Yahoo News Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from the last week.
Let’s start with some sunny optimism from Cellamare, who has been reading Bear Grylls’ Extreme Food:
The ideal read for the near future. All I need to know from building a campfire to the ideal lizard shish kebab. Plenty of advice on building killing weapons, hunting strategies and stalking and trapping. Seeing I’m out of bread and the electric meter will soon run out of credit my neighbour downstairs is starting to look rather tasty.
Understandably, a few of us are having trouble finding that kind of focus, as jediperson explains:
I am reading less than I ever have done. I don’t know where the ‘erstwhile to be had’ comfort has gone, but it has evaporated from here, or from me, for the moment. I’m almost, as an agnostic, at the point of praying for some release from uncertainty. Kate Atkinson’s Transcription is staring me in the face, as I am writing this, along with Martin Amis’s Zone of Interest which I would normally be keen to at least have a good go at, being on fantastically generous release from my local library, as it was shutting down. 40 books, on one ticket, up until the end of June ... I think instead I might return to my old time favourite, and read Cold Comfort Farm yet again ...
In contrast, RickLondon has decided to take up something new:
I’ve decided now is the time for a new reading project and have just started Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian. Not sure if it’s my cup of tea, but I do like historical fiction so thought I would give it a whirl.
Jack London’s White Fang is working well for Frenchcath:
Easy and exciting read. Perfect when you’re in lockdown.
“I have spent 26 joyful hours listening to the audiobook of Mrs Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters,” says rowan17:
It is the best comedy of manners ever and has gone to the top of my favourite books list. The reading was extraordinary, so many characters, all totally believable, and all read by ONE person!!!
Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake has impressed writeronthestorm:
Great stuff. I hadn’t realised the simplicity of Chandler’s writing: descriptions of rooms, landscapes etc are quite basic and sometimes just a list. Where it really comes alive is when Marlowe gives an opinionated view, usually of people. Then the writing is punchy, witty and descriptive even in a few words.
Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness “was everything I expected it to be,” says TheLittlestRascal:
The writing just lures you in. Before you know it you’ll be out there trying to board a French steamer to “call in every bloody port they have out there”, watching the coast, trying to figure out what is calling out to you from that soot black primordial darkness. It’s an exploration of madness and greed, brilliantly written and packaged as an adventure story.
Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda has worked similar magic on MarGar65:
As entertaining today as it was when I first read it 47 years ago. The only thing missing is the “secret corner” and the large box of cookies that I consumed while enjoying it in my childhood.
“I had a great time with Carson McCullers’s The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe,” says safereturndoubtful:
Populated by three eccentric characters, it is to do with loneliness, and looking for love, and finding it in the most unlikely places. The setting is a dreary town, down on its luck, with boarded up houses and a boarded up cafe, that is still reeling from the after effects of a strange love triangle. Its a splendidly told comic tragedy that ponders whether being in a unsatisfactory and often painful relationship is preferable to living alone…
Padgett Powell’s You & Me has left kevinincanada wanting more:
In essence it is two guys shooting the breeze: my library blurb suggests think of waiting for Godot – maybe, in that there are a couple of guys in an almost featureless space - but not really. Powell’s cleverness and style is to the fore, and while there’s no real story there is some continuity of personnel and theme. And it is quite funny (and I find few books even ‘quite’ funny). I’m afraid he’ll never get rich writing books like this but I hope he keeps them coming.
Finally, some useful isolation tips from allworthy:
Have done lots of short things. I’m reminded of telling the students to revise in short bursts. Have lots of beginnings. I sorted out my Shakespeare ‘stuff’ - all the audio versions and some DVDs I’ve never got around to watching so might have a Shakespeare project. Reading Down and Out in Paris and London for a book group. Am never going to eat in a restaurant again after all Orwell’s descriptions, assuming we’re ever permitted to go to one again.
Let’s hope we get to put that to the test safely soon.
Interesting links about books and reading
“Dangling modifiers and nonsense galore”: Lorrie Moore does not admire the prose in foundational texts.
“How then should we understand what Rembrandt was portraying?” Julian Bell explains.
Mary Beard on Asterix The Gaul.
The mighty 3AM magazine has got it locked down.
If you’re on Instagram, now you can share your reads with us: simply tag your posts with the hashtag #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection in this blog. Happy reading!
