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.

A very interesting question as to how we consume books was raised by conedison:

While watching a film or play I believe that if you find yourself complimenting the acting, directing, writing etc, this actually means the film/play isnt really working for you. I think the ultimate compliment is subjectivity to be so caught up in the story that its component parts go, for the time being, unnoticed. But is it the same while reading a book? Is the ultimate compliment subjectivity? After all, a film/play only takes a few, consecutive hours of our time while reading a novel requires a much more considerable investment. We start a book. We stop when the tube or train stops at our station. Hours pass. We return to reading on the way back home, then stop, then start again, perhaps in bed just before sleep. We repeat this process many times. In other words, we have many hours in between to evaluate what weve been reading. And through this inevitable evaluation do we not distance ourselves emotionally? Can we ever truly submerge our critical sense and just go with the flow?

Our dining table, clear for a change. I am about to sit down and begin.

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By Jeremy Simms

4 November 2014, 12:33

Jeg er voksen, men det glemmer jeg når jeg vågner så brat.

I am grown up, but I forget that when I awake with a start.

I wish I knew nothing of Under The Skin before I started reading it. I havent seen the film but heard a lot about it and through that, I knew a little bit and while it didnt ruin any of it, I really would have liked to have been surprised by the developments because this book is fantastic. I wont say anything lest I spoil anything for anybody else but Michel Fabers prose is absolutely gorgeous, reminding me of a more sinister Fitzgerald and that makes the plot developments all the more intense. One thing I do wonder though is why is it that Scottish people are always written in dialect? You never get that with any other part of the UK but they always have tae talk laik tha, yken?

Im having my usual problem with non-fiction, fascinated whilst reading and promptly forgetting everything when I close the book. I could spend an unlimited amount of time with the Davies book though, splendid vistas lie in every direction.

Had this sitting on my shelf for nearly a decade glaring at me. At least I thought it was glaring at me. Turns out it had something in its eye, possibly a wayward snowflake, and it was instead just waiting patiently for me to find the right moment. A joy of a book - its dedication to W.G.Sebald makes perfect sense now. Not to everyone's taste but certainly to mine.

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By MajorWhipple

6 November 2014, 14:37

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