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 week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

We really enjoyed finding out more about authors and books about life in China, past and present, from AggieH:

I didn’t expect Yiyun Li’s Gold Boy, Emerald Girl to live up to the critical praise. I was wrong. It is a great collection, both in terms of literary quality and contemporary cultural insights.

I didn’t get on quite as well with Zhu Wen’s I Love Dollars and other Stories. I can’t explain it properly, but there was a disjointedness about the writing that I found jarring. But still some very interesting writing & thinking.

I want to express myself, even if a little abstractedly.

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By Kurt Skeels

19 November 2014, 15:57

Flanagan is good at showing (without overtly commenting on it) how the atrocities continued by all sides after the war. This feels like a worthy winner of the Man Booker. [...] It’s one of those books that just stays with you. Flanagan is very good at showing (rather than simply telling) how those who survived could never be the same again. His book has made me very aware, too, of how random life is – the pot luck of having a relatively comfortable life or finding yourself living through a complete nightmare. It made me feel quite terrified about life actually. It’s very graphic in places but I forced myself not to skim. And he gets the balance right – it’s not endless chapters of unremitting violence. I wouldn’t have been able to read that. It’s interspersed with life before and after the war, which makes it more poignant. I won’t say any more – don’t want to spoil it for you.

It’s an absorbing little volume, if a little odd as well. While marketed as fiction, it’s more a semi-fictionalised account of the author’s investigation into the case of a Jewish schoolgirl who went missing during the Nazi Occupation of Paris. The geography and architecture of the city, both past and present, plays a central role in the story, as the narrator recounts his wanderings through haunted streets, piecing a story together with what little information he can gather. The Search Warrant is whetting my appetite for more Modiano.

I am actually listening to wonderful reissues of great American authors reading selections from their own works. Originally recorded 50 years ago and now reissued are literary icons including James Baldwin reading "Giovanni's Room", Philip Roth reading"Letting Go", William Styron reading " Lie Down in Darkness and James Jones reading "From Here to Eternity". There are more wonderful classics to hear. Anyone who loves literature should check out the collection.

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By holly124

18 November 2014, 16:29

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