An end of week recap

“We’re humans, not machines. We have bad days. We have mental difficulties. We are inspired, yet we fail. We are not linear. We have hearts that break and souls we don’t know what to do with. We kill and destroy but we build and make possible too. We’ve been to the moon and invented computers. We outsource most things but we still have to live with ourselves. We’re pessimists who believe it’s too late so what the hell? We’re the comeback kids in love with second chances. And every New Year is another chance.”
– Jeanette Winterson

A humongous and heartfelt Happy New Year to every one of you. Welcome to the first wind up of 2024. I should like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and wish you a healthy, peaceful, book-filled year ahead.

I fully intended winding up the week with you last Saturday but was struck down with a case of the dreaded lurgies. Anyhow, I hope you all had a pleasurable New Year’s Eve, whether you were celebrating quietly at home with a good book or carousing into the early hours with the masses. Let’s hope the next twelve months bring good things to the world.

As ever, 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.

* Honour an Indie in ‘24 *

The first heart-warming announcement of the year is that Karen Langley of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy Siddal of Lizzy’s Literary Life are returning in February with their fourth Reading Independent Publishers Month – a literary challenge that first started during lockdown to support all the wonderful indies struggling through difficult times and has since become a highly anticipated date in many a book lover’s diary. This fun challenge doesn’t merely “give [you a] good reason to support [your] favourite indie publishers more visibly than usual,” says Kaggsy, “but it’s also a perfect excuse to discover new ones.” Should you fancy taking part, please head over Announcing Reading Independent Publishers Month 4 #ReadIndies to peruse all the important details.

* 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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Literary Hub: 24 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward to in 2024 – Natalie Zutter brings you a selection of “exciting new series’ and standalones from Kelly Link, Lev Grossman, Sofia Samatar, James S.A. Corey” and many others.

Publishers Weekly: Publishers Weekly’s 2024 Book Business Events Calendar – PW has put together a Google calendar rounding up international bookish events to keep you in the loop this year. They plan to keep it updated regularly throughout 2024. 

Nippon.com: Japan’s Prizewinning Books of 2023 – Takino Yūsaku with a “roundup of the books that won the Akutagawa Prize, Naoki Prize, and other major literary awards in Japan in 2023.”

The Guardian: ‘Historical reparation’: new bookshops in Europe give voice to female authors – “Greta Livraria in Lisbon and Rare Birds in Edinburgh are among the new stores dedicated to women’s writing,” reports Ashifa Kassam.

The Conversation: 15 literary podcasts to make you laugh, learn and join conversations about books – Sessional Lecturer in Writing at The University of Queensland, Amber Gwynne, shares her favourite literary podcasts.

Hungarian Literature Online: Nightmares in Hungarian – “HLO‘s Austin Wagner reviews The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales, the debut English collection from Hungary’s leading horror writer Attila Veres, in Luca Karafiáth’s translation.”

Ploughshares: “We’re standing on the edge of the cliff”: An Interview with Lauren Groff – Following the conclusion of her Climate Visionaries project undertaken with Greenpeace, Jason Katz speaks with Lauren Groff about writing climate fiction, her climate-related work and talking to our youngest members of society about climate change.

Caught by the River: Shadows & Reflections: Pamela Petro – “All of this is in the coat: the sun and rain and photosynthesis, the rivers, the loss, the anger, the artistry… the camaraderie of women in a bustling Saturday market…” Last year, Pamela Petro, author of The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir, acquired a treasured Welsh tapestry coat.

Electric Literature: An Undocumented Farmworker’s Quest for Happiness in Europe – “Celina Baljeet Basra’s debut novel, Happy, at once fulfils and tragically subverts the promise of its title,” says Pritika Pradhan.

World Literature Today: Icelandic Stories: A Conversation with Katrín Jakobsdóttir & Ragnar Jónasson – “In this conversation with Iclal Vanwesenbeeck, [Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Ragnar Jónasson] “discuss Icelandic fiction’s strong connection to the environment, their shared love of Agatha Christie, a possible sequel, and much more.”

Time: The 25 Most Anticipated Books of 2024 – Megan McCluskey and Olivia B. Waxman with a selection of books to look forward to this year.

LALT: The Medusa Daughters of Ampuerismo – The featured author in the latest issue of Latin American Literature Today is María Fernanda Ampuero, an Ecuadorian feminist writer and journalist, whose “horror writing is mostly anchored to the terrors of gender violence, broken families, migrations, and non-normative, vulnerable bodies.” 

The Art Newspaper: As British Library faces fallout of cyber attack—what can arts bodies do to combat ransomware threats? – “A hack that has limited the British Library’s access to its digital systems is the latest in a series of online raids on cultural institutions,” finds Gareth Harris.

Esquire: It’s Time to Rewrite the Rules of Historical Fiction – “Research has long been a backbone of the genre. But beyond the textbooks, there’s a whole world of family stories that have not yet become history. They deserve their place in fiction, too,” says Vanessa Chan.

Frontline: Always a good fight – “A few of India’s leading writers spoke to Frontline of the hopes and challenges the future holds.”

Svenska Dagbladet: White’s Nobel Prize – the calm before the storm – “For the first time, the Nobel Prize in Literature went to an Australian, Patrick White. But behind the scenes of the Nobel Committee, there was a larger drama going on: Could two Swedish authors share the prize instead? Kaj Schueler has read the (until now) secret Nobel documents from 1973.”

Port: Suddenly It Was Just Words – “French novelist Constance Debré reflects on her fearless autofiction.”

The Atlantic: The Multiplying ‘Philip Roths’ – Adam Langer asks the question: “Has the celebrated author become better known for his persona than for what he wrote?”

Nation Africa: Here are the must-read books from East Africa this January – From Tanzanian masters to Ugandan Queens.

San Francisco Chronicle: ‘A legend in the literary world’ keeps S.F.’s City Lights shining – Rachel Howard profiles San Francisco’s legendary bookseller, City Lights.

ArabLit: Arabic Lit In Translation: Forthcoming in 2024 – “This is a partial list based on canvassing publishers and translators.”

BBC News: Hanif Kureishi: I’ve become a reluctant dictator – “Novelist Hanif Kureishi sustained life-changing injuries when he collapsed and landed on his head on Boxing Day [2022]. A year on, he joined BBC Radio 4’s Today programme as a guest editor and described the accident’s profound impact on his life.”

The Phnom Penh Post: Mekong odyssey makes a splash at Laos awards – The winners of this year’s Mekong River Literature Awards – a prize established by writers’ associations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – have been revealed.

The Paris Review: The Life and Times of The Paris Metro – It barely lasted two years, but during that time, “nothing else remotely like Metro existed,” with its “full high-low smorgasbord” and its “finger on the pulse of Parisian life,” recalls Adrienne Raphel.

Harper’s Magazine: Sex and Grue in Ancient Rome – Christopher Tayler reviews Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World, Mary Beard’s wide-ranging account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors.

Full Stop: January – Sara Gallardo – “Nefer, the teenage protagonist of the slim, classic Argentine novel January, first published in 1958, is pregnant and doesn’t want to be,” reveals Paula Bomer in her review of the English translation of Sara Gallardo’s masterpiece.

CBC: 30 Canadian books to read in winter 2024 – “Cozy up with a great Canadian book during the cold and dark winter season. Check out this list of 30 buzzworthy Canadian titles to read right now!”

Sierra: How Writers of Color Are Changing What Nature Writing Looks Like – “A new generation of writers reboot a genre,” according to Amanda Machado.

Irish Examiner: Book review: A writer’s journey through life – “Evelyn Conlon’s memoir mainly covers the years from 1970, the year she dropped out of University College Dublin and took a boat to Australia, to the present day.”

TNS: “We often let things pass by because we are too polite” – Aasim Akhtar in “conversation with Egyptian novelist, essayist and socio-political activist Ahdaf Soueif.”

The Millions: Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2024 Preview – The Millions has published the first of its seasonal roundups for the year, highlighting books to look out for this winter (summer in parts of the world).

The Tennessean: Parnassus Books’ owner and author Ann Patchett learns Florida county banned her novels – “Novelist Ann Patchett told Instagram viewers that PEN America informed her that two of her books were banned in Florida.”

The Spinoff: What led me to Ruin: Emma Hislop on what inspired her debut short story collection – “Emma Hislop reflects on the decade it took to finish the stories that make up her debut collection, Ruin, and the many books, relationships and people that helped her along the way.”

Commonweal: ‘Wild Butchery of Souls’ – “A contemporary poet aims to capture the terror of World War I.”

The Japan Times: Asia publishing mainstay Tuttle rides new wave of interest in Japan – The back catalogue of Tuttle, which traces its history in Japan to 1948, is in high demand, and has even branched out into graphic novel versions of classic Asian literature.

The Public Domain Review: Rhapsodies in Blue: Anna Atkins’ Cyanotypes – “In an era when the Enlightenment’s orderly vision of the natural world began to unravel, Anna Atkins produced the world’s first photography book: a collection of cyanotypes, created across a decade beginning in 1843, that captured algal forms in startling blue-and-white silhouettes,” writes Paige Hirschey.

Toronto Star: First Person: It took 10 years for Chelene Knight to figure out how to embrace joy – in a world that feels like it’s falling apart, she shares a lesson – The Canadian writer and poet “shares the promise she’s making to herself as we slip into a new year.”

Polygon: The year I read 20 Hercule Poirot mysteries and fell for Agatha Christie – Nicole Clark discusses: “The man, the myth, the mustaches.”

The Things: Dolly Parton Has Spent Over $500 Million On Books For Kids For A Sentimental Reason – “Dolly Parton’s books for kids program has cost her hundreds of millions, but there’s a specific reason the singer sticks with it,” finds Oyinlola Oguntola.

Nautilus: History’s Five Best Body Part Stories – “Charles I’s neck bone, Queen Victoria’s armpit, and other fabulously gruesome medical tales” are featured in Suzie Edge’s Vital Organs, reveals Kristen French.

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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.

Categories: Winding Up the Week

Tags: Booklists, Books, Jeanette Winterson, ReadIndies, Reading, Reading Independent Publishers Month 4