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.

edinflo has been enjoying My Life in Middlemarch, New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead's account of her love for George Eliot's novel:

I read Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch in two days flat. It's something of a hybrid: a potted biography of George Eliot; an account of how Middlemarch was written; and an extended essay on how the book has affected Mead personally at different stages in her life and, more generally, how books affect us and how our experiences can change our reading of them.

Despite the title, there is more about George Eliot than Rebecca Mead in the book, which I think is a good thing. Mead is our way in, but Eliot keeps us there what an interesting person! I'm now on the hunt for a good biography of her.

I do like these books about books. I've read two recently - Laura Miller's The Magician's Book (about The Chronicles of Narnia) and Careless People by Sarah Churchwell (about The Great Gatsby). When they are done well they can be insightful and illuminating, not just about the book/author in question, but about that strange relationship between author-book-reader and the transformative power of reading.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. What an eye opener. Made me realise how little I know about medicine and history. Everyone should read the tale of the HeLa cells and what they have done for mankind and where these cells came from.

Im reading Daughter Of The Desert: The Remarkable Life Of Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell. Its proving to be a suprisingly easy read about an interesting subject. Born in 1868, Bell was a phenomenally gifted person who became all of the following: a mountaineer of note, archaeologist, cartographer, scholar, photographer and a respected authority on the Arabic lands in the Middle East. She was fluent in six languages, travelled around the world a couple of times and was a notable horsewoman. The legacy she will be most remembered for is her involvement in the carving up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the first world war and specifically the establishment of Iraq as a separate country.

Reading books on soccer, naturally...

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By cfwaters

16 June 2014, 15:06

Holiday meant I read less than planned, but travel did enable me to get through 2 books in a few days, firstly there was Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason, an intelligent quirkily plotted crime novel, about a man who discovers bodies in his back yard that aren't the one he put there, and his attempts to hide his burial.

Secondly though was Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig a fantastic urban fantasy/horror/thriller novel, that is the first in his Miriam Black series of novels, funny exciting, violent and speedily placed, possibluy my read of the year thus far.

I had started the first Maisie Dobbs and it's OK. For hot weather, I had started reading the ebooks mystery series (all with Witness in the title) by Rebecca Forster. These books are great for hot weather when you really can't think. I'm on #6, which I was saving for hot weather. A woman detective gets in and out of trouble, but they are colorful.

When it was cooler, I had just begun Wretched of the Earth for a short while before or after I did art before breakfast. Then I'd switch over to Maisie Dobbs.

I originally read Cider with Rosie a about a squillion years ago and I can remember endlessly reading passages from it to my first wife under the influence of a glass or two, or more often a bottle or two, too many. Now I can see why. I recently picked up a copy from my usual source, the book stall in the Wells market, and from the first line onwards it was obvious why it is such a classic that has gone into so many editions. What a joy of a book and what an absolute landmine of language. Every paragraph is a perfect gem, so much so that its impossible to choose any one over another. His descriptions of the locals, Cabbage Stump-Charlie, Tusker Tom, Albert the Devil and Harelip Harry had me weeping with laughter and his sketches of his siblings and of course his wonderful and chaotic mother had me in tears.

Its been said of Elvis Presley that after him there was no point in any other pop singer. Thats also true of this book. Until I read it I thought I could write. Now I know how far down the literary food chain I really am. Do not dare to die without having read it.

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