamson. It is the very, very gritty story of a teenage white trash kid growing up in the roughest parts of Oakland, California. Living in a trailer, bullied and beaten, it is his story of survival in the ghetto. It is also a love letter to Oakland, to jazz and to the city’s great hero, Jack London. It is so well written and a really enjoyable read. I can’t seem to find a great deal out about the author, other than he is a critic and college professor of some renown. But the novel seems to be all but forgotten, which is a shame.
Meanwhile, Robert Rudolph has been enjoying a novel set on the opposite side of the USA:
I’ve just finished Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Very good narrative, though I felt like shouting advice or asking questions of his heroes a few times. King has strong - and obviously mixed - feelings about his native state, but his paean to the New England fall - and his wart-filled portraits of villagers - add a solid underpinning to his vampire yarn.
Poignantly, julian6 recommends the “miraculously fine” Larry’s Party by Carol Shields:
A tender nuanced portrait of a life ebbing backwards and forwards but with a basic onward movement from first love and marriage into middle age. The story is of Larry Weller - a landscape designer more specifically a maze maker. Are these mazes emblematic of his life journey - his own puzzlings about his fears and motivations - his desires - his fondnesses and sudden blank incomprehensions? Shields is a marvellous guide and observer - it is utterly rotten that cancer deprived the world of this great author far too soon. I haven’t yet reached the conclusion of the work - it will be sad indeed to finish this gem.
Here too is an important reminder from Ongley:
A couple of days late, but I just wanted to remember Primo Levi (Torino, 31 July 1919 – Torino, 11 April 1987) on the 30th anniversary of his death. Hard to believe now that Levi had difficulty in finding an editor for If This Is A Man, which was eventually published by De Silva in 1947 in a print run of 2,500 copies of which only 1,500 were sold, mostly in his home town of Turin.
Finally, Boocat01 has no doubt at all that we should all read Dodgers by Bill Beverly - and do it now:
This is an outstanding book. Easily one of the best I have read in the last 10 years. I’ll run out of words to describe it so please just go and read it. In fact I’d say put down whatever you are reading right now and pick ‘Dodgers’ up instead.
Interesting links about books and reading
- Some of James Baldwin’s archive is being opened up. But not all of it.
- Meanwhile, there’s a battle brewing about attempts to save Baldwin’s home in France.
- A reading list for fans of the S-Town podcast. (Hat tip to katcalls.)
- Justin Trudeau is a massive... reader. (His reading list is actually very interesting.)
- Now you can use your favourite quotes to annoy people even more.
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.
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 lifes 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!
