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

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Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including a disturbing collection of short stories and a JG Farrell novel that puts all other books to shame.

I am finding the entire collection disquieting, disturbed, off-kilter, and a little bit nasty

So far I’ve read six of the eleven stories and am finding the entire collection disquieting, disturbed, off-kilter, and a little bit nasty – all of this in the most stylistically delicious of ways. I find Mantel technically brilliant, in the same way I find a writer such as Alan Hollinghurst to be so; she is effortlessly assured, so clean and precise a writer that she becomes easy to read when what one is actually reading is anything but easy – and I relish that dichotomy: clear, simple style and cloudy, complex content.

Woth each passing week I am stocking up with a whole host of treasures. Just ordered the last part of the posthumously published trilogy on Sir Winston Churchill by William Manchester. One politician well worth reading books by and about ... Roll on November 8th!

I am so tired of polite, well-behaved, solidly crafted and oh-so-dull historical fiction

It’s the sort of book which makes you feel sorry for all the other books because they must know they don’t stand a chance in comparison and may as well just pack up and go home. The real joy of the book lies in the author’s utterly distinct voice and the force of his invention. I am so tired of polite, well-behaved, solidly crafted and oh-so-dull historical fiction (although I feel slightly conflicted about describing Troubles as historical fiction). It’s such a pleasure to read a book bent on illuminating a piece of history where the artistic vision comes at you roaring all the way.

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