Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
First up, some corrections. Tom Mooney has come to a new understanding of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying:
When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And I was completely wrong about William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying is a phenomenal book. I struggled like hell with Faulkner when I first tried him a few years ago but this time he sang to me and I heard every word. This tragic, rich, epic book is simply incredible.
And Devenish has revisited Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain:
It’s been eight – nine years since I gave up on Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain – the only book other than The Power of Now (a rather bizarre choice of gift that I received) I’ve never finished. The fact The Magic Mountain is rated so highly by so many people only added to the sense of failure. I really couldn’t see how people had not only completed it, but enjoyed it.
Then someone recommended John Woods’ translation to me and I cannot believe the contrast … it’s like reading a totally different book. The whole tone has changed – what was a dry and seemingly humourless book now has me sniggering away to myself. While still very wordy, it’s now a joy to read.
Talking of wordy, sursumcorda has just “cracked open” A Small Boy and Others by Henry James:
Well not exactly cracked open. I’ve put on my white gloves and reached for my lorgnette. This is a handsome volume from The Library of America, complete with silk bookmark, so serious face on here.
James started writing this memoir at the behest of his sister-in-law, following the death of his beloved brother William. Wiilliam and Alice had travelled to England in some alarm at the state of Henry’s health but William died suddenly shortly after their return to Chocorua. (Don’t you love that place-name. I think Wallace Stevens loved it too.) Henry wrote to Alice in 1911: “The book I see & feel will be difficult & unprecedented & perilous - but if I bring it off it will be exquisite and unique”.
Henry’s health was still precarious - he died in 1916 - so this is a heartfelt labour of love.
Sometimes, an immediate and “undemanding” read can be just as satisfying. Cookyhunter recommends Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers:
I have been reading Trollope for months now (with forays into crime and children’s books every now and then). He’s just such a comfortable, undemanding, gentle read, and so funny, too! Right now I am deep in Barchester Towers. Everyone is convinced that Eleanor is keen on the hideous, unctuous Slope with his moist handshake and slithery cunning. Slope himself is battling Mrs Proudie over the control of the feeble bish. He’s also beguiled by the fascinating, amoral Madeleine and her sofa of sin. What a tonic!
Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels have gripped BobHammond2:
I’m going to an event with Ian Rankin in Manchester in a couple of weeks (my wife is a big fan) so have been working my way through the early Rebus novels in preparation. They are incredibly more-ish - I raced through the first three in a fortnight and am now gripped by the fourth, Strip Jack. Rebus seems like an irascible but endearing character with the obligatory troubled back story and home life.
Meanwhile, Ellie Rose has found interesting parallels with Rebus in William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy:
They are great reads, set in the seamy underbelly of 1970s Glasgow. Laidlaw is a policeman whose conscience won’t let him see the world in black and white, us and them, like some of his colleagues do, and you can see in him the template for some later obsessive cops (Rebus comes to mind). Unlike Rebus, though, his genuine affection for the drunks, down-and-outs and petty thieves of Glasgow is actually quite touching, and makes a change from the crime novel staple of the misanthropic detective.
McIlvanney has a talent for a pithy sentence, too. Laidlaw hooked me on page nine with the sentence “His face was an argument you couldn’t win” and wouldn’t let me go until I finished the sequel, The Papers of Tony Veitch.
Finally, Robert Rudolph recommends Yudhijit Bhattacharjee’s The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell:
The story of a DIY spy who plots to sell US secrets, if he can find any way to contact someone to sell them to. A man who creates secret messages using Renaissance-era cryptography, built up with tables of letters and keywords (the author’s explanation is most interesting), only to forget his own keywords from time to time.
Sounds even tougher than online banking…
Interesting links about books and reading
Geoff Dyer on Cheltenham, Hardy and cheese rolling.
James Baldwin wrote one book for children – and it is being republished.
Is Little Women a feminist novel? “No,” writes Hillary Kelly on Vulture.
“To outsiders, Sherlockians can seem at risk of veering dangerously close to a society of pedantic bores”: visiting 221B Baker Street in Pennsylvania.
If you’re on Instagram, now you can share your reads with us on : simply tag your posts with the hashtag #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection in this blog. Happy reading!
