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.

Chris James shared a happy find:

Through a remarkable quirk of serendipity, I was led this week to a gem of a book called A Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble (really, I thought, anyone with a name like Arthur Grimble must have an interesting story to tell!) It starts in 1914 as Grimble, working for the Colonial Office, takes up his first station as a cadet in the Gilbert Islands, a chain of atolls in the middle of the Pacific. Im about halfway through, and this fellow has had me laughing till I cried with a great combination of painful self-effacement and British dry wit.

A quick look at Wikipedia points out that chapters had been excised or moved around as part of the translation and for a book written to create a sense of unease, I started to feel a little conned; anyone can mess around with a books layout and thus make it make less sense. But then I found that I was still going over it in my mind days later and regardless of translation changes, I really enjoyed it and found it quite fascinating, which is always the sign of a good read.

Im as enthusiastic about this book as this book is restrained. Its a quietly wily novel with an actively passive main character. Helle Helle would not approve of all those adverbs and adjectives. Her prose is as spare as it is strong. Like Dorte, the Copenhagen student moving inertly from youth to adulthood, its sneakily surprising. Small sentences trip you up here and there, making you rethink events (insofar as there are events) that have gone before. Dortes Aunt Dorte also got me rethinking; Im still not sure if shes a meta-character.

Im neither explaining nor conveying this book well, if at all. Its gone back to the library, so I cant try to substantiate my recommendation by quotation. Id like to link to a proper review but it doesnt seem to have been reviewed in the UK press. A pity. Its an interesting, dry, focused novel that deserves to be focused upon.

In lazy, subjective algorithmic terms: youll probably like This Should Be Written in the Present Tense if you like Amélie Nothomb, Marie Darrieussecq, Kjersti Skomsvold, Gerbrand Bakker, Per Petterson, Diego Marani. (All European, Ive just noticed. Not, I suspect, a coincidence.)

Inspired to read again by recent discussions on how it was first published.

Sent via GuardianWitness

By drfarfetch

3 October 2014, 21:48

Boy, Jane likes to leave it late doesnt she! Persuasion was my second Jane Austen and again I thoroughly enjoyed it. The way she explores the male/female relationship and family life is spot on. I loved the strong female character and I think maybe this is some of the appeal to me of Jane Austen.

This book had less plot than Northanger Abbey and I probably liked it slightly less for this. It was a bit more subtle. I know I am doing her a great disservice, but whilst reading it I did sometimes remind myself of my Grandmother reading her Mills and Boon. But obviously written much more beautifully.

Following on from the whole debate over whether the character of Crispin Hershey in The Bone Clocks is actually based on Martin Amis or not*, it got me thinking about what an obviously made-up name it is. Then I thought about some other fictional characters who are authors (Wilfrid Barclay in William Goldings The Paper Men, Thaddeus Beaumont in Stephen Kings The Dark Half which Ive just started reading, and even the very uninspired Bill Grey in Don DeLillos Mao II) and how these are also quite unconvincing.

Can anybody think of any fictional writers with convincing names, or failing that any more rubbish-sounding ones like those above? Nobody seemed interested on the Mitchell-Amis article comments so thought Id try my luck here instead...

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