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 weeks blog. Heres a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

We saw an interesting discussion of short books triggered by a comment by LeoToadstool about Wilma Stockenströms Expedition to the Baobab Tree. AggieH said:

The best short books are like a full-bodied spicy wine. They give you no choice but to drink slowly in small quantities over an extended period, each sip going to your head.

I thought Id fly through A Summer Affair (UK translator Ewald Osers; DK translators Eva Andersen & Jiri Lichtenstein). It took me a week. It got increasingly dark, intense and pleasantly unpleasant.

Two wonderful Very Short Books Ive read in the last couple of weeks have been Tim Wintons Lands Edge and Asko Sahlbergs The Brothers (trans. Emily and Fleur Jeremiah). The other nice thing about Very Short Books is you can add them to your TBR list without to much pain.

A collection of poems by physician and poet Amit Majmudar. Poems with a great variety of influence: historical, mythological, scientific, and religious alike.

Sent via GuardianWitness

By Alan Smith

16 September 2014, 21:26

Very funny. Interesting to read about life in Iceland in the 18th century. I hadnt realized the three parts had originally been published separately, though this explains the leaps from one character to another in different parts of the book.

Any recommendations for other Icelandic authors? Ive already read some books by Arnaldur Indriðason, but Im kind of tired of crime fiction at the moment.

Anyone else got their Christmas/New Year reads tucked away yet? I love the thrill of knowing theyre on top of mums cupboard out of the way. Lovely.

Its an absolute masterpiece, getting better and better as it goes on. The way the author plays with the medium, especially in the 2nd part, is a joy to behold.

Im really quite sad that its all over.

@GuardianBooks Nearly finished The Goldfinch but it's been a chore - unfortunately, I seem to be the only person left cold by it.

One of my kids was over for dinner last night and when he left I found two novels on my desk The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Adam Resurrected by Yoram Kaniuk. This surreptitious book deposit is a kind of literary sadism because my kids KNOW how high looms my TBR mountain they always seem desirous of turning my K2 into Everest.

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