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 week's blog. Here's a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, which featured a brilliant conversation about fictional dinner guests stay tuned for a follow-up on that later and a heavy historical theme.

The World War I anniversary is prompting many of our readers to read on the subject, as a lot of this week's GuardianWitness submissions prove. For instance:

I've just started reading Goddamn This War! from the excellent Jaques Tardi. The comic gives an enthralling and horrifying view of life in the trenches from the perspective of a French soldier. Tardi's artwork is superb.

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By Matt Rice

7 April 2014, 3:05

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By Angela Donoghue

3 April 2014, 17:22

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By kisunssi

3 April 2014, 19:47

Decided to get a copy of Lanark when I heard about the referendum. I remembered being told about Gray's political persuasion after watching Under The Skin. Something is calling me toward Scottish dystopia. Not sure whose side I'm on at the moment but it's a fascinating read and oddly fitting parallel to current events.

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By William Black

4 April 2014, 6:19

An amazing book full of reflexions and hard critiques on our current societies. Absolutely worth reading!

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By Talmai Green Tara

3 April 2014, 23:33

Being of somewhat mature years I'm frequently taken aback by what now comes into the history category, and have been known to rummage for the smelling salts when a TV series set in the 60s (1960s for god's sake) is described as period drama.

I give thanks that I've never had to face the tragedy, complications, challenges and privations of life during the second world war, or in Stalin's USSR.

I love Hilary Mantel's vision of Tudor England and enjoyed both Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.

As it is the centenary year of WW1 I would say that Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy comes very high on the list of books about that war and is a book that I go back to from time to time.

Fiction and some non fiction (Just Kids) in an ever growing pile fed by London's bookshops and the library (It's my Carrie Bradshaw thing)

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By Ian Michael Luke Turner

4 April 2014, 13:45

I read about 7 books at a time. About 1/2 of my reading is virtual in ebook format, very handy to carry around. However nothing beats a real book!

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By Susan Sedlak

3 April 2014, 15:46

Unusually the bedside table sees two volumes set aside with markers still protruding. But I'll return and finish them when the time, and the frame of mind is right.

Jose Saramago is a new one for me, with a writing style that reminds of the very enjoyable Terry Darlington. But we are in different times, Portuguese poverty. I'll finish Raised From The Ground one day.

And if I get bogged down I'll look at some pictures.

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By TimmRanson

3 April 2014, 16:00

Quarantine. Jim Crace.

(SnowyJohn, in particular).

I feel pretty similar. I thought some of the writing was tremendous, but it felt like an exercise at times. An exercise in various things: writing an ensemble of characters, delivering a convincing evocation of the period, nature writing, dealing with the Gospels in a convincingly naturalistic way and he pulls it all off. It was just that for some reason I felt like the end result was less than the sum of its parts. Maybe thats because its so daring, though? I circled the phrase Jesus thought at the beginning of one of the earlier chapters, because its such a jarring phrase to read when were used to that being almost a taboo to deal with.

Interesting, and memorable, and thoughtful, but a tease of a book too (this probably stems a bit from the question of the narrator's emotional investment or opinion being absent, which fat_hamster raised). Is that a bad thing? I dont know.

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By Christine Hinde

4 April 2014, 10:49

Went to see, Noah, this afternoon and while I've not read anything else by this particular Author, as usual, the Book was better than the Movie.

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