An end of week recap

“Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity, and that strikes terror into the hearts of people who love reading.”
– Ruth Rendell (born 17^th February 1930)

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.

* Wind Your Way Through Literary Wales *

If you would like to do Dewithon 24, this is your final (just under) two-week opportunity to decide what to read, watch and possibly listen to for this annual celebration of literary Wales. For the sixth successive year, I invite book lovers, podcasters and fellow bloggers to take part in Reading Wales, which begins on 1st March and runs throughout the month. We’ve had immense fun with Dewithons past – you can look back and see what we got up to right here. For more in-depth information about participating, please head over to Prepare for Reading Wales 2024.

* 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:

‘Companion Piece’ by Ali Smith (Review) – Having read Scottish author Ali Smith’s seasonal cycle of novels – “a series of four books featuring slices of life from post-Brexit Britain” – Tony Malone of Tony’s Reading List was “tempted to come back one last time” by Companion Piece – a “short novel introducing us to Sandy, a painter, whose father has ended up in hospital after a heart attack.” As before, “Smith is writing to comment on the state of the nation, and a right state it’s in,” he drily observes. She apparently “touches again on COVID, and the effect it has had on the already ragged NHS” and takes a “series of jabs at politicians more concerned with point-scoring than actually doing something to help people.” Featuring the writer’s “usual wordplay, literary references and hidden connections,” but this time shifting “several hundred years back in time with the appearance of a new protagonist” about “three-quarters of the way through the book” (a development Tony’s not entirely at ease with), it is nevertheless an “enjoyable” book in which the reader is left to conclude that “letting new companions into your life might just help you through the dark […] times.”

* 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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Neil Perry Gordon – Novelist’s Newsletter: Staying Connected – In this piece about his novel exploring the afterlife, Between Two Gates: A Young Man’s Quest Toward Birth, the author discusses “how to continue your relationships with those who died.”

The Conversation: Why retranslate the literary classics? – “Which version of The Metamorphosis or Crime and Punishment should you choose?” asks Enrico Monti. “In a particularly well-stocked library or bookshop, you could find many different English translations.” 

The Standard: Is American Fiction true to life? Yes, and our publishing industry has a big problem with Black writers too – “In the Oscar-nominated satire, a Black author is appalled when his ‘ghetto’ spoof is a bestseller – but British writers tell us that in publishing, if they don’t want to write about trauma, they struggle to be heard,” reveals Emma Loffhagen.

Nippon.com: “Murasaki Shikibu and Fujiwara no Michinaga”: Literature and Power in the Heian Court – “Fictional portrayals of author Murasaki Shikibu and statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga often depict the two as intimates or even lovers. A new book seeks out the truth about these major historical figures from Japan’s Heian period.”

The Walrus: How Should a Diary Be? Sheila Heti Scrambles Her Life in Alphabetical Diaries – Ariella Garmaise explains how in Alphabetical Diaries, Canadian author Sheila Heti “takes her autofiction to the next level by publishing her journals—with editing help from Excel.”

The Nation.: Helen Garner’s Alienating Domesticity – “In her novel The Children’s Bach, the Australian writer conjures a relentless portrait of the comforts and restrictions of family life,” says Isabella Trimboli.

Aeon: Metaphors make the world – “Woven into the fabric of language, metaphors shape how we understand reality. What happens when we try using new ones?” asks Benjamin Santos Genta.

Reactor: SFWA Names Susan Cooper the 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master – Cooper, says Molly Templeton, “is best known for the brilliant Dark is Rising sequence.”

Buzz: JAC: Sam Adams’ tender tale of childhood in wartime Wales – “Sam Adams’ novel Jac on the experiences of boyhood in a wartime coal mining village is a tender contribution to the literary effort to capture the distinct spirit of the south Wales Valleys.”

BNN: Aka Morchiladze: Georgia’s Literary Gem Nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature – Mazhar Abbas writes: “Aka Morchiladze, a titan of Georgian literature, has been nominated for the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. His rich narratives, deeply rooted in Georgian culture, have earned him international acclaim and multiple literary awards. This nomination spotlights the beauty and depth of Georgian literature on the global stage.”

The New European: A family on the edge of the world – According to Charlie-Connelly, “no other writer has captured the singular beauty of the northern French coast like Rebecca Gisler in her debut novel,” About Uncle. 

The Washington Post: This French mystic’s insights came with unique blind spots – “In The Need for Roots, Simone Weil offered a shaky foundation for ‘a new patriotism.’”

The Hedgehog Review: Language Machinery – “The ultimate semantic receivers, selectors, and transmitters are still us,” says Richard Hughes Gibson.

The MIT Press Reader: J.G. Ballard: My Favorite Books – “The [late but] renowned English writer reflects on the literature that shaped his imagination.”

Good e-Reader: Book Publishing in Sri Lanka Faces Crisis – Navkiran Dhaliwal reports that a new tax on books has caused turmoil in the Sri Lankan publishing industry.

The Millions: Pressure-and-Release: Writing Shanghai’s Rooftoppers – French-Chinese-American writer Aube Rey Lescure discusses Shanghai rooftoppers and her new historical novel River East, River West.

Nautilus: Could Onomatopoeia Be the Origin of Language? – In this extract from A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous, Caspar Henderson explains “what we can learn from the ding-dong hypothesis, James Joyce, Buster Keaton, and a language known as !Xoon.”

BBC Culture: In History: Toni Morrison on why ‘writing for black people is tough’ – “One of the great 20th-Century novelists, Morrison consciously aimed her work at black American readers. In a 2003 interview, she told the BBC about why that made her writing sing.”

China Books Review: What China’s Reading: How Past Reflects Present – “Chinese literature has a long tradition of using history to discuss contemporary affairs. [Na Zhong] picks five recent titles that do just that, from Shang sacrifices to neglected spouses.”

JSTOR Daily: James Holman, the “Blind Traveller” – “Once a celebrated travel writer, Holman struggled to find a publisher for his books thanks to a Victorian reluctance to witness his disability,” finds Imogen Lepere.

AP: Nonfiction book publishing is dominated by men. A new prize hopes to help change that – Sixteen women are in contention for the £30,000 prize, launched last year to redress the relatively low numbers of women recognised in non-fiction prizes.

LARB: Subversion of Resolution: On Eileen Vorbach Collins’s “Love in the Archives” – Melissa M. Monroe reviews Eileen Vorbach Collins’s Love in the Archives, which she describes here as “a patchwork of true stories about suicide loss.”

Smithsonian Magazine: Millennia After Leonidas Made His Last Stand at Thermopylae, a Ragtag Band of Saboteurs Thwarted the Axis Powers in the Same Narrow Pass – “A new book [The Killing Ground by Myke Cole and Michael Livingston] chronicles the 16-plus battles that took place in the Greek pass between the ancient era and World War II.”

Publishers Weekly: Roxane Gay on Marguerite Duras and Kaveh Akbar on Amos Tutuola – Two writers known for their bold explorations of personal experience discuss two authors that have shaped their work.

The Morung Express: Nagaland: ‘Each translator has a story to tell’ – A “panel discussion [at The White Owl Literature Festival & Book Fair in Chümoukedima] delves into [the] ‘dilemma’ of translating each word without changing its meaning.”

Arts Hub: Literary judging: take a look behind the scenes – Thuy On “answers some frequently asked questions about literary judging.”

Esquire: Into the Unknown With the High Priestess of Fabulist Fiction – Kelly Link, author of the recently published fantasy novel The Book of Love, “discusses ghosts, the afterlife, and “nighttime logic” in literature” with literary critic Adam Morgan.

Public Books: A #MeToo Novel That Must Be Read #WithYou – The South Korean novel, Another Person by Kang Hwagil, critiques violent misogyny within a literature department. Remarkably, finds Kaelie Giffel, it does so by addressing the reader directly.

CBC: Heather O’Neill shares 6 books that fostered her love of reading – “The bestselling writer is championing Catherine Leroux’s The Future on Canada Reads 2024.”

Vanity Fair: Inside Ewan McGregor’s Enchanting Take on A Gentleman in Moscow – “The best-selling novel gets a sparkling adaptation in this new limited series, to which McGregor brings a thrilling commitment—and one very particular mustache,” reveals David Canfield.

Literary Hub: How an Icelandic Bird Led to the Discovery of Human-Caused Extinction – Gísli Pálsson, author of The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction, “on the undersung work of the naturalists John Wolley and Alfred Newton.”

Hindustan Times: Damon Galgut – “It’s much easier to oppress people you don’t see as fully human” – “The South African author who won the Booker Prize in 2021 talks [to Simar Bhasin] about writing in different literary forms, how politics shows up in his work, and how, though novels don’t change the world, they do make a difference to human perception.”

ABC: Sad girl novels like Madeleine Gray’s Green Dot are everywhere right now. What’s behind this literary trend? – Nicola Heath asks Australian critic and Green Dot author Madeleine Gray: “Does the sad girl novel map the emotional landscape of a generation or the malaise of the privileged classes?”

Radio Free Europe: Kazakhstan’s ‘Bloody January’ Censorship: Good Books And Banned Books – “Journalist Daniyar Moldabekov has dedicated the last two years of his life to covering the events known in Kazakhstan as Bloody January. But after intervention by ‘law enforcement,’ the publisher of a book he wrote on the topic told him he would be unable to print it.”

The Critic: The spectre of the past – “The Great English Ghost Story,” says J. S. Barnes, “offers a form of comfort and is rooted in the ache of nostalgia for a more elegant era.”

The Japan Times: Take your first dive into Japanese literature from the comfort of your kitchen – Eric Margolis explains there are levels to understanding Japanese literature. First there’s basic comprehension, but after that you can take time to appreciate the wordplay.

The Moscow Times: ‘The Master and Margarita’: From Favorite Novel to Blockbuster Film – Andrei Muchnik on the movie “based on the eponymous novel [The Master and Margarita] by Mikhail Bulgakov,” which, he says, has “become one of the highest grossing and most talked about films in Russia in recent years.”

Barron’s: Hungarian Bookstore Evades Fine Due To Missing Comma – A bookshop in Hungary has avoided prosecution for violating a law “promoting” homosexuality to minors due to “a missing comma in the legislation.”

The Irish Times: Ambitious writer would like to find compelling characters for romance novel. Hot sex preferred – “Romance novels are regularly derided as schlocky, low-grade bodice-rippers, but how easy is it to pen Mills & Boon-style fiction? Niamh Donnelly gives it her best shot.”

The Hollywood Reporter: ‘Bluey Book Reads,’ Celebrity YouTube Series, to Feature Kylie Minogue, Eva Mendes, Jenna Fischer – Georg Szalai reports that a group of celebrities will read picture books featuring beloved Australian pup Bluey for a new YouTube series.

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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, #ReadingWales#24, Ali Smith, Books, Brexit Literature, Dewithon, Reading Wales 2024, Ruth Rendell