Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces had several admirers last week. Peter Law-Jones wrote:
Coming to the end of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, a surreal journey through a febrile mind and New Orleans. The sense of a truly absurd world is both unsettling and very funny. An excellent read.
And the Thepuffpastryhangman said:
I’m enjoying A Confederacy of Dunces for a second time. An utter joy. The descriptions of Ignatius’s ‘hobby’ make me snork every time. Second only to the magnificent Lucky Jim for laughs.
On the subject of rereading, bobthekelpie has had an interesting experience with “an old favourite that I periodically reread”, The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown:
What I did not realise until I started reading my daughter’s copy, is that the version I loved as a child, that I have faithfully reread all these years, was heavily abridged. OMG MIND BLOWN.
So I’m now reading an old, but wonderfully new and better version of one of my favourite books.
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel is “an amazing, amusing, informative book” according to Dogbertd, who has to be quoted in full:
I’m really glad I stumped up for the hardback because the pictures are (naturally) an integral and important part of the book, and you’ll want time to examine them closely. Hamel is an engaging and amusing guide to 12 of the most precious books written in Europe in the period before Gutenberg made print accessible to all.
Hamel uses the same method throughout. First, a description of where the book is housed – along with sometimes caustic comments on his experience of getting his hands on the books – he hates those white gloves you’re sometimes forced to wear, but he loves the librarian in St Petersburg who gives him chocolates to eat as he’s perusing a 15th-century manuscript. Then he describes the book itself, pointing out the most interesting features: it’s like having the the best tour guide in the world at your side – in one book on the Apocalypse he notes that the Antichrist has had his face scratched out by an outraged reader – as has the Whore of Babylon (serves her right, he says). He then expounds on the history of the book and the sometimes murky routes it has taken to its current resting place.
Along the way you’ll learn what a Psalter or Book of Hours is, why many manuscripts have pictures of cats playing viols (and it’s not because of the connection to catgut) and why the pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury both bowed down before de Hamel.
It’s a superb book if you love books and history, the Middle Ages, literature and art.
Here’s a brave admission from NorthernSceptic:
I am reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which I kept seeing on various recommendation lists. It looked experimental and interesting. Another reason for picking it up was that (as a man) I have made a resolution to read more books by women. Reflecting on books I’d read, I realised 90%+ of them were written by men (this takes in a range of fiction and non-fiction). This wasn’t a conscious choice on my part. Speaking to friends – and looking around at general buying habits - it seems it’s more common than not for men to mainly read books by men, and women to mainly read books by women. No doubt there are various reasons for this.
No doubt. Meanwhile, Grumpywoman56 recommends A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble:
It’s a collection of short stories and I’m really enjoying it. She eloquently expresses the hidden thoughts (even to themselves) of women. They were written in the 70s but it could apply to today’s society. It’s spurred me on to read more of her work.
MandoMonroe is whizzing through Bill Bryson’s At Home:
I needed something light-hearted and his equal parts interesting and amusing style is perfect. The only trouble is, I’ve read nearly 250 pages since Sunday night so I’ll need to find something else by the end of the week …
How about Émile Zola’s The Beast Within? It has grabbed beingsentient:
It started out quite nicely with evocative descriptions [of] Paris from an apartment window. Then it quickly turned absolutely horrible when the Beast made its entrance. I’m hooked.
Tolstoy’s War and Peace has won over FrogC:
I am reading War and Peace for the first time, at the age of 61. Only about 200 pages to go now. It is extraordinary, and there is no other novel like it. All the same, the essays on history, where Tolstoy forgets his characters for a few chapters and just rants about the errors of historians, are very strange, and one is inclined to think a novelist can’t do that. The only reason he gets away with it is that there is so much else going on at the same time.
And tericheri adds of the same epic novel:
That’s what I call a good read. The rest are mere trifles.
All of them?!
Interesting links about books and reading
Why you should surround yourself with more books than you’ll ever have time to read.
Simon Goldhill on translating Homer.
Isabel Allende has some useful writing advice.
It’s good to grow up with books.
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!
