An end of week recap

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

Book and Author Anniversaries 2024! – Over at Literary Potpourri, Mallika Ramachandran has put together an informative “list of book and author anniversaries” for 2024. Titles “celebrating their 50th, 75th, 100th and 150th anniversaries, and authors who turn 100, 150 and 200” are included – and though, as she points out, this roll call is far from exhaustive (rather, a selection of “stand out” names), it is without doubt wide-ranging and should prove tremendously useful to those planning bookish features and events over the coming months. From Nancy Mitford and Arthur Miller to Simone de Beauvoir and Thomas Hardy, there is much in Mallika’s selection to inspire her fellow book bloggers.

* 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 Japan Times: Genre-defying novel ‘Catfish Rolling’ navigates grief in a fractured land – Genre-defying novel Catfish Rolling, Clara Kumagai’s impressive young adult debut, explores the emotional aftermath of a powerful earthquake, mixing folklore, science and philosophy with magical realism. 

BBC India: Agatha Christie: The Indian hotel murder that inspired the queen of crime – “Few things are more gripping than a family feud,” says Cherylann Mollan, “especially when the relatives involved aren’t yours and murder is part of the plot.”

The Atlantic: How Octavia Butler Told the Future – “We need her conception of “histofuturism” now more than ever,” says Tiya Miles.

Balkan Insights: Devised in a Cell, Kosovo Political Prisoner’s Literary Epic Celebrates Freedom – “Bajram Kosumi, a political prisoner who became a top politician after the Kosovo war, started writing a book in his head in a Yugoslav isolation cell in the 1980s. After decades of work, his encyclopaedia-style novel has now been published.”

The New European: Magic in the margins: what links Marlene Dietrich with Coleridge and Kerouac? – They were, according to Charlie Connelly, all “fans of writing their own thoughts on the pages of the books they read.”

The Conversation: Yumna Kassab’s impressionistic novel Politica considers moral dilemmas and harsh choices in a time of war – “Politica is the fourth novel by Yumna Kassab, who has made a significant impact on the Australian literary scene since the publication of her debut novel […] in 2019.”

The Hedgehog Review: Boundary Wars – “The only distinction that matters is between fiction work that lasts and work that doesn’t,” reasons Jonathan Clarke in his piece on literary versus genre novels.

Los Angeles Times: Katherine Min was ahead of her time. Four years after her death, her second novel proves it – Katherine Min died in 2019. Four years on, her “fierce, prescient second novel,” The Fetishist, has been published.

Independent Book Review: Book Review: Hecate’s Labyrinth – “An eclectic web of ideas come together to take a Russian witch on a transformational journey in the unique fantasy novel Hecate’s Labyrinth by Michael Lightsey,” writes reviewer Jaylynn Korrell.

Study Hall: Feminist Media Is Mostly Gone. Where do Feminist Writers and Stories Go Now? – Jael Goldfine investigates the slow death of literary vehicles for feminist writers.

Observer: Meet the 10 best new novelists for 2024 – The Observer’s “annual pick of the most exciting debut fiction has previously tipped Sally Rooney and Louise Kennedy, Tom Crewe and Douglas Stuart. Here the class of 2024 tell us their stories.”

CBC: Jennilee Austria-Bonifaco’s fiction tells the stories of Filipino immigrants in Canada – “The Toronto writer spoke with The Next Chapter’s Ali Hassan about Reuniting with Strangers.”

The Wire: I Refuse to Give Readers Everything on a Platter: Vivek Shanbhag – “On the sidelines of the Kerala Literature Festival, Shanbhag spoke to [Jahnavi Sen] about his books, their context and more.”

LARB: The Body and Its Denizen: On Kate Manne’s “Unshrinking” – Emmeline Clein reviews Kate Manne’s Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia.

The Critic: J.K. Rowling is honest, not “nasty” – Victoria Smith believes “attempts to discredit the author are increasingly pathetic.”

The Marginalian: The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit – “One of Western culture’s most damaging myths, largely inherited from the Romantics, is that of the tortured genius…” Maria Popova shares her thoughts on Hermann Hesse’s 1927 novel, Steppenwolf.

Nieman Storyboard: David Grann Part 1: A deep-dive into “The Wager” – “The New Yorker writer and bestselling author — who says he’s not a “natural writer” — shares the research and writing process behind his latest book,” The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

Publishing Perspectives: In Tbilisi: Bookseller Tamara Megrelishvili on Sales Trends – “The founding chief of a key Georgian bookstore, Tamara Megrelishvili, talks [to Eugene Gerden] about lagging tourism, wartime flux, and political unease.”

The Paris Review: Sorting through the Wreckage: The Stories of Diane Oliver – The Black feminist writer, Diane Oliver, published only four short stories before being killed in a car accident in May 1966. Tayari Jones looks back at her work.

China Books Review: Translated Chinese Literature: Winter Warmers – Jack Hargreaves “picks […] five recently translated titles — from Hong Kong tea house poetry to a self-help seal — and reviews the state of the (diminishing) field.” 

The Guardian: The Gallopers by Jon Ransom review – gay love in the 1950s – “This sly emotional thriller from the author of The Whale Tattoo explores the discord between the individual and the world,” says Yagnishsing Dawoor of The Gallopers.

Caught by the River: Shadows & Reflections: From The Border Hills – “Alistair Fitchett on a year spent falling in love with the landscape of the Scottish Borders through the books of D.E. Stevenson and Molly Clavering.

TNR: The Book of Ayn Trolls Us All – Kristen Martin finds “Lexi Freiman’s novel about a cancelled writer skewers pieties left and right.”

BBC Europe: Russian poet and Putin critic Lev Rubinstein dies after car crash – “Russian poet Lev Rubinstein, a key figure in the Soviet underground literary scene and a critic of President Vladimir Putin, […] died six days after being hit by a car in Moscow, his daughter announced.”

GlobalVoices: Establishing Nepal in the international literature scene: An interview with translator Jayant Sharma – “Translation is a powerful tool for sharing history and culture” – Writer, editor and literary translator Jayant Sharma talks to Sangita Swechcha about literary voices, Nepali literary heritage and more.

The Paris Review: Gravity and Grace in Richard II – Cristina Campo writes: “It is in Richard II, more than in any other work since Homer, that grace blooms, a pure, pale flower, on the dark foliage of necessity.”

Frieze: Éric Chevillard’s Quirked-Up Philosophy of the Museum – The French humourist’s latest collection of micro-essays, Museum Visits, “which takes place in an imaginary museum, often manifests as a parody of scientific observation,” finds Bailey Trela.

AP: A scholar discovers stories and poems possibly written by Louisa May Alcott under a pseudonym – “The author of Little Women may have been even more productive and sensational than previously thought,” reveals Michael Casey.

Radio Free Europe: The Azadi Briefing: The Taliban’s War On Books – Abubakar Siddique reports: “The Taliban confiscated at least 50,000 books from publishing houses and bookshops in the Afghan capital this week.”

Historia: Historical books to look out for in 2024 – Frances Owen with a “round-up” of forthcoming books “covering history, biography, and historical fiction and spanning eras from Ancient Greece and Egypt to the 1980s.”

The Standard: Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant wins TS Eliot Prize for his ‘theatrical’ poetry – Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant has won the prestigious TS Eliot Prize for his book Self-Portrait as Othello.

Toronto.com: Heather O’Neill and Catherine Leroux: The two Quebec writers connect on motherhood, a writing life and Quebec – Canadian authors bond over speculative fiction novel, The Future.

Arts Hub: Book review: 1819 Dictionary of Criminal Slang, James Hardy Vaux and Simon Barnard – “Simon Barnard brings new light to a dictionary from the early days of Australia’s colonisation.”

Esquire: Inside My Mid-Life Crisis – “After 40, most of us start to panic about what we have (or haven’t) accomplished. Me? I’m learning that there’s more to life than being a famous writer,” says Viet Thanh Nguyen.

The Straits Times: Singapore Literature Prize announces new categories for translation, comics, debut books – Shawn Hoo reports, the Singapore Book Council (SBC) has announced three new categories for the Singapore Literature Prize in addition to the existing ones, in each of the Republic’s four official languages.”

Slate: A Whale of a Time – “[Luke Winkie] survived a 24-hour marathon reading of Moby-Dick. It hurt so good,” he confesses.

Tor.com: Tor.com To Become Reactor, Debut New Site, On January 23^rd – Tor Publishing Group has announced Tor.com, the internet base for fans of speculative fiction, will become Reactor later this month – along with a new website (www.reactormag.com).

Russia Beyond: 7 most mystical books by Russian classic writers – Alexandra Guzeva suggests: “Russian literature reflects widely-held popular beliefs about otherworldly phenomena and events that defy logical explanation.”

Nursing Clio: Sex Lives – According to Eileen Sperry, it is far easier for us to believe that people’s sex lives 400 years ago were simpler than ours are today. Here she discusses Sex Lives by Joseph Gamble and asks what sex was like in the time of Shakespeare.

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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: Best Books of 2024, Books, Friedrich Nietzsche, Winter Reading