Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Brooke Sherbrooke shared her cheerful discovery:
Life is difficult, reading dark literature is my norm, all of it can send me into a funk. So, I’ve taken a side-step in my TBR pile, and am just finishing up David Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.
No author has ever made me laugh out loud like Mr Sedaris. He is irreverent and of my vintage so I fully engage with his references. And, this is not to be missed, he writes very well indeed. Some of the stories are from his life and point of view, some of the stories are penned by fictional characters with entirely different points of view.
I’m a big fan of Val McDermid and I’m fascinated by forensic science so I am LOVING this book. She explains each branch of forensics clearly with relevant case examples where each has been used. Forensics would definitely have been my career choice had my Chemistry teacher not told my mum I should stick to art!
I’m lucky that my library is starting a reading group devoted to literature in translation (called Found in Translation, if you see what they did there ...) Its first meeting is next week, and while at that we will have a chance to put forward suggestions for books, we’ve been told that the book for April is Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck. I must hang my head in shame as neither the author nor title is familiar to me. I’m sure, however, that one of you will know it. Just wondering what anyone who’s read it thought of it?
Oh my. Visitation. Hope they serve stiff drinks at your book club. Lots of moments that required me to pause, close the book physically and sit still, thinking and trying not to think, before taking a breath (which I had to catch first) and continuing.
It’s beautifully written, unusually structured and quite oddly shaped. It felt at once expansive (social, cultural and political history, WWII, post-war Europe, Soviet Europe) and claustrophobic (individual lives, small lives, under beds, in cupboards, in solitude by a tree).
I’d forgotten how exciting and gothic the book is. Also I was sure Helen Burns, Jane’s friend at Lowood, died after being made to stand out in the rain for hours, but this doesn’t happen in the book. She dies of consumption. I think I must be remembering one of the many dramatisations I’ve seen. I think the book transcends them. I remember Michael Jayston as a particularly appealing Rochester but have never seen any actor who fits Bronte’s description. Sad to say, her description calls up Gordon Brown for me . . .
Five minutes ago I finished a book. I’m not ready to talk about it. But this community deserves to know what it is. It ticks a few boxes, in an unusual genre, for me.
Female author; in translation.
@GuardianBooks Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai alongside the film adaptation by Bela Tarr (chapter by chapter) - astonishing and mesmeric
@GuardianBooks I'm reading Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood in bed and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng on the train. I like both so far
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