Welcome to this week’s blog. Don’t you just love that picture? Thanks lukelovegrove, if you’re reading this. The last fortnight’s contributions included a rare compliment to reviewers, from sanda1scuptorNYC:

I just finished reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. First, I applaud the reviewers who did not give away the event at the start of the book, because I’d not have read the book. And glad I did not look at the wikipedia entry which did, until after I read the book.

The Goldfinch is a wonderful novel. Lots about art and restoration of antiques,too. And a nice long book. While I skimmed passages often in the ebook, when I got near the end I slowed down and kept stopping. I did not want the book to end. Will I read it again? Yes, but not sure when. So many good books to read.

Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries didn’t inspire the same enthusiasm in Sara Richards , who wrote: “I finally limped to the end of The Luminaries. Phew is all I can say, and well done me.” She added:

The book is tightly structured, returning to the beginning at its end, and using astrological symbols. But I read an interview with Ms Catton where she said that she had written the first chapter, where twelve men meet in a room, and she didn’t know what was going to happen. And that is how the book felt to me, a set of coincidences, accidents and no way for the reader to feel for any of the characters.

SnowyJohn agreed that the plotting could have been better, but jmschrei is a fan:

Personally I found that although the novel owes a lot to Dickens and Collins among others, it is above all a fascinating exercise in structural storytelling. I loved the fact that as the pace of the story escalates it comes full circle to end at the beginning without neatly resolving all of the threads. To be honest The Luminaries reminded of Cloud Atlas as a reading experience in that it was as much about how a story (or stories) can be told as it is the story it tells.

Over on Witness, reading has yet again taken a nostalgic turn:

Back on TLS, everythingsperfect made a discovery:

I read Behindlings and fell completely in love with Nicola Barker. I am now whizzing through Clear and will probably finish it tonight. Darkmans will have to wait for my next vacation. I want to be able to sink into it and not be disturbed before I emerge at the other end.

And TimHannigan has been catching up with an early work by one of my own favourite writers:

I snuck half an hour out in the sunshine at lunchtime today to finish reading Kathleen Jamie’s Among Muslims. On the basis of Findings and Sightlines, I’d rate Kathleen Jamie today as one of the very best modern British writers (and she certainly knocks the spots of Robert Macfarlane in the “New Nature Writing” stakes). This was her first book, from years and years ago – way back in 1992.

Finally, how’s this for for a display of bibliophilic good taste:

Now it’s over to you...