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

Are you on Instagram? Then you can be featured here by tagging your books-related posts with #GuardianBooksRead more Tips, links and suggestions blogs

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

fingerlakeswanderer picked up a new book that she initially wasn’t sure about, but “once I started reading, I couldn’t stop”:

The sentences were so lovely that, even though many might complain that there isn’t much of a plot, they pulled me along and made me want to know what was going to happen next in the character’s life.

I’m speaking of Academy Street by Mary Costello. It is nearly all told from inside the main character’s head, whom we meet when she is a very young girl, watching the funeral procession for her mother who has succumbed to tuberculosis. A series of events leads to her moving to New York City, and, similar to the lovely Brooklyn, the experiences of a young Irish woman in the big city become compelling.

By the end of the book, I felt as if Costello had introduced me to someone I would have loved to drink tea with

In terms of plot, the character lives a fairly ordinary life, but the moments that create the dramatic tension and drive the narrative forward are poignant and resonant. By the end of the book, I felt as if Costello had introduced me to someone I would have loved to drink tea with.

Most surprisingly, it’s absolutely hilarious – especially the long set pieces revolving around groups of people in a room not really doing much. That doesn’t make it sound great, but it’s a testament to this novel that so far our hero has had a few visitors and fallen asleep, yet I don’t want to put it down when it’s time to get off the bus – I’m hooked.

Goncharov has a lovely narrative voice as well, which feels familiar and somehow kind. This year, I’m trying to work my way through the generally lesser known Russian classics – not that Oblomov is unknown, but I mean not a part of the assumed “canon” (ie Karamazov Brothers, Anna Karenina, Doctor Zhivago etc.) So far this year I’ve read Children of the Arbat and The Heart of a Dog. Enjoyed the former more than the latter, but both interesting. Any more suggestions very welcome!

First off no one becomes a nun. This novella is a wonderfully bizarre allegory of how César Aira became a writer. The protagonist is César Aira himself as a boy, although he refers to himself as a girl throughout and only through other characters do you understand that he is actually a boy. His father, an overbearing and violent man, has recently moved the family from a rural village somewhere in the Pampas to the city of Rosario. We join the two characters in a park as Cesar has just been bought his first ever ice-cream, strawberry flavoured, by his father from a vendor. His father insists that it will be the most wonderful thing he has ever tasted. César takes a small sample on his tongue and it is the most disgusting thing he has ever tasted.

The consequences of this apparently simple domestic incident are horrendous. You can read this book in one sitting. It is famed in Argentina, has only just been translated into English and is well worth reading.

Continue reading...