An end of week recap

“The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!”
– Paul Valéry

This is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I 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.

* Nip ‘on Over to Japan for a Good Read *

As 2024 heaves into view, so too does the Japanese Literature Challenge – hosted again by Meredith Smith of Dolce Bellezza for an impressive seventeenth year in succession. She confirms it will “run from January through February,” during which time you are encouraged to read as many (or as few) books as you wish that have been translated from Japanese into English. Meredith says she will “tack a post to the top of [her] blog, through which you can link your reviews,” however, you must first decide which titles take your fancy. She will reveal her personal selection after Christmas, but she intimates it will include works by “Haruki Murakami, Kaoru Takamura, Hiromi Kawakami, and Yukio Mishima, as well as Seicho Matsume.” So, pay a visit to Japanese Literature Challenge 17 for further details and while you are there, please leave a comment to express your interest in taking part.

* All’s Well with Orwell’s Ouvre *

The New Year brings with it a fresh literary challenge to drive away those post-festive blues. Over at This Reading Life (formerly Brona’s Books), Bronwyn has announced she intends to “#slowread” a range of titles by, about or in some way relating to the English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic, George Orwell. She doesn’t intend to “create a strict reading schedule” but hopes herself to kick off with Sylvia Topp’s Eileen: The Making of Orwell, followed by Homage to Catalonia before working her way through a list of his essays, in addition to “other bibs and bobs.” Should you wish to take part in #ReadingOrwell24, she would very much appreciate your “company for part or all of the year.” Absolutely “any Orwell book or essay, Orwell biography or Orwellian-styled books are welcome,” she says, “in any order or timeframe that suits you best.” Please peruse all the necessary information at Reading Orwell 2024 and leave a comment underneath or share a list of the works you are hoping to read, before “linking back to [her] post.” It is, she says, “that simple and flexible.”

* Lit Crit Blogflash *

I am going to share with you one of my favourite literary posts from around the blogosphere. There are so many talented writers posting high-quality book features and reviews, it was difficult to pick only this one – which was published over the last week or so:

Penelope Unbound, by Mary Morrissy – A regular contributor to Shiny New Books, Dr Rob Spence this week focused his critical eye on a “splendid novel” by the Irish author Mary Morrissy. Penelope Unbound is a speculative history of Nora Barnacle, the real-life muse and wife of James Joyce, described here as “a working-class woman” who famously went on a first date with the author in his native Dublin in 1904 – a day now celebrated worldwide as ‘Bloomsday’ after his modernist novel Ulysses. The narrative “begins in 1915,” but quickly switches back in time to the “couple’s arrival at Trieste, after a fractious and exhausting journey from Zurich,” where Joyce “leaves Nora at the station” while he goes to seek work. He regrettably fails to return, and “hours later, fainting from hunger, Nora decides he has abandoned her, and allows herself to be carried off to a different life.” This, we are told, is where Morrissy’s imagination takes over, “and the reader is […] inducted into Nora’s Triestine world.” In short, Rob declares this a “moving” and “inventive” book, which both captivates and leaves one keen to read “more of Mary Morrissy’s work.”

* 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:

****************************

Literary Hub: How We Spend Our Days: On Wintering and the Value of Giving and Taking Care – “Amanda Parrish Morgan considers [Katherine May’s Wintering and] the lessons of a long pandemic season.” 

The Yale Review: Revisiting Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance – Garth Greenwell on Dancer from the Dance, the “novel that introduced a new post-Stonewall gay sensibility.”

Brisbane Times: Whodunnit: Why were novels by a famous Australian author forgotten by history? – “Derham Groves was curating an exhibition about Australian crime literature when he stumbled across five books featuring an eccentric amateur sleuth,” says Jewel Topsfield.

Comma Press: Translating Kurdish Literature: Rojin Shekh Hamo – “Translator Rojin Shekh Hamo delves into the difficult but necessary task of translating Kurdish literature.”

Quillette: Mutual Friends: The Adventures of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins – Hannah Gal finds that a “charming exhibition at London’s Charles Dickens Museum provides a fascinating glimpse into the private lives of two great English writers.”

Fast Company: The best book covers of 2023 are the ones you’ll never see – “The most interesting book cover designs are often left on the cutting room floor,” reveals Zachary Petit.

Publishers Weekly: Olga Ravn on Doris Lessing and Karl Ove Knausgård on Jorge Luis Borges – A pair of Nordic literary trail blazers discuss the works of two titans of the written word.

The Guardian: The Notebook by Roland Allen review – notes on living – “From plans for flying machines to philosophy – the remarkable joy of jotting things down.”

The Hindu: V.E. Schwab on The Fragile Threads of Power: ‘I love the grounded escapism of fantasy’ – Mini Anthikad Chhibber writes: “The bestselling author says fantasy not only allows you to rewrite the rules of the world, but also allows you a sense of wonder in bleak times.”

The Georgia Straight: Well Read: Roberta Rich, author of “The Jazz Club Spy” – Sara Harowitz talks to the Vancouver-dwelling historical novelist Roberta Rich about second careers, her favourite books and new mystery, The Jazz Club Spy.

Nation Cymru: Review: Yr Apêl/The Appeal: The Remarkable Story of the Welsh Women’s Peace Petition – Celeste Shockley’s bilingual Yr Apêl/The Appeal “tells the astonishing story of the 1923 movement that not only impacted Wales, but also stretched out an open hand to America as well.”

Esquire: You’ve Got to Read George Orwell’s Review of ‘Mein Kampf’ – Charles P. Pierce plans on “printing this passage out and putting it on the refrigerator in preparation for the 2024 [US] election.”

ABC News: The best new books released in 2023, as selected by avid readers and critics – From “an incredible debut” to a novel that “celebrates the joy that can be found in an ordinary, imperfect life” — these are the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s critic’s favourite reads of 2023.

EEAS: The EU launches new website to introduce the wealth of European literature to Japan – “The new website (eubungaku.jp) enables users to explore the EU’s multi-cultural literary landscape through interviews, articles, and comprehensive resources for authors, translators and publishing professionals.”

The Nation: Bookworms and Fieldworkers – “How did Marxism become Marxism?” Christina Morina attempts to answer this question in her new political history, The Invention of Marxism: How an Idea Changed Everything – reviewed here by Peter E. Gordon.

The Irish Times: Thomas Kilroy, acclaimed playwright, novelist and academic, dies aged 89 – “Kilkenny author of 16 plays and one novel helped modernise Irish theatre,” recalls Paul Cullen.

Psyche: What does switching from paper to screens mean for how we read? – “It’s well established that we absorb less well when reading on screen. But why? And can we do something to improve it?”

The National: Six books shortlisted for 2023 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation – “The £3,000 award honours translators bringing the work of Arab writers to the attention of the wider world,” says Soraya Ebrahimi.

Public Books: How to Lose a Library – On 31^st October, the British Library suffered a massive cyberattack. Since then, what has been lost? asks Carolyn Dever.

Reuters: Russian publisher, stores drop writers over pro-Ukraine comments – “One of Russia’s largest book publishers and the country’s biggest bookstore chain said […] they were dropping two prominent Russian writers over their pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian comments.”

Scientific American: 55 Books Scientific American Recommends in 2023 – Brianne Kane shares the “best fiction, nonfiction, history and sci-fi books Scientific American staff read in 2023.”

Africa is a Country: Poetry, nationalism, and al-Shabaab – “In Somalia, poets are considered organic public intellectuals,” says Ahmed S. Ibrahim. 

BBC Scotland: Bargain bucket Harry Potter book ‘worth £60,000’ – “A Harry Potter first edition found in a Highland bookshop’s bargain bucket could be worth £60,000, according to auctioneers selling it.”

Harper’s Bazaar: This Daring New Novel Will Be Your New Obsession – “In Sarah Blakley Cartwright’s Alice Sadie Celine, a woman begins an affair with her adult daughter’s best friend and mayhem breaks loose.”

The Observer: Tales of the unexpected: inside the thriving world of independent bookshops – “Cosy, curated and community-minded, the bookshops we cherish offer much more than a place to find a good read…”

3 Quarks Daily: The Duty Of Interpretation – Rebecca Baumgartner reflects on “how much we rely on translators to bring us literature from around the world, and how important it is to be able to trust what they tell us.”

Counter Craft: Processing: How Ed Park Wrote Same Bed Different Dreams – The author of the Korean multi-genre Same Bed Different Dreams speaks to Lincoln Michel about “structure, humor, inventing history, and big ambitious novels.”

Hungarian Literature Online: Hungarian Books in Translation 2023 – “New Péter Nádas, Andrea Tompa, Magda Szabó and debuts from Zsolt Láng, Melinda Mátyus, and Gábor Zoltán – [HLO’s] list of Hungarian books published in English translation in 2023.”

Human Rights Foundation: Worldconned: How China Co-Opted Sci-Fi’s Crown Jewel Amidst the Uyghur Genocide – Danielle Ranucci reports that China recently coopted the WorldCon science fiction convention amid the Uyghur genocide.

The American Scholar: The Quest for Cather – Anne Matthews reviews the new biography of Willa Cather, Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather by Benjamin Taylor, and looks at what happens when “subjects play hard to get.”

Faber: What We’re Reading this Christmas, 2023 – “Looking for a book to curl up with by the fire?” Faber staff were asked to reveal “which books they’ve been loving this year, which they’ll be giving as presents, and which they’re selfishly keeping for themselves.”

The Guardian: ‘The drugs were good, the music was good, the sex was good’ – cult French writer Ann Scott on her techno years – “She ran away to punk London at 12, becoming a drummer, a skinhead and a model. Then she wrote Superstars, about the hard-raving 90s. Now the writer is back – with a novel about a Marvel movie composer relocating to the coast,” writes Angelique Chrisafis.

Quantara.de: Star-crossed lovers – “In her bestselling novel All the Rivers, Dorit Rabinyan tells the poignantly beautiful love story of an Israeli translator and a Palestinian painter in New York, a romance that eventually dies due to the apparently unsolvable Arab-Israeli conflict,” writes Volker Kaminski.

New York Social Diary: Jill Krementz Photo Journal: A Celebration of Cats – The photographer and author Jill Krementz has collected her shots of iconic authors with their cats.

Hindustan Times: Rakhshanda Jalil – “I refuse to be bullied or marginalised” – Chintan Girish Modi speaks to the Indian writer, critic and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil about On Urdu: The Best Stories of Our Times, a “new anthology she has edited and translated, that features fiction by Surendra Prakash, Qurratulain Hyder, Zakia Mashhadi, Gulzar, Khalid Jawed, and Ali Imam Naqvi, among others.”

The Critic: The Pan Book of Horror Stories: top-drawer gore – “Their lurid covers were catnip to bloodthirsty, impressionable teenagers,” recalls Neil Armstrong.

TLS: Generous to a fault – In The Letters of Seamus Heaney, a selection from fifty years of Heaney’s correspondence, Seamus Perry discovers the poet’s “kindness, and the weight of public expectation.”

Arts Hub: Book review: Critic Swallows Book: Ten Years of the Sydney Review of Books, edited by Catriona Menzies-Pike – Ellie Fisher reads a “selection of essays that bear witness to a diverse history of literary criticism in Australia.”

Electric Literature: 9 Books About the Aftermath of the Balkan Wars – “Christine Evans recommends literature about war’s collision with ordinary life.”

Medium: How Many Hobbits? A Demographic Analysis of Middle Earth – Being a demographer, Lyman Stone was curious to know how many people lived in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth – so he analysed the data.

****************************

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.

Categories: Winding Up the Week

Tags: #ReadingOrwell24, Christmas Books, George Orwell, Japanese Literature, Japanese Literature Challenge 17, Mary Morrissy, Paul Valéry, Reading Orwell 2024