An end of week recap

“Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”
– David Baldacci

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.

* In Short: Tales from the Queen of Crime *

I’m a little late announcing Fanda Kutubuku’s latest literary happening, which kicked off on 1^st January, but this shouldn’t present a problem as you are apparently permitted to jump in at any point. The Agatha Christie Short Stories 2024 challenge involves reading and reviewing a selection of short fiction written by the renowned English crime author, at the rate of two pieces a month. Fanda has planned “twenty four stories in no chronological order, with equal proportions of the Poirot, Marple, Harlequin, Tommy & Tuppence, Parker Pyne, and some non detectives” – and she very much hopes you will join in her quest to read them all by 31^st December 2024. To get involved, please head over to Fanda Classiclit and peruse Would you join me in: Agatha Christie Short Stories 2024? #AgathaChristieSS24 for all you need to know about taking part.

* Damp Squib Dragon Ahead *

This year, unfortunately, I am going to be away for large chunks of March, which will create something of a logistical challenge when it comes to hosting Reading Wales 2024. I will do my utmost to continue, but alas, I won’t be able to put my usual time and effort into the event. Nonetheless, Dewithon will definitely take place in some form or another (from 1^st to 31^st March) – though, I should point out, it would probably happen regardless of my input these days, since it has taken on a life of its own. I will endeavour to pop in as frequently as possible, but participants may see considerably less of me than is customary. I would therefore urge everyone to continue reading and reviewing literature by writers from Wales (or indeed, books set in or about Wales) and I will highlight your pieces in the usual way. The rest, it seems, will be in the lap of the book (or ‘not-enough-hours-in-the-day’) gods.

* Just Perfect for Reading Wales *

I hope this next announcement may help drag us out of the Dewithon doldrums, as I am filled with delight to report that our very own Volatile Rune, Frances Spurrier, has had a book published. And it isn’t any old book. Oh no. It is a fantasy novel set in Wales. The Winchester Codex has “been so many years in the writing” that Frances can barely contain her excitement in her amusingly titled post, I PROMISE NOT TO SPEND THE WHOLE OF 2024 TALKING ABOUT THIS, BUT… (and that isn’t me shouting but the author’s capitals – though I’m more than happy to make some noise in its honour).

According to the synopsis from Troubador Publishing: “Books can be dangerous” and protagonist “Fitz believes he is guardian of one of the most dangerous of all – The Winchester Codex [-] responsible for wiping out the entire draconic race, of which he is one of the last vestiges. Caught in a trap from the deep time of history, the dragon had vowed to protect the book’s author. Yet in the 21st century, what relevance does this ancient manuscript have? He hides the codex in his attic and tries to forget about it.”

We are told: “In Swansea, Fitz and his friend Perceval happen upon a temporarily homeless teenager who joins them on a walk around the coast of Wales to raise funds for charity and records everything on social media.” But it would seem “not all their followers are benign” and “what started as a simple walk, ends with a journey into darkness and to the gates of death.”

Frances tells me her book is “a cross between a mystery, a fantasy, an historical novel and a love letter to Wales.” Apparently, she has some “physical copies and digital codes for review” purposes if anyone would like to take up the offer. So, might I suggest you choose this book as your reading matter for #Dewithon24?

Go on. You know you want to!

* 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 follow a selection of interesting snippets:

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The Irish Times: The best-selling Irish author you may not have heard of says social anxiety prompted her to write – “Galway woman Evie Woods found comfort in books, and her fourth novel The Lost Bookshop brings a similar comfort to her growing readership,” says Edel Coffey. 

ABC: What is outback noir and why is so much crime fiction set in regional Australia – From dusty farming communities to sleepy seaside towns, crime fiction set in regional Australia is taking off. Nicola Heath discovers why readers are devouring these stories.

3 Quarks Daily: Popular Nonfiction And The Audience Of Imagined Idiots – Those “books with bright covers and upbeat titles” – often “shelved in the Self-Help section.” You know the type. Rebecca Baumgartner shares her thoughts on “landfill nonfiction.”

Al Jazeera: In Zimbabwe, a small publisher that helped launch big voices shuts down – “In 25 years, the couple-run Harare-based Weaver Press published hundreds of Zimbabwean fiction and nonfiction titles,” reports Percy Zvomuya.

The New York Times: The Fine Art of the Paperback Makeover – “Redesign? Relaunch? Regret?” Scott Heller and Miguel Salazar would like you to take a look at “the ways publishers aimed to seduce new audiences by changing up the covers of notable books.”

Open Culture: Watch a 106-Year-Old Wizard of Oz Book Get Magically Restored … By Cutting the Book’s Spine, Washing Pages & Recoloring Illustrations – Accomplished book restorer, Sophia Bogle, demonstrates her craft on an original edition of Frank L. Baum’s The Lost Princess of Oz.

TNR: Flaubert Versus the World – “The writer’s collected letters are a glorious escape from the annoyances of social life into the splendor of prose,” finds Scott Bradfield.

Transfuge: Sofi Oksanen: “Sooner or later, abortion will be illegal in Russia” – “Sofi Oksanen is committed by publishing Two Times in the Same River, an investigation and reflection on rape as a weapon of war for the Russian army in Ukraine. And more broadly, the Finnish author questions us about the new form of Russian imperialism,” reports Oriane Jeancourt Galignani.

Verily: The Strength of Hidden Desire: Elinor Dashwood as a Heroine of Mature Love – Mary Catherine Froula reflects on “the growth of the female heart in a Regency romance.”

The Japan Times: Anticipated translations and books about Japan to brighten your 2024 – From debut novels to classic crime thrillers, Iain Maloney says the year ahead promises a wealth of must-read titles to add to your reading list.

Literary Hub: For the Love of Plants: 11 Books on Nature and Conservation Coming Out in 2024 – Amy Brady recommends titles “forthcoming in the first half of 2024” by Erika Howsare, Miriam Darlington, Zoë Schlanger and others. 

49^th Shelf: The Horror and Fairy Tales of Uncanny CanLit – Canadian writer, Paola Ferrante, author of the genre-bending short fiction collection Her Body Among Animals, with a selection of her favourite “uncanny CanLit fiction.” 

The Atlantic: Against Counting the Books You Read – “The number of titles you finish in a year says little about your actual reading habits,” cautions Emma Sarappo.

Arab News: Review: Dark wit of ‘Diary of a Country Prosecutor’ has not faded over time – First published in 1937, Diary of a Country Prosecutor by the “prolific Egyptian author, playwright and essayist” Tawfik Al-Hakim, has been reprinted with a new introduction by Richard Littler.

The First News: Small town library wins prestigious international design award for excellence – The Nowy Horyzont Library in Kraśnik, Poland, “has won a prestigious international design award after undergoing a major transformation,” reports Khaoula Semmoumy.

LARB: Parents Against Books: A Conversation with Nancy Agabian – Haig Chahinian interviews Armenian American LGB writer Nancy Agabian about her new book The Fear of Large and Small Nations.

Open Letters Review: Venice by Dennis Romano – Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City, Dennis Romano’s comprehensive history of La Serenissima is, according to Steve Donoghue, “an indispensable addition to the busy shelves of popular histories” of a place that has provoked “fascinated outbursts of prose for a long, long time.”

PopMatters: Personhood and Performance in Soloski’s ‘Here in the Dark’ – Alexis Soloski’s thriller, Here in the Dark, “illuminates the act of performance (no matter the stage) and the notion of stepping into and out of one’s personhood,” says R.P. Finch.

Wired: Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon – Kate Knibbs reports: “Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There’s little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.”

Air Mail: “War, Tribes, and Camels Without End” – Lawrence of Arabia: My Journey in Search of T. E. Lawrence, a new biography by British explorer Ranulph Fiennes, sheds fresh light on T. E. Lawrence, the enigmatic, larger-than-life character remembered as Lawrence of Arabia.

The New York Review: The Fate of Free Will – “In Free Agents, Kevin Mitchell makes a scientific case for the existence of human agency,” finds James Gleick.

The Conversation: ‘Cli-fi’ might not save the world, but writing it could help with your eco-anxiety – Sixteen Australian and New Zealand cli-fi authors discuss “writing about a climate-changed future [and the ways in which it] does more than bring up the anticipated negative emotions.”

CuLTureFLY: Book Review: Lucero by Maya Motayne – Four years after the publication of her debut fantasy novel Nocturna, Maya Motayne completes her magical adventure trilogy with Lucero – described here by critic Megan Davies as “mythic in scope, focusing on gods and prophecies and destiny…”

The Kathmandu Post: Reading is not just about amassing facts but questioning assumptions – “Writer Shailendra Adhikari discusses his literary influences, reading habits and the art of crafting ghazals.”

Alta: Kerouac’s Ghost – “Jack Kerouac wrote San Francisco Blues in 1954. What does it have to tell us now?” asks David L. Ulin.

Asian Review of Books: “Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration” by Simon Partner – In Koume’s World we learn of the extraordinary diaries kept by a 19^th century wife, mother and grandmother of a lower-ranking samurai family.

Brittle Paper: Ugandan Author Goretti Kyomuhendo Reissues 20-Year-Old Novel Whispers from Vera – Whispers from Vera, Ugandan author Goretti Kyomuhendo’s long out of print novel, has recently been republished, finds Kuhelika Ghosh.

Prospect: Mário de Andrade, the troll of the tropics – “Two new translations of one of Brazil’s modernist greats have much to say about the country’s postcolonial reckoning—while still finding time to tell a good joke,” finds David McAllister.

Shondaland: In ‘The Women,’ Kristin Hannah Shines a Light on the Unsung Heroes of War: Nurses – “The acclaimed author discusses her upcoming novel,” The Women, with Emily Zemler.

Faber: Independent Bookshop of the Month: Shalimar Books – Throughout 2024, Faber will visit some of its “favourite indie bookshops around the UK and Ireland, choosing one bookshop [owner] each month to interview.” This week, the focus is on Shalimar Books in Kennington, South London.

UnHerd: The labyrinth of Guy Davenport’s mind – “Born nearly a century ago, Guy Davenport was unclassifiable. Was he a poet or a polymath? An artist or an eccentric philosopher? As a new collection of his essays [The Geography of the Imagination] is published, John Jeremiah Sullivan recalls his laughter, tears and wit…”

New York Post: Inside the ‘Argylle’ publishing mystery burning up the Internet – Who is Elly Conway? It’s the question plaguing the literary world at present. Hailey Eber investigates the writer behind spy thriller Argylle.

CBC: Since when did reading books become a game? Well, millions are playing – “Some say the challenges make reading a sport,” says Natalie Stechyson, “but not everyone wants (or is able) to compete.”

Open: Reading the Shadows – Nandini Nair shares a selection of “collaborative to posthumous novels where love and hope are lost and found” – including a title that may be of interest to those taking part in Reading Orwell 2024: Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux (described here as “a fictional retelling of George Orwell and his time in Burma”).

Polygon: StoryGraph is the Goodreads alternative worth switching to – In the opinion of veteran journalist Sadie Gennis, the social cataloguing web platform for books “has better features and no drama.” Is she right?

The Skinny: The (Un)Holy Land: Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail – “In its recent deplatforming at Frankfurt Book Festival, Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail has come to represent many of the contradictions of Western attitudes to the Middle East. [Anahit Behrooz revisits] the book in the wake of the bombardment of Gaza.”

Jewish Currents: Staging Resistance – Nora Caplan-Bricker reviews Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost, a novel about an actress agreeing to take part in an Arabic production of Hamlet in the West Bank, in which “art prepares the ground of the self for the demands of collectivity.”

South China Morning Post: ‘Liberation through reading’: All Sages Bookstore finds new location but keeps unique place among Beijing intellectuals – A “30-year-old bookshop is a landmark in Beijing’s intellectual landscape thanks to owner and once prominent dissident Liu Suli,” reveals Yuanyue Dang.

Open Country Mag: How Leila Aboulela Reclaimed the Heroines of Sudan – “The widest-read contemporary Sudanese writer is retrieving from history the stolen spaces of her country’s women and bringing nuance to an image of Islam. In a time of war, her fiction expands a national consciousness,” says Paula Willie-Okafor.

Jamaica Observer: Book awards news: 2023 TS Eliot Prize shortlist includes two Jamaicans – “Two Jamaican writers […] have been named on the shortlist for the 2023 TS Eliot Prize.”

The Korea Times: Interview: Quality translation backs Korean literature’s rise on global stage – Kwak Hyo-hwan, president of LTI Korea, is calling for “consistent government support for translation.”

Croatia Week: Year of Marko Marulić, father of Croatian literature, kicks off – “A ceremony marking the start of the Year of Marko Marulić and the 500th anniversary of death of this Renaissance poet regarded as the father of Croatian literature [has been] held in Split.”

The Spokesman-Review: Book World: When should you give up on a book? Readers weigh in. – “If you do bail [on a book], there’s no sense in feeling guilty about it,” says Stephanie Merry.

Eater: Rules of Derangement – “The 20th century brought dinner parties to the masses, along with some truly unhinged entertaining advice” – a selection of which Amy McCarthy has gathered for our gratification from “a slew of books written to advise prospective hosts on how to throw the perfect shindig.”

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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: #dewithon24, Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie Short Stories 2024, David Baldacci, Detective Fiction, Dewithon 2024, Fantasy Fiction, Frances Spurrier, Reading Wales 2024, Welsh Literature