The Guardian's Blog, page 105

The best books on Thailand: start your reading here | Pushpinder Khaneka

Our Thai tour starts with an epic royal saga and ends with a wide-ranging look at the forces that shaped the modern nation

Kukrits epic novel follows one womans life spanning the reigns of four kings Rama V to Rama VIII from the 1890s to the second world war.

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How independent should Scottish writing be?

Not surprisingly, many authors have been writing about the referendum, but this political approach to their work has problematic implications

Why are so many Scottish writers keen on an independent Scotland? Why are so many writing and talking about what a Yes vote will mean to them over the years to come?

I can only think its because its an exciting and creative thing to do to imagine a new kind of country with new opportunities and ideas about identity. Its like starting a new book, having a clean page As though all the ideals and hopes one might have for a literary project could be writ large in the planning of a countrys future.

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September's Reading group: The Bridge by Iain Banks

The novel that Banks himself thought his best has much to recommend it at any time, but seems particularly apt this month

The hat has chosen The Bridge by Iain Banks. This hymn to the Forth road bridge, lament for the ills of Thatcherism and story of a fatal car crash seems beautifully appropriate in the month of the Scottish Independence referendum but it is also, of course, a book for all time. Banks himself thought it was his best novel. According to Wikipedia, he called it: "Definitely the intellectual of the family, it's the one that went away to university and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books."

Elsewhere, the first review comment I found online brought a lump to my throat. Back in 1986, The Times said it "represents significant progress in the flowering of an exceptional talent a totally absorbing read."

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Accents, narrators and total silence: how you hear voices when you read

Do characters speak to you when you read or are you more affected by the authors voice? In response to a survey investigating what hearing voices means to writers, we asked readers for their experiences. Here are some of your responses

Hearing voices is not only common, but it turns out to be a rich and underexplored area of study. For a thought-provoking set of articles on the phenomenon, head to our Inner Voices series, where youll find a scientific exploration of talking to ourselves, a survey on how authors find their voices, why hearing voices was central to Dickenss technique and the different sorts of voice-hearing described by Hilary Mantel and Virginia Woolf, among other pieces.

As important as the voices in writers heads are those that are heard by readers. So on a recent open thread, we asked you how you experienced characters when reading specifically, how you heard their voices (if indeed you did). Your answers were fascinating and amazingly diverse. Here is a selection of your contributions.

Its usually early on in a story my mind seeks out a voice for a character I feel shouts out to have one. Sometimes, I will read dialogue out loud to establish it.

Without help from a writers description, and involuntarily, I will gradually begin to form a vague picture of each character. I suspect many of these are subconsciously based on characters Ive seen on TV. At times, they will be based on people Im acquainted with, or characters in the news and screen personalities.

Im hearing a narrator reading the book to me. Its the same no matter if Im reading in German or English. Since I started to read more English books the voice appeared. It was not there when I had more difficulties understanding the meaning. Petra Breunig

I always hear the voices of characters in books, and if I cant, its usually because Im not that into the book. I sometimes get other sensations, especially if the author describes a place well, smells, sounds, the feel of certain fabrics, atmosphere, like cold, heat, mugginess. A good book can get all the senses going. Mel Davies

I always read out dialogue in my head when Im reading Irvine Welsh novels Im English, and its somehow much easier to understand what the hell theyre saying when I am listening to them in this way. markthemovieman

I am a very slow reader of novels because, I think, I hear the dialogue in real time. Each character tends to get an accent, and thats more specific as I get into a book. I read a lot to my kids when they were younger, which may be connected. TerryMarx

I hear the voices of the characters as they speak. Not always in the dialect or accent that they may be described as using. However, when Im writing my own fiction I do hear their differences in pronunciation, usage, etc. MakeMPsOwnUp

If I have a visual image in my head, the voice is connected to that image. For example if a male character is seen by me as a big fella, he has a deep voice. Someone I deem to be an older woman has no squeaky girly voice. Visual impacts are very strong for me and I reject a movie immediately if the actors dont represent my mental image.

Some books are stronger than others. I personally reckon the reason the books of Stephan King never really translated to the screen, is because the characters he described touched many parts of us. One trait stronger than the other. And this made them likeable to us, despite them not necessarily being the nicest of people. But if you focus on another trait as a film maker, you lose many readers. SybilSanderson

The only time I can recall this happening, and it was vivid, was after I had read Peanuts, with Charlie Brown. Id initially discovered it in newspaper cartoon strip form before going on to buy the book versions, which were just the collected originals. I knew all the characters, from Charlie, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy (who did not talk because he was a dog, he only thought), Pigpen et al. I read them all.

Then the cartoons arrived animated on TV and I remember shouting at the screen THATS NOT THEIR VOICES! I had such a clear idea in my head what they sounded like, I couldnt watch the TV version. nationwide

I do it to a certain extent. I am deafened and can hear very little.So I am used to filling in the gaps when lip reading or using subtitles to watch dvds and TV remembering where I can from when I could hear, I also have auditory hallucinations I know I cant hear a tap running or leaves rustling in the wind without my brain filling in the sound. I find I am hearing the voices of actors and actresses too young for me to have actually heard and also, as the article discusses, finding voices for characters in books especially those I have read more than once. I cannot recall doing this when I could hear however. Themardler

I generally just hear my own internal voice. I cant simulate accents in my head without phonetic spelling. I dont see characters clearly either. Generally I think I assign a few vague traits to them, and draw backgrounds from memory. Tom Jubert

I dont hear the voice and only have a weak visual sense of the characters, or indeed settings - more a wash sense or atmospheric. For example, an Atwood novel like Cats Eye might be set somewhere pretty mundane but I feel a profound atmospheric skew due to the strangeness of the novel, like the world described is a few degrees off kilter relative to our own. viriditan

If Ive heard the author speak, I actually hear them reading it to me in my head. And, also, the main character in my head will look like the author, even if theyre of a different gender... samofthepryce

I read a book written by someone I know, and heard his voice the whole way through. It was a good book, but he speaks quite slowly, and as I read I had to keep waiting for him to catch up! DrHeadgear2

I hear the book I am reading as if it is being read to me by the author. If I dont know what the author sounds like I imagine the voice from what I know of their biography. When I read Midnights Children I heard the voice of Salman Rushdie, which I knew from interviews he had given. I was disappointed when someone bought me the audio version to find it being read by someone with an Indian accent. I only managed to listen to one chapter. It wasnt the sound of the book for me. morememoreme

You have to hear poetry, its in real time. Usually, and especially in the case of TS Eliot, hearing the poets voice will give you greater insight (if you hear it once, recorded, you hear it all the time when you read). Reading novels like that would be a bit long though.

Im never conscious of hearing a characters voice, but I often visualise a characters appearance, from cues in the text. That is why, for me, film adaptations of much loved books are often a disappointment, when totally bizarre casting choices are made. Gizzit

I visualize very well when reading. The more enjoyable the story, the stronger it becomes. In a series, especially those extended ones, the vices, images, and reality become stronger until there is as much going on in my head as there is on the page. Yes, I did have an imaginary friend as the oldest child who was an only until age 7. My children and grandchildren have followed suit as well. I frequently hold conversations with myself I look at it as a means of working through decisions and stress. I teach literature and read voraciously. Denise Cuevas

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The Man Booker prize 2014 shortlist keeps surprises to a minimum

In the year the Americans were feared to be taking over, only two ended up as finalists, with familiar British stars alongside them

News: The Man Booker prize shortlist revealed

This was the year the Americans were coming but they weren't the ones we were expecting. Donna Tartt didn't even make it to the longlist, and now the Booker judges have passed over grandees Richard Powers and Siri Hustvedt in favour of Joshua Ferris, the youngest writer on the list, with To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, a black comedy about modern American life both on- and offline; and Karen Joy Fowler, whose cautionary tale We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves looks at first like a traditional family narrative but reveals itself to be something much stranger.

If there were fears of a wipeout, then, this is a measured list, with half the places taken by British authors (the surprise omission here is David Mitchell, whose globetrotting, time-travelling fantasy epic The Bone Clocks looked as though it might be all-conquering). The Commonwealth is represented by Richard Flanagan's bravura novel about the experiences of Australian soldiers in the second world war, The Narrow Road to the Deep North; there's a novel set in the subcontinent in the shape of Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others; and two out of the six authors are female, following raised eyebrows when women made up just three of the 13-strong longlist.

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Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them

Welcome to this weeks blog. Heres a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

PatLux was surprised by other readers reactions to a painfully candid memoir:

I have just finished Jeanette Wintersons Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? and was so moved by her honesty. It has left me with much to on which to reflect about relationships in my own family, how our upbringing affects us and about people I know who are adopted. I often find it interesting to read Amazon reader reviews AFTER I read a book and many people on the UK site speak of the humour in this book. I did not find any of it funny. In fact to me it is achingly sad. What do other readers think?

Im halfway through A Confederacy of Dunces, which Ive had recommended to me on a few occasions as the funniest book ever. Its certainly one of the funniest novels I can remember reading, though Woody Allens Complete Prose is probably still the funniest book Ive read.

I didnt decide to start reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I decided to read Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. Only, when I went to pick it from the top of my to-read pile, it all fell over and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the book I managed to grab while everything else hit the floor, knocked over a lamp and smashed the bulb. I didnt think of it necessarily as fate bringing me to the next book I need to read but rather that I really, really do need to make this pile manageable. I know Ive said it many times before but this is the Come To Jesus Meeting Ive probably needed and Im going to not buy any new books at all until this pile is eradicated. Honest.

As she organizes her photographs for an exhibition, in London, Caroline tries to make sense of her past. The novel also includes some wonderful sepia photographs, taken in rural Australia, by the author.

Sent via GuardianWitness

By shortstop6

6 September 2014, 3:14

The news has been so relentlessly depressing the last few days. I stared at my bookshelves and picked out Max Hastingss Warriors. I first read it probably eight or so years ago, and opened the first page. At once I was gone. I know Hastings is a bit of an upper-class twit, but his military history books are unparalleled (imo). Warriors describes individuals in campaigns over the last 200 years in little short [factual] stories. His writing is so concise, and so accessible, it captures my imagination. At once Im filling in the blanks of what it must have been like to be in Napoleons Grand Army or at Wellingtons side in Belgium in 1812. Just what I need to appreciate how lucky Ive been to live through 50 years of peace in Europe. What books do you return to when 2014 just gets, well, a bit tedious?

For me its more important to have comfort reading on my shelves than books I will only read once. I have a large stock (Barbara Pym, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Wodehouse, Angela Thirkell and various childrens books) but I have reread them all so often that they now only work occasionally. I got really depressed by the international news over the last couple of months and have tried a few different things with varying levels of success.

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Man Booker prize 2014 let's play guess the shortlist

It's a traditionally impossible game, but we've had a go on the books desk. What are your predictions?

Shortly after 10.30am BST on Tuesday we'll discover which six authors have made it onto this year's Man Booker prize shortlist. In the year the prize opens up to the world, we're wondering: how many of that half-dozen will be American? And with only three women on the 13-strong longlist, how many books by female authors will we see?

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Not the Booker prize shortlist: a long look at The Smoke Is Rising by Mahesh Rao

Despite an exhausting profusion of points of view, this is a fascinating drama of Mysore's halting journey into an uncertain future

Novice writers are often warned about using multiple points of view in their narratives. The earlier Not the Booker entrant Louis Armand could feature as the poster boy for that advice. The varying perspectives in Cairo overwhelm the story, confuse and distract. The book is so fractured, so out of control that it's nigh on unreadable. Reading that book, apparently, also gave me a certain amount of plural perspective phobia. When I started The Smoke Is Rising, I had a sickening sense of familiar problems.

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Poem of the week: A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General by Jonathan Swift

This verdict on the passing of a publicly celebrated warrior is fuelled by a bracing contempt

Hate is as fine a motivator of the muse as love, and who better to provide an angry Poem of the week than the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin the Reverend Dr Jonathan Swift? A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General is indeed a poem so angry it sometimes forgets to be satirical: the moral castigation is paramount, and one admires the poet all the more for getting away with the naked simplicity of it.

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How not to respond to a bad review

Stephan J Harper's litany of angry comments about a critic is a textbook demonstration of the reasons why wounded writers should keep shtum

If it's not the craziest response ever by a novelist to a negative review, it's almost certainly the longest, most obsessive and most ridiculous. When Michael E Cohen reviewed an interactive ebook called Venice Under Glass on the Apple-related site TidBITS.com, he can't have expected that underneath it would eventually appear more than 50 responses from a single commenter: the book's author, Stephan J Harper.

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