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

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Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including books that demand hugs, funny reads and the complications that can arise from lending books you love to someone you love.

LiteraryWanderings commented on Us by David Nicholls and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes:

I found Us so disappointing. Without wanting to spoil the plot I found that I didn’t invest with the characters at all and therefore didn’t really care what happened to them. I found this so sad as I’d saved the book to read whilst I was away as the perfect holiday read. Did anyone else feel the same? If you’d recommend any of his other works (other than One Day) I’m all ears.

[About The Sense of an Ending,] it’s the only book that I have finished reading and then immediately starting reading again. I found that his style was so approachable and intriguing, and it’s only as the book unfolds that you start to realise how well-crafted it actually is.

Do not read this book without the closeness of a person to hug you

It is wonderful. It is a privilege to go on such a journey. Do not read this book without the closeness of a person to hug you though, you will certainly need a hug, and a box of tissues. It is such a beautiful book that I have already had copies sent to some of my friends so that they can also experience the emotional workout for themselves.

I was looking up Samuel Beckett texts last week, and a number of people have said that either Murphy, Watt, or Molloy is “the funniest book I’ve ever read”. It made me curious. What is the funniest book you’ve ever read?

Do you ever let someone borrow a book that really matters to you? Last night my youngest daughter who’s leaving the country for her gap year asked me if she could take with her my copy of Stoner. Actually, she asked her mother to ask me on her behalf, figuring it would be harder for me to say no to both of them. I went into my daughter’s bedroom, told her it was ok and then she asked me if she could make pencil marks in it ... the horror, the horror.

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