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

Hello, and welcome to this weeks blog. After a fortnight enjoying ourselves at the Edinburgh international book festival its back to work in wellies this week - but anyone inclined to self-pity, as the rain sluices through the UK, should spare a thought for these librarians, facing heroically up to the task of setting the Napa county library to rights after the weekends earthquake.

Since MartaBausells is taking a well-deserved break, Ill be holding the for a couple of weeks. For what its worth, Im currently reading - and thoroughly enjoying - David Mitchells new Booker-longlisted novel The Bone Clocks (pace Mexican2, who is not so keen). If youre in London, do come along to a talk Im chairing with him next week. If you dont live within striking distance, and have any questions youd like me to ask, do leave them here and I will do my best to include them.

Currently reading Something is Going to Fall Like Rain, by Ros Wynne-Jones - brilliant so far, I suspect there may be tears later...

I recently finished Donal Ryans The Spinning Heart. Although this book is finally available in North America it has garnered little attention. I feel that is a shame, the dialect is not difficult and the story has resonance with many communities hard hit by the the economic collapse. A beautiful, sensitive tale.

Am midway through and savouring every page of Bryan Lee OMalleys new graphic novel Seconds. Its a cracker: funny, sweet and looks great. Alongside that Ive just started Orwells Homage to Catalonia. Very interesting so far, especially as its both an area of history and an area of his life of which I was almost entirely ignorant.

Im 30 pages in and enjoying it, but with 900 pages still to go it will take a while. According to the blurb, it explores themes of power, information, secrecy and war in a gripping thriller. Blimey.

There seems to be quite a lot of technical stuff about encryption which I personally enjoy, but Im guessing that, as with most technical stuff in novels, you can simply ignore it and it wont spoil the book.

Started The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth. Its impressive. The language is a pseudo Old English made readable to modern readers, and it is incredibly well done. I was fortunate enough to be forced to learn a bit of Anglo Saxon at University, and its interesting spotting echoes of Anglo Saxon and later authors. Im not far in (its a necessarily slow read to start with) but he seems to making interesting use of dream sequences, too. The one thing Im slightly concerned about is that the rambling, loosely structured narration is going to get on my nerves over time. Something thoroughly different and convincing, though.

I started reading The Persian Boy for the Reading Group, but sadly the novelty (or novel-ty) seems to have worn off now - while I quite enjoyed Fire From Heaven, nearly a hundred pages into TPB, the second of the trilogy and all its been so far is The Secret Diary of a Eunuch Aged 14 and 3/4, with a running commentary on which groups are going where and in what formation.

Just finished Funeral Games which is the third part of the Alexander trilogy by Mary Renault and Im still gathering my thoughts. It may sound pretentious to say so but Im barely existing in my own world and am still reeling from the spectacular fallout from Alexanders death.

I gave away 1000+ books when I moved this year. To a local AIDS charity thrift store. I miss just a few, but I kept a thousand, so I wont go crazy.

I am reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which starts out brilliantly and looks to be evolving into a Cryptonomicon-lite.

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