An end of week recap
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
– Bertrand Russell
It has become something of a tradition at Book Jotter to spookify the wind up nearest to Hallowe’en. Thus, with the festival only three days away, you may well find sinister doorways leading to frightful features secreted amongst the usual mix of literary links and general bookish blather – many with recommendations leading you to the perfect All Hallows’ read.
Should you be plotting dire deeds over the weekend, I wish you much gruesome gratification. In the meantime (albeit a day earlier than usual), I will, as ever, summarise books read, reviewed and currently on the TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I will again look ahead to forthcoming features, see what’s on the nightstand and keep readers abreast of various book-related happenings.
CHATTERBOOKS >>
If you are planning a reading event, challenge, competition, or anything else likely to be of interest to the book blogging community, please let me know. I will happily share your news here with the fabulous array of bibliowonks who read this weekly wind up.
* Broomsticks at the Ready *
* Not a Halloween Happening *
* NonFicNov Eludes Fall *
* Irresistible Items *
Umpteen fascinating articles appeared on my bookdar last week. I generally make a point of tweeting/x-ing (soon, perhaps tooting or bsky-ing) a few favourite finds (or adding them to my Facebook group page), but in case you missed anything, there follows a selection of interesting snippets:
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The Guardian: ‘She exposed the fragility of so-called civilised life’: why Shirley Jackson’s horror speaks to our times – “With their visions of violence and misogyny in small-town America, the Haunting of Hill House author’s chilling tales are taking on a dark new resonance,” says Elizabeth Hand.
BBC Gloucestershire: Beatrix Potter trail opens in Gloucester city centre – Louis Inglis reports: “A trail celebrating the anniversary of the publication of The Tailor of Gloucester has opened in the city.”
Books Are Magic: Horror Reads: Modern vs Classic – “Horror is a genre that owes so much to its early writers and creators,” writes Jacs Rodriguez, so featured here are “some early originals (that you should read) and their modern counterparts (that you should DEFINITELY read).”
The Sydney Morning Herald: This piercing novel is a paean to living with chronic pain – Vanessa Francesca reviews Katherine Brabon’s new novel, Body Friend, which she describes as “a poetic reflection on living with pain.”
iNews: How two retired doctors hunted down Terry Pratchett’s lost stories – “In the 70s and 80s, Pratchett published short stories under a pseudonym while working as a local newspaper journalist,” says Ed Power. “Decades later, husband-and-wife superfans Jan and Pat Harkin went on a hunt to find them.”
Zyzzyva: Blood Will Out: ‘Not Forever, But for Now,’ By Chuck Palahniuk – Kian Braulik reviews Not Forever, But for Now, Chuck Palahniuk’s horror satire about a family of professional killers.
Ploughshares: Reading Palestine – Yardenne Greenspan is a writer and Hebrew translator who describes herself as “a liberal Jew from Israel currently living in the US.” She recently made a foray into contemporary Palestinian literature and talks here about reading Palestinian stories – in particular, A Rebel in Gaza by Asmaa al-Ghoul and Selim Nassib.
CrimeReads: The Devil Made Me Do It – Jennifer McMahon with “nine demon and possession novels to lose yourself in this Spooky Season.”
Noema: The Emptiness Of Literature Written For The Market – “To meet consumer demand for instant gratification, writers have increasingly adopted the neutered rhetoric of brand management,” argues Kenneth Dillon.
The Moscow Times: Maxim Osipov’s Fifth Wave of Independent Russian Writing – Writer, editor and doctor Maxim Osipov left Russia and launched The Fifth Wave, a journal of Russian language writing. Cameron Manley chatted to him recently about “his life as an émigré, his new journal, and his broader fears and hopes for Russia’s future.”
LARB: Allegedly Rational: On Andrew Lipstein’s “The Vegan” – Tadhg Hoey reviews Andrew Lipstein’s The Vegan – a novel that challenges our notions of morality with an allegory of guilt, greed and a forgotten world of animals.
Tor.com: Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Horror Books – Alex Brown hopes to get you “into the Halloween mood with some supernatural beasties, brutal murders, and teens spending entirely too much time around dead bodies.”
African Arguments: Has African climate fiction already shown us the future? – “From cities within sand-storms to biotech implants, African writers are imagining diverse climate futures.” Here Carl Death recommends five “climate-changed futures in novels and short stories.”
The National News: Why better stories and translations are needed for Saudi literature to thrive – Authors say it is “time to turn [the] page on stereotypes of dunes and veiled women that dominate books to better reflect [the] kingdom’s rich literary heritage,” reports Saeed Saeed.
EL PAÍS: New book explores how 19th century Gothic literature helped scientists identify the characteristics of a serial killer – “The authors of Frankenstein and Dracula challenged prevailing criminological theories and presaged the scientific study of psychopathy.”
N+1: Speaking in Tongues – “The artists of the Eighties acted fast. They had to: there would be no future otherwise. But in battling the retrograde Reaganite look of the System, they knew they were its bastards nonetheless.” Frank Guan on Don DeLillo.
Los Angeles Times: Black horror is having a big moment. So is its pioneer, Tananarive Due – “October is Black Speculative Fiction Month,” says Paula L. Woods, “but that doesn’t begin to explain why Tananarive Due is so busy.”
The Jakarta Post: ‘She Wanted to be a Beauty Queen’: George Quinn raises Javanese stories – Australian professor George Quinn translated an anthology of Javanese short stories to help introduce Javanese literature to a wider audience.
Current Affairs: Finding Los Angeles with Anthony Bourdain – “How Bourdain’s work reoriented one writer’s engagement with people and places around him.”
Book Riot: For the Love of Witches: Why Witch Fiction Isn’t Going Anywhere – “There is nothing that witch fiction can’t do,” according to Alex Luppens-Dale. Discover why from a woman who has “read hundreds of books, both fictional and not about witches.”
The Monthly: Robyn Davidson and the Impossible Book – Michael Williams sits down with Australian non-fiction writer Robyn Davidson, “famed author of Tracks (1980), to discuss fear, loneliness and how she completed her self-proclaimed ‘impossible memoir’ Unfinished Woman.”
The Japan Times: Japanese thrillers and crime mysteries to curl up with this fall – As the nights grow colder, Kris Kosaka suggests you pick up these recommended fictional crime books and “dive deep into [the genre’s] unique intersection of art and entertainment.”
The Paris Review: The Future of Ghosts – In this adapted excerpt from an essay featured in Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories, Jeanette Winterson questions whether there is a place for ghosts in the metaverse.
Publishers Weekly: Canadian Publishing 2023: Made in Canada – Canadian authors are fighting for market share amid slowing book sales, with those in the north of the country licking their wounds after a brutal wildfire season.
JSTOR: Bride of Frankenstein – “Drawn from the margins of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, the cinematic Bride of Frankenstein is never just one thing, and she never goes away.”
Longreads: Poets in the Machine – “Why does the literary world still hold online writing at arm’s length?” asks Megan Marz.
Frontline: Melded in Malaysia: Review of ‘My Mother Pattu’ by Saras Manickam – “Stories [in My Mother Pattu] explore the everyday experiences of the Indian diaspora in Malaysia and question our notions of belonging and otherness,” finds Usha Rao.
The Brooklyn Rail: W. Scott Poole’s Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire – Yvonne C. Garrett reviews Dark Carnivals, W. Scott Poole’s panoramic account of the filmmakers and writers who work in the horror genre.
The Pudding: What Does Happily Ever After Look Like – Jan Diehm looks at how romance novel covers have transformed over the last few decades, reflecting women’s changing place in society.
The Guardian: I Love Russia by Elena Kostyuchenko review – reportage at its best – “The Novaya Gazeta journalist offers brilliant, immersive bulletins from her homeland but doesn’t explain its return to totalitarian rule,” writes Luke Harding in his review of I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country.
Radical Reads: 10 Novels That Shaped Lionel Shriver – The American author and journalist who lives in the UK, “has been using speculative fiction to plumb social and political issues since she began novel-writing in the late ‘80s.” Here are 10 novels that she says, “have most influenced her life and work.”
Asian Review of Books: “Mater 2-10” by Hwang Sok-yong – Mater 2-10 is a “sprawling, multigenerational epic,” which “tells the story of a working-class Korean family and details their struggles against the tides of the 20th century,” writes Patrick McShane in this piece about Hwang Sok-yong’s International Booker–nominated historical novel.
Buzz: PIG BOY: a YA take on the Mabinogi imbued with magic, folklore and fun – A short piece from Hari Berrow on Michael Harvey’s [Pig Boy a] retelling of “Culhwch and Olwen – the longest tale in the Mabinogi and one of the earliest Arthurian legends.”
XinhuaNet: China Focus: WorldCon ushers in more opportunities for Chengdu as “sci-fi incubator” – “Sci-fi aficionados attending the opening ceremony of the 81st World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) […] were treated to an exhilarating two-minute ‘space journey,’ to the accompaniment of haunting female vocals.”
Counter Craft: Underpinning Your Horror in the Uncanny – Lincoln Michel offers “tips on evoking the eerie in fiction.”
BBC News: David Shrigley: Artist pulps 6,000 copies of The Da Vinci Code and turns them into 1984 – Colin Paterson reports: “The Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley has pulped 6,000 copies of Dan Brown’s best-seller The Da Vinci Code and republished them as George Orwell’s novel 1984.”
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FINALLY >>
If there is something you would particularly like to see on Winding Up the Week or if you have any suggestions, questions, or comments for Book Jotter in general, please drop me a line or comment below. I would be delighted to hear from you.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I wish you a week bountiful in books and rich in reading.
NB In this feature, ‘winding up’ refers to the act of concluding something and should not be confused with the British expression: ‘wind-up’ – an age-old pastime of ‘winding-up’ friends and family by teasing or playing pranks on them. If you would like to know more about this expression, there is an excellent description on Urban Dictionary.