An end of week recap

“Poor Wales. So far from Heaven, so close to England.”
– Sharon Kay Penman

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.

* Are You Doing Dewithon? *

After a 29-day run up to a wild Welsh leap into March, the time has finally arrived: Dewithon ‘24 is underway!

You can see the official Reading Wales 2024 page right here, which is where we display your Dewithon posts and broadcasts. Please share with the book reading community your reviews, features, interviews – indeed, anything with a D24-related theme – and be sure to check back often for updates.

We kicked off the event on 1^st March with the first two verses from Aberdaron, a poem written by the Welsh war poet, writer and dramatist Albert Cynan Evans-Jones.

The first book review to appear this year was penned by the lovely Volatile Rune, Frances Spurrier. Please head over to In this Fairytale, the Princess is Wiped from the Record for a fascinating critique of Huw Thomas’s new biography of King Charles III in which “the nature and impact of [his] relationship with Wales as its Prince” is explored in some detail.

I can report that the official UK Google Doodle for 1^st March was once again a homage to Dydd Gŵyl Dewi (Saint David’s Day) featuring a splendid red dragon. The artwork was created by Celine You, who sketched out the design on wood before burning the markings to outline and finish it off with paint. It is inspired by the myth of Dinas Emrys, a rocky, wooded hillock near Beddgelert in north-west Wales where legend says two dragons fought for supremacy.

Finally, should you post any content relating to Reading Wales on your blogs (or elsewhere), please be sure to let me know. I will be heading off for a brief spell soon, but will still check my emails regularly and keep popping in to keep the Dewithon engine ticking over.

* Do Not Miss March Magics *

Enormous apologies to Chris Lovegrove of Calmgrove for coming perilously close to missing his latest reading challenge, March Magics 2024, and completely overlooking Dido Twite Day on 1^st March, both of which are explained in his recent post. The main event (running until the 31^st), celebrates two “inimitable British fantasy writers who left us during this month, namely Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett,” says Chris, who would be delighted if you joined him in reading “at least one title by – or related to” these remarkable authors. Please do check out #MarchMagics2024 and Dido Twite Day for all the gen on taking part – it definitely isn’t too late. Yet!

* 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 Guardian: ‘Indescribably filthy’: historian Emily Cockayne on the letters that landed her a film deal – “As Wicked Little Letters with Olivia Colman hits cinemas, the associate professor [and author of Penning Poison] who unearthed the real-life case explains [to Donna Ferguson] how petty grievances and prejudices got out of hand in 1920s Sussex.”

Nation Cymru: Parthian and the New Welsh Review announce new publishing partnership – “Parthian and the New Welsh Review have announced a new partnership which will secure the intellectual legacy of the groundbreaking literary magazine in print and online.” 

Brisbane Times: There’s a mystery to be solved after the Black Saturday fires – Sue Turnbull reviews Radiant Heat, Sarah-Jane Collins’ first novel, which centres on the puzzle of a dead body found in the aftermath of the Black Saturday fires.

Aeon: Folklore is philosophy – Abigail Tulenko suggests that “folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world.”

The Asian Age: Book Review | How a hosiery salesman launched India’s first indie publishing giant – Never out of Print: The Rupa Story:The Journey of an Independent Indian Publisher “adds to our knowledge on the history of publishing in independent India,” writes Sridhar Balan.

Literary Review: Her Family & Other Animals – Norma Clarke considers what Barbara Comyns’ career reveals about the lives of women in mid-20th-century England in her review of A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner.

Caught by the River: Wilding Reimagined – Isabella Tree’s bestselling book Wilding — a document of her and Charlie Burrell’s trail-blazing and influential rewilding experiment at their Knepp estate in Sussex — has been reimagined in a new edition, illustrated with beautiful lino prints and watercolours by Angela Harding.

Literary Hub: Mythical Retellings, Mars Colonies, and Reincarnated Lovers: March’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books – Natalie Zutter presents a selection of “thrilling and cozy SFF from Natasha Pulley, Lee Mandelo, Téa Obreht, and many more.”

Quillette: Beginning in Gladness, Ending in Madness – “1900–1950 was a golden age of literary eccentricity,” declares Stephen Akey after reading World Authors: 1900–1950 edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens.

This is Africa: Andrew Chatora’s Literature award…a background – “Harare Voices and Beyond explores without restraint, a multitude of topics including family feuds, money, identity, love, substance abuse, mental health, and politics, among others,” says Memory Chirere.

CrimeReads: 10 New Gothic Reads That Explore the Darkness Within – “Tonya Mitchell on recent novels with ‘that otherworldly, haunting quality that keeps Gothic readers coming back for more’.”

The National News: How Hanan Issa takes sacred inspiration from her love of trees – The “National Poet of Wales has written of her connection to nature and how it has deeply religious significance.”

Chytomo: The biggest Ukrainian bookstore opened in the heart of Kyiv – “Sense Bookstore on Khreshchatyk, the main street of Kyiv,” opened on 16^th February,” reports Olena Lysenko. It was attended by “Ukrainian writers and musicians Serhiy Zhadan and Irena Karpa [who] premiered a music video for a song they co-wrote.”

Undark: Book Review: Reflections on a Life Suffused with Science – Emily Cataneo writes: “Science journalist Nell Greenfieldboyce deftly weaves science and memoir in [Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life,] a collection of deeply personal essays.”

JSTOR Daily: Mark Twain’s Obsession with Joan of Arc – “Despite being famous for his witty analyses of the American South, Twain was proudest of the historical fiction he wrote about France’s legendary martyr” in Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.

Writing About Reading: “Where do you hear about books?” – Daniel Roberts says he is frequently asked this question. Also, he shares his favourite books of 2023 and discusses “not counting up your books.”

NLR Sidecar: Syncretic Past – Thomas Sliwowski reviews Jacob Mikanowski’s Goodbye Eastern Europe, a eulogy for a disappearing world – complete with vampires, cholera and “eighteenth-century messianic movements.”

Hazlitt: Writing a Novel With Pictures – Indian author Amitava Kumar on “smuggling contraband in from the realm of the actual.”

The Paris Review: My Friend Ellis – “Over dumplings, we distinguished the varieties of the suicidal impulse: fatigue, boredom, panicked helplessness, deluded martyrdom, a relief from pain,” writes Geoffrey Mak in this adapted excerpt from his LGB memoir Mean Boys: A Personal History.

Los Angeles Times: Espionage fiction writers pick their favorite fictional spies – “Three writers of recent espionage fiction turn their keen powers of observation on 1950s Los Angeles, current-day Europe and beyond to shed light on their times — and, chillingly, ours,” says Paula L. Woods.

Prospect: A kind of magic: Anthony Grafton’s ‘Magus’ reviewed – “Centuries ago, scholars used to engage with the supernatural—such that it almost became a science,” writes Emily Lawford in this critique of Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa by Anthony Grafton.

Nature: How our love of pets grew from a clash of world views – “Indigenous Americans’ relationships with and knowledge of animals have influenced how Europeans have thought about animals since 1492,” says Surekha Davies in her review of Marcy Norton’s The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492.

Today: Sabaa Tahir returns to ‘Ember in the Ashes’ world with new novel – “She said writing the fantasy novel felt like ‘coming home’” – Elena Nicolaou has an ‘exclusive’ on Sabaa Tahir’s upcoming YA novel, Heir.

The New Criterion: A forgotten writer of Père Lachaise – In this essay adapted from Buried But Not Quite Dead: Forgotten Writers of Père Lachaise, Anthony Daniels investigates the possibility that the Guatemalan literary critic, writer, journalist and diplomat Enrique Gómez Carrillo married to Salvadoran-French writer and artist Consuelo Suncin de Sandoval-Cardenas betrayed his lover (a spy) to the French in the First World War.

Book Reader: Notebook: Readers and Writers Finding Each Other – Ann Kjellberg suspects romance is carrying fiction these days, which, in turn, is carrying publishing.

BBC News: London Underground poem archive donated to Cambridge University – Hundreds of posters and memorabilia items from a public art project – Poems On The Underground – have been donated to Cambridge University Library.

Arts Hub: Book review: One Another, Gail Jones – Australian author “Gail Jones’ latest novel shines a light darkly through the life of Joseph Conrad,” says Laura Pettenuzzo.

AP News: How Chinese science fiction went from underground magazines to Netflix extravaganza – “For a few days in October 2023, the capital of the science fiction world was Chengdu, China. Fans traveled from around the world as Worldcon, sci-fi’s biggest annual event, was held in China for the first time,” recalls Simina Mistreanu.

Publishing Perspectives: European Union Prize for Literature Names Its 2024 Nominees – “The European Union Prize for Literature names 13 authors—each from a different EU country—whose works ‘represent the richness of literary expression across Europe,’” reveals Porter Anderson.

Literary Hub: Phillipa Gregory on How the Norman Invasion Brought Patriarchy to England – “There are more penises than English women in the Bayeux Tapestry,” declares Philippa Gregory in this piece about how the Norman invasion stripped women of rights and exposed them to violence – excerpted and adapted from her work of feminist non-fiction Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History.

The Marginalian: How Emotions Are Made – Maria Popova explores human emotion in Lisa Feldman Barrett’s How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain – a book she describes as “a bold, empirically grounded challenge to the classical view that events in the outside world trigger emotions inside us, instead showing that […] we feel what our brain believes.”

Vancouver Sun: Book review: Sima Elizabeth Shefrin pits healing laughter against COVID woes – “Author takes on tough issues like the mortal dread associated with the climate change and the grinding loneliness of lockdown,” writes Tom Sandborn.

The Japan Times: Sayaka Murata’s ‘Earthlings’ is a fittingly wild ride on stage – In the opinion of culture critic Thu-Huong Ha, the gore and guts of the horror/magical realism novel Earthlings makes for “a fun, zany stage adaptation.”

Qantara.de: “I am shocked and grieving, yet hopeful” – First published in 1993, Dancing, standing still, the name of Israeli author Zeruya Shalev’s first novel, told the story of a child “kidnapped and taken across the border” into Palestine. In it, says Julia Encke, there is “talk of a tunnel. A conversation about disturbing topicality and the question of where all this is leading us.”

Refinery29: The Answer To Loneliness? For These Women, It’s Book Clubs – “As the popularity of books surges, […] young people are taking the opportunity to marry together books and socialising,” finds Tanyel Mustafa.

Publishers Weekly: U.K. Publishing Spotlight: Building Bridges Between the U.K. and U.S. Book Businesses – “British publishers discuss how transatlantic collaboration can boost books’ performance and the work it takes to maintain mutually beneficial relationships.”

Time: The 13 Best New Books in March – Here, according to Shannon Carlin, are the books you should read this month, “from Tana French’s latest thriller to RuPaul’s revealing memoir.”

Engadget: A Neuromancer TV series is coming to Apple TV+ – “It’s based on William Gibson’s 1984 book of the same name,” reports Sarah Fielding.

Quill: Nameless In Print – “Marvel Comics and artist Banksy both agree: being invisible is a superpower. You’re there, but you’re not there. The same goes for being a ghostwriter, where staying hidden is a large part of the power. In fact, it’s a core part of the talent, and oftentimes is a contractual obligation” says Angela Hatem.

Wired: Lots of People Make Money on Fanfic. Just Not the Authors – “Next year, SenLinYu’s Harry Potter fic Manacled will disappear from Archive of Our Own. They don’t want to take it down, but it’s the only way to keep others from profiting [from] the work.”

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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: Reading Wales, Winding Up the Week

Tags: #dewithon24, #ReadingWales#24, Dewithon, Diana Wynne Jones, Dido Twite Day, Dydd Gŵyl Dewi, Fantasy Fiction, Google Doodle, March Magics 2024, Reading Wales 2024, Red Dragon, Saint David's Day, Sharon Kay Penman, Terry Pratchett