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, including a number of open-ended questions coming from the community which sparked interesting conversations.

fat_hamster asked:

Here's one of those open ended questions I delight in. Has anyone read a book they feel should be made into a film one day? Mine is Room by Emma Donaghue.

I'd choose Manly Pursuits by Ann Harries. In her novel an aged and ailing Cecil Rhodes believes that the only thing that can save him is the mellifluous sound of English songbirds. Oxford ornithologist Thomas Wills is engaged for the task of delivering the birds to Cape Town. The Boer War looms. The book includes appearances by other real Victorian figures including Lewis Carrol, Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling.

Okay, normally I ignore all movies-based-on but the temptation to design one to order, as it were, is too hard to resist. So I would like to see Gaiman's Graveyard book as a movie but very much like Greenaway did with The Tempest/Prospero's book. So it must be voluptious and weird, with one narrating voice (which would have to be provided by Gaiman himself.)

Batman: The Black Mirror a fantastic and (as you'd expect) dark and twisted story where the city of Gotham is a character in its own right and different Batman has to deal with foes old and new.

The Final Whistle brings to life the varied but always eventful lives of 15 Rosslyn Park rugby players who died during World War One. Haunting and heartfelt.

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By AbdullahM

16 April 2014, 0:23

I've just finished Silent Cry by Nobel Prize winner Kenzabur e, story of two brothers returning to their home village in Shikoku, a remote forested area of Japan. They are struggling with their own lives and with the myths of their family history. The book is a heavy tale of continuous descent with the ever-present rolling rumble of the futility of action in the light of insufficient knowledge, poor judgement and evitability.

This after finally finishing the extravagant and sumptuous feast that is Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec. W or the Memory of Childhood and Avoid duly purchased.

I finished reading Post Captain by Patrick O'Brien, and have already found HMS Surprise in an Oxfam bookshop so I won't have to wait so long to start the next in the series. After waiting patiently for one of the many copies to be returned to the public library, I finally chanced upon the next in the Jack Reacher series, Without Fail, and am now reading that has everything you'd expect in it so far so am not disappointed. Also just started re-reading Elephant by Raymond Carver, which is probably my favourite of all his books...

I've been reading A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré and I agree when people say it could be his best book. After the misstep of The Little Drummer Girl, a book which probably have been considered great were it written by anybody else, it's really good to see that he's returned to his familiar universe while going for something far more ambitious.

I'm not the kind of person who tends to think of 'hard' and 'easy' books and I'm definitely not one to confuse difficulty with quality but, aside from being great, it's also perhaps the most difficult books I've read: the Magnus chapters skip from first to third person, past to present tense, address usually two separate people and sometimes pull back even further out of his narration, often doing at least one of these per paragraph. It takes a while to get used to but when you get used to the rhythm, it's genius, and even with all this going on, it's still a thrilling page turner.

Just finished A Delicate Truth by le Carre. The final page was devastating, although how Toby could have avoided all the state's mechanisms is debatable. Where is Snowden now? And who else recently committed suicide rather conveniently?

Ethical medicine, Proustian detail, awkward ethnography of The English and Icelandic execution; attempting to squeeze it all in whilst playing with Mikey (and my son)

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By Jordan Murr

17 April 2014, 9:33

Finished All The Pretty Horses in a state of bliss but I've decided to take a break before The Crossing. I decided on a change of scene with The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru. Just started and not yet sure what the tone is meant to be. Seems like it might be picaresque and I'm not sure if the writer is achieving it. In all fairness it's too soon to say.

Normally I will only discuss books here I enjoyed and which I would recommend to others but I will make an exception for Isabel Allende's detective novel 'Ripper'. First the faint praise: it's not really bad but weighing in at almost 500 pages 'not really bad' turns into 'why-am-I-still-reading-this?' fairly quickly. The story isn't bad, the way it's presented is not bad, the setting and what there is in terms of back story: not bad... Well, you get my drift.

[...] She is slumming here. You can't help but feel she wrote this on a dare but without putting any real thinking or writing effort into it. So, if you really have nothing better to do or if you lost your suitcase with all of your holiday reading and this book is the only thing wit words in it you come upon in a night train, some faraway hostel et cetera, then it will do. Otherwise, really, don't bother.

In honour of the Bard's birthday on the 23rd, I am reading this play while listening to the magnificent radio production put on by Sir Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston on BBC Radio 3.

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By saadskhan

22 April 2014, 3:16

Reference books plus prized possession- a signed first edition of Laurie Lee book.

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By ID980815

14 April 2014, 17:27

Reading as part of my English exam. The more I read the more I enjoy it. Uplifting and recommend to anyone of any age.

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By csrees97

15 April 2014, 18:02

The Last Blue Sea by David Forrest. I've had two copies (it's a fairly rare paperback) both were passed to Vietnam Vets to give their wives a "feel" of jungle warfare. Neither was returned. I accept that.

Very Special Intelligence by Patrick Beesley. About the Admiralty's radio intelligence service. I got to dip into it (PQ-17 chapter). SKE picked it up. Said "This is my job". Bang. Into her Chador. Left me with the feeling I was in breach of the Official Secrets Act.

Good question. I have the opposite problem in that I can't give them away! I've bought 4 copies of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and three of Burgess's Earthly Pleasures , as gifts for people, and most ended up back on my shelves. I've stopped trying to make people read things now.

The only book I've had nicked was an annoyingly rare edition of Keats. The person who borrowed it denies memory of doing so. I'm trying to wangle an invitation to their house so I can casually pluck it off the shelf and point out my pencil notes on the inside.

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