Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
ID3334123 recommends the Beastie Boys Book by Mike D and Ad Rock:
By turns joyful, hilarious and moving, often all three at once. Utterly life-affirming in its grin-inducing energy.
A Month In The Country by JL Carr has provided similar sustenance for roadwaterlady:
Such a delight to read – like the first mouthful of freshly baked cake, still slightly warm and fruity, quietly infusing one with peaceful acceptance, for as Tom finds his way so do we.
The great Marcel Proust has held alexandra1108 “hooked” since last summer:
This week I started the last volume, Le temps retrouvé … Sad that this adventure will soon end but immensely happy that there is more Proust to read and that I can start the Recherche any time again when I feel like it. It’s THE book for me, profound, witty, elegant, intriguing, beautifully written and all in all it is just a great pleasure to spend time with Proust’s extraordinary and sharply observant narrator. What a writer!
ChronicExpat is also enjoying a classic, JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur:
Progress is slow as I am frequently distracted by current politics on both sides of the Atlantic...although I’m finding the book quite a good corrective for that. So many of the characters see themselves as riding the cutting edge of progressive (circa 1857) thought, and Farrell so brilliantly inhabits the Victorian mindset, that it leaves me wondering how we with our own certainties will strike future readers (assuming, of course, that there will be a future where readers continue to exist, and that they have any interest in their self-destructive forebears). It also encourages me to remind myself that my own philosophical/political positions may not turn out to be quite so correct as I like to think they are.
On the subject of politics, Peter de Bont has found Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly “a revelation”:
Essential reading for our times. It presents four historical cases of political calamity due to a combination of ideological insularity, wrong premises based on false presumptions, seriously cross-wired communication and individual shortcomings. She opens with an eye-opening essay on lack of rationality, or even simple common sense, as oft-recurring factor in formulating and executing government policy of potentially sweeping consequence – starting with Troy and the famous Trojan horse, by way of object lesson connecting all; the six Renaissance popes systemically ignoring persistent clamour for church reform, ultimately leading to the Reformation; George III’s boneheaded inanity bringing England crushing military defeat in the American War of Independence, as well as severe economic loss; and, finally America’s self-betrayal in Vietnam.
Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 is another “good book to read in these times of collective insanity,” according to ShouldBeEven, who has been intending to read the book for “over twenty years”:
I picked up a second copy for three quid from Fopp just before Christmas and it was worth the wait. The final 200 pages are incredible. Yossarian’s Christ-like night walk through Rome stands out in this blackest of comedies.
Krestinsky says that Heller’s Something Happens may be “even better”:
It’s interesting in a John Cheever kind of way, although even more jaundiced and cynical.
Time for some science fiction. A Far has just finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky:
Fantastic, fun and intelligent science fiction. Themes we’ve seen before but written in a pretty unique way… I discovered it as Tom Hanks recommended it on Twitter. This is my first Hanks recommended read. So far he has an excellent recommendation success rate with me.
BullRob has another good one on the go:
I’ve just started Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest having previously read and enjoyed his The Three-Body Problem. Fascinating writing from the leading Chinese author of science fiction.
And Brian Catling’s Vorrh trilogy has impressed gimlisonofgloin:
Amazing. Admittedly I’m not the most seasoned reader but I’ve never read anything quite like them. Fantasy that’s new and inventive. None of the tired old tropes. Refreshing to read.
Elsewhere, Cardellina has enjoyed The Secret History by Donna Tartt:
What a wonderful book. Six hundred plus pages of absolute indulgent pleasure (plot, writing, characters, atmosphere, everything). This time, on the third or fourth go-round, some of the small hairline fractures became clearer for me – for example, in a hypothetical “The Secret History” drinking game I would definitely add a “drink every time a character ‘raises an eyebrow’ to indicate disbelief” rule – but the writing and plotting are so confident and it’s such an entertaining firework of a book, it’s hard to care too much about issues like that.
Finally, Devenish is “savouring every word” of WG Sebald’s Austerlitz:
All the time there’s the heavy, slightly sinister air. There’s something so perfect about the way he writes, not a single unrequired word or comma out of place.
Sebald so perfectly suits the times we live in. Like when I read JG Farrell’s Singapore Grip, there’s a sense of sadness knowing that this is it – this is the last one.
We all know that sadness – but at least it also makes the books feel even more like a gift.
Interesting links about books and reading
75 writers write a response to 75 archive poetry recordings from the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center.
The Long Island outpost where John Steinbeck and Truman Capote took refuge.
Lou Marinoff on “The Monster of Malmesbury”, Thomas Hobbes.
James Wolcott on The Life of Saul Bellow, “the authorised and definitive biography that groans with the graven heft of stone tablets.”
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!
