Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

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

Glozboy said:

I’ve been enjoying Dickie Bird’s autobiography this week. There are some great anecdotes and Bird isn’t backwards in coming forwards about his opinions on modern cricket and certain people within the game. The best aspect of reading it is that I’m doing a think Yorkshire accent in my head the entire time, which is great fun, and makes the bits involving Geoffrey Boycott all the more enjoyable!

lonelybloomer is tackling War and Peace once and for all:

Being Russian, I was supposed to read it for school and then for uni; but I never quite got to it. Had an idea it would be a boring chore. Guess what – it’s not! It’s like the real-life story, evolving in multiple layers, even war pieces are quite interesting, and I am learning a lot about my country’s mentality and way of life in 19th century, which I didn’t really knew before. It’s a beautiful experience.

TaymazValley is on to Naomi Klein’s latest book:

EnidColeslaw asked an excellent question:

I was wondering: is there a specific word in the title of a book that immediately draws you in and makes you want to buy the book?

For example, I recently read The Lighthouse by Alison Moore without knowing anything of the plot (but I obviously did know it had been shortlisted for the Booker so my choice may have been biased), just because I love this word and what it conveys. Even if the book proved too inconsistent, it created exactly the bleak atmosphere I was looking for with this word. Suffice it to say I’m quite impatient to read the real deal that is To The Lighthouse.

judgeDAmNation offered:

I read The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig for similar reasons – I have something of an obsession with finding novels set in or about people working in the Post Office, as with the obvious exception of Bukowski and J. Robert Lennon’s Mailman, I have struggled to find any other novels on a similar topic. I did also read David Brin’s The Postman recently, again just for the title – if anybody knows any more mail-centric novels I have overlooked then I would be grateful for a tip-off.

Finally, we really enjoyed two great subthreads featuring most of this blog’s regulars about reading speeds and reading habits – do check them out. Thanks Trevor Edward Walder for initiating both conversations.

If you would like to share a photo of the book you are reading, or film your own book review, please do. Click the blue button on this page to share your video or image. I’ll include some of your posts in next week’s blog.

And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.