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

conedison discussed the pleasures and pitfals of poetic prose:

Leonard Cohen was already an award-winning poet before becoming a songwriter, but he also wrote two novels. I remember reading his Beautiful Losers many years ago and being transported by certain passages. Also in David Guterson’s Snow Falling On Cedars (which I was not crazy about), I remember thinking that some of his paragraphs were so serenely poetic that perhaps he’d chosen the wrong genre in which to express himself. Now for only the third time I’ve read truly poetic prose in Takashi Hiraide’s The Guest Cat. The writing is rice-paper delicate as if every word was written with an ostrich feather. Cat lover or no, it’s a sweet read.

A comment from judgeDAmNation about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (et al) prompted a conversation about what constitutes “normal” or “abnormal” books – if indeed there are such things. NatashaFatale said:

Interesting question, actually. For me there are two kinds of fiction: fiction that entertains me passively much as watching a baseball game or a movie does, and fiction that rewards closer attention and therefore demands, if not work, at least a certain kind of concentration that I don’t always feel like investing. What I find interesting is the way most people who sometimes enjoy passive entertainment seem to find authors they like and other authors who leave them cold (or worse) without thinking about it, almost as if their taste in light fiction is a part of their nature.

We’re not going to complain about goodyorkshirelass’s choice of (charmingly vintage) mug:

John Williams’s Stoner continues to win reader accolades, with FreethoughtRules saying:

Absolutely wonderful writing style. I keep being surprised by the unusual turn of phrase. Delightful!

And there was talk of whether readers have writers to whom they are so devoted that they would read any of their work no-questions-asked. MsCarey said:

I think you’re fortunate when that happens – a sort of love affair. I’ve come closest in the last couple of years with Angela Carter. I love the way that she pulls the floor from under me. I want to understand how her head works. But I’m reading her very slowly, she’s such strong meat. I also loved the cool clarity of Alice Munro’s writing which I read for the first time last year. I will be going back to her.

CMWong wrote:

“What makes a good story?” I asked my friend. She then recommended this book to me. I found it at my local library and just love its weathered cover. There are some great stories in here, and just what I needed to read to feel inspired.

Interesting links about books and reading

• The Books: an essay about the experience of moving in with a partner and the process of combining libraries. Thanks to jmschrei for recommending it.
  
• The History of Loving to Read: an analysis of the cultural history of loving literature, in The New Yorker.
• Man in Hole: can a novel’s plot be reduced to data points? In The Paris Review.
• And Now This: Author Elizabeth Wurtzel on breast cancer, writing for Vice.

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.