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.

The pending arrival of winter set caminoamigo off on some comfort reading:

...because the winter will be long and I just want to spend some time on the French Riviera. That's OK, isn't it?

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By caminoamigo

29 October 2014, 10:44

Im stunned at how good it is. Im feverishly turning the pages as I would a thriller. Just in case there is anyone out there more ignorant than I (difficult), I will add by way of explanation that the book is the account of the 18-year-old Leigh Fermors walk across Europe in 1933/4. An absolutely mesmerising description of landscape and its impact on the culture and history of Europe, it reinforces at every turn that there is no better way to explore than by foot. And Im not sure if there is a better companion than Leigh Fermor. [...] The result adds up to an erudite, funny, entertaining and extremely moving portrait of Europe between the wars.

I'm ashamed to say that it's my first Bainbridge but on the strength of this book set in Victorian Liverpool and the Crimean theatre of war it certainly won't be my last. An astonishing ability to portray the emotional workings of the human heart and what drives people to continue when faced with the most appalling horror and carnage.

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By MajorWhipple

29 October 2014, 22:16

Very, very good indeed. Perfectly awful people depicted in a way that made their real depths of awfulness come clear. Those final chapters with the girl looking for a doctor, and then the revelation of who she is and before that all the rationalisations for everything that Anse gives were quite exceptional. I really cannot wait to read more Faulkner, but I need something cheerful now. Reading too much grimness in one go lessens its impact.

I suppose I dont mean just, say, being from Yorkshire and reading a novel set in a generic and general Yorkshire environment. I mean reading a book set in your immediate habitat, describing individual shops and houses, individual bends in the road even, all of which you know as well as your own living room... Ive just read finally Patrick Gales Notes From an Exhibition, set in Penzance and surrounds.

It was a curious experience. At first I found it faintly embarrassing; I would cringe a little at each mention of a local street name, though I dont for the life of me know why. I was also, naturally, hypersensitive to inaccuracy, barking blimpishly at the printed page : Queen Street, not Queens Street! And The cinema wasnt partitioned into three screens in the 1980s!

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