An end of week recap

“The first bud of spring sings the other seeds into joining her uprising.”
– Amanda Gorman

I hope those celebrating Easter have a marvellous time – whether you are off to church, awaiting the arrival of the Easter Bunny or gorging on chocolate eggs. In any event, I wish you a myriad of blissful hours with your nose buried in a good book.

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 and its followers, please let me know. I will happily share your news here with the fabulous array of bibliowonks who read this weekly wind up.

* Zoom-in On the Indie Spring Showcase *

Over at findingtimetowrite, self-confessed “world lit” addict and co-founder of Corylus Books, Marina Sofia is doing her bit for the Indie Press Network Spring Showcase by helping host one of three virtual events taking place each evening between 9^th–11^th April, and she “strongly encourage[s] you to sign up if you have time or have followed the #ReadIndies hashtag at any point.” Aimed at “readers, booksellers, bloggers, journalists [and] festival organisers from all around the world,” those tuning in will “see and hear what over 30 indie publishers will be bringing out this season.” What’s more, “there will be publishers of all sizes and renown, from Bluemoose, Renard and Dead Ink, to… Corylus Books!” If this whets your literary appetites, please pop over to Early Monthly Summary for March 2024 and scroll down the page for all the specifics.

* A Growing Reputation *

I am delighted to report that another inspiring member of our bookish community has recently seen one of her short stories published in an anthology edited by Emma Timpany. Maria Donovan, author of The Chicken Soup Murder from Seren Books (which was a “finalist for the Dundee International Book Prize and runner up in the Dorchester Literary Festival Writing Prize 2019”) is among those whose work has been included in Botanical Short Stories: Contemporary Writing About Plants and Flowers, a collection of “intriguing and surprising” pieces by “new, emerging and experienced writers [celebrating] the world of flowers and plants and the meanings they hold.” The book, which boasts its own website, has been made an official March & April Choice by Booktime Magazine, a free publication produced by the Booksellers Association, “full of reading recommendations and inspiration for the book community” (you can pick a copy up in many independent bookshops around the UK). The collection will be published by The History Press on 4^th April 2024. So, massively exciting times for all involved!

* It’s a Dewiwrap! *

Dewithon is all-but over for another year and I offer enormous thanks to everyone who took part. Despite my limited input on this occasion, I have been thrilled with your terrific contributions.

In the next few days, I will update the Reading Wales Library with all the latest discoveries. There is also a dedicated page to display your posts. Here I link to your reviews, features, interviews and so forth. >> Reading Wales 2024 >> 

If you have produced any content relating to the event on your blogs (or elsewhere), please be sure to let me know. It is never too late to share your dewifinds with the world.

* 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: The Power of Darkness: How Night Skies Inspire Creative Thoughts – Using a wakeful period in the life of Daphne du Maurier as an example, Annabel Abbs-Streets, author of Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self examines the “psychology behind artistic practice.”

The Age: The missing novel that was demanding to be written – Charmian Clift’s unpublished novel was demanding to be written. More than half a century after the great essayist’s death, Peter Craven reports The End of the Morning has finally been released.

The Fire Wire: Stephen King’s First Book Is 50 Years Old, And Still Horrifyingly Relevant – “Carrie was published in 1974. Margaret Atwood explains its enduring appeal. This essay is adapted from her introduction to the anniversary edition, […] published this month by Vintage.”

CBC Books: Edmonton author Myrna Kostash wins $25K Kobzar Book Award, which recognizes Ukrainian stories in Canada – Myrna Kostash’s Ghosts in a Photograph – winner of the 2024 Kobzar Book Award – “is a memoir inspired by [the author’s] discovery of family mementos.”

BBC Cambridgeshire: Agatha Christie artefacts at Cambridge University crime novel exhibition – “Crime novelist Agatha Christie’s typewriter and Dictaphone are among items on show in a new exhibition celebrating the literary genre,” says Helen Burchell.

Dissent: Raymond Williams’s Resources for Hope – “To be radical requires a theory of how this world, for all its problems, contains and is fostering the beginning of another, very different world,” says Jedediah Britton-Purdy in this piece on Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic, Raymond Williams.

Aeon: Terrifying vistas of reality – Sam Woodward discovers “H P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity.”

Words Without Borders: The Watchlist: March 2024 – “Tobias Carroll recommends six new books in translation you won’t want to miss [this month], from Bengali science fiction to an early novel by renowned Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz.”

Current Affairs: How Solarpunk Fiction Defies Dystopian Doomerism – “Move over cyberpunk,” says Annie Levin. “Make way for solarpunk, the defiant ecosocialist answer to dystopian doomerism.”

London Ukrainian Review: Review: Roman A. Cybriwsky, Along Ukraine’s River – “Roman Adrian Cybriwsky’s Along Ukraine’s River: A Social and Environmental History of the Dnipro (2018) explores the river which has become the frontline of Russia’s invasion today. Marjukka Porvari’s review focuses on the colonial history of the Dnipro from Tsarist to Soviet times.”

Electric Literature: Téa Obreht on the Serbian Folktales that Inspired Her Dystopian Novel – “The author of The Morningside discusses the immigrant experiences that influenced her vision of climate calamity.”

The Japan Times: ‘The North Light’: One man’s psychological journey subverts the crime genre – Hideo Yokoyama’s mystery novel, The North Light, which centres on a man confronting the shattered pieces of his life, offers a look into post-bubble Japan’s architectural world.

New Criterion: Words, words, words – Author and poet Amit Majmudar on “the Bard’s four-hundred-year legacy.”

Reactor: A Brief Guide to the Fiction of Vernor Vinge – “From his earliest novels to his magnum opus, Vinge [1944-2024] crafted inventive, insightful works of hard science fiction,” finds James Davis Nicoll.

Arts Hub: Book review: Cool Water, Myfanwy Jones – Ellie Fisher on “fathers and sons and how damage can be inherited” in Melbourne writer Myfanwy Jones’s latest novel.

Independent: Books on the impact of the internet and AI are finalists for the first-ever Women’s Nonfiction Prize – “Books about the dizzying impact of the internet and artificial intelligence are among finalists for a new book prize that aims to help fix the gender imbalance in nonfiction publishing.”

Frontline: Narratives from the Indo-Muslim world – Harish Trivedi explores a “multifaceted treasure trove of materials that provides us with a new and richer understanding of the legendary Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder.”

Jacobin: Why Is Our Culture So Obsessed With Individual Experience? – “From immersive art to personal essays and first-person novels, our culture is obsessed the idea of individual experience. Anna Kornbluh, the author of Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism, spoke to [Daniel Zamora] about why.”

Big Issue: Where have all the rural voices gone from English fiction? – “Urban life dominates contemporary fiction. When will regional voices be allowed to flourish?” asks Scott Preston, author of The Borrowed Hills.

Cleveland Review of Books: Gulp Fiction, or Into The Missouri-verse: On Percival Everett’s “James” – “Can one tell Twain’s story from Jim’s perspective without creating a flimsy, second-hand imitation of Jim’s voice which dooms the experiment from the start?” asks Matt Seybold of James – Percival Everett’s reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Hazlitt: The Two Solitudes of Book Design – “From spartan cream to splashy blobs, Canada’s French and English literary cultures have their own separate visual languages,” observes Alex Manley.

LARB: The Pulp of Culture: On Andrew Pettegree’s “The Book at War” – Greg Barnhisel reviews Andrew Pettegree’s The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading, a history of books on the frontline.

The Sydney Morning Herald: When an artist is cancelled, the canvas is the last thing on his mind – Jack Cameron Stanton finds Liam Pieper’s novel takes a satirical look at cancelled artist Oli Darling and the scheme to get him back in favour with the glitterati.

Public Books: Phantoms of Patriarchy: On Ditlevsen & Bachmann – Writer and literary translator Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg argues that “revival fetishism” perpetuates the gendered dynamics of authorship and reception that Tove Ditlevsen and Ingeborg Bachmann spent their lives writing about and against.

Irish Examiner: Six books shortlisted for the €100k Dublin Literary Award — including two Irish authors – “The novels nominated and shortlisted for the award will be available for readers to borrow from public libraries around Ireland.”

Crime Cymru: Writing about books about writing – Eamonn Griffin – “Crime Cymru’s Eamonn Griffin, […] has some background reading for those inclined to study the art form/discipline of crime writing.”

Full Stop: The Long Form – Kate Briggs – “The Long Form is about how a person lives with a long novel: in between the domestic motions of her day, Helen is reading and considering the form of Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones and the origins of the English novel form generally—a distracted preoccupation, an interiority in relationship with the material demands of her day,” writes Anna Zumbahlen of Briggs’ literary novel.

Caught by the River: Strange Things Are Happening – “Published […] by White Rabbit Books, Richard Norris’s dazzling psychedelic memoir Strange Things Are Happening is one of the great eyewitness accounts of the heroic years of the counterculture, writes David Keenan.”

Esquire: Is “Doomslang” Making Us All Numb? – Amanda Montell, author of The Age of Magical Overthinking, writes: “Dystopian jargon (like “dumpster fire” and “doomscroll”) is taking over the way we talk. But the constant conjuring of End Times is having surprising, unintended—maybe even dangerous—consequences.”

Star Tribune: ‘Gentleman in Moscow’ writer Amor Towles’ new book could be his best yet – Table for Two “collects six stories and a novel, every one of them a winner,” declares Chris Hewitt.

The Collidescope: Architect of Existence: A Rare Interview with Miquel de Palol – George Salis conducts a Q&A session with Catalan architect, poet and storyteller Miquel de Palol.

Faber: Three Readers on Helen Oyeyemi’s Parasol Against the Axe – “Parasol Against the Axe is a love letter to Prague and to the art of storytelling. Everyone who encounters this brilliant story will take something different from it, so to celebrate this [Faber] invited readers to tell [them] about their experience with the book” – including our very own Susan Osborne of A Life in Books.

The Kathmandu Post: Books make me feel less lonely – “Climate justice activist Shreya KC talks about why she likes accurate female representation in literature and how books are her favourite gifts.”

NPR: The stories in ‘Green Frog’ are wildly entertaining and wonderfully diverse – “Gina Chung’s collection [Green Frog] is a fantastic medley of short stories that dance between literary fiction, fable, Korean folklore, and science fiction” — and according to Gabino Iglesias, “one that’s full of emotional intelligence.”

The Asian Age: Book Review | An old woman’s odd quest to find her co-wives – The novelist’s “prose is so lyrical that it can be set to music,” says Rachna Chhabria in her review of Shinie Antony’s Can’t.

USCDornsife: Novelist Hari Kunzru wins 2024 Chowdhury Prize for Literature – “USC Dornsife’s Department of English, with the support of the Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation, will award the $20,000 prize during a gala at USC” to British novelist Hari Kunzru.

The Wall Street Journal: ‘Write Like a Man’ Review: Diana Trilling’s Challenge – “In the contentious intellectual circles of mid-20th century New York, both sexes adopted a combative toughness,” writes Benjamin Balint in his review of Ronnie A. Grinberg’s Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals.

Futurism: Amazon Kindle Lock Screens Are Showing Ads for AI-Generated Books – “I’ve never minded the ads on them… until they became flooded with AI-generated books.”

Penguin: The best books out this month – “Discover new fiction and non-fiction releases” by Claire Douglas, Katherine Arden, Ruth Allen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others.

CBR: How Comic Book Fans Mistakenly Claimed the Term ‘Trade Paperback’ as Theirs – “Unfamiliarity with book terms led comic book fans to adopt a standard book term, “trade paperback,” as a comic book term,” says Brian Cronin.

Spiked: The strange rise of ‘queer’ chick lit – Julie Burchill believes “the huge popularity of the Heartstopper graphic novels speaks to our sexless age.”

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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: Amanda Gorman, Andrew Pettegree, Annabel Abbs-Streets, Booktime Magazine, Corylus Books, Dewithon 2024, Emma Timpany, Helen Oyeyemi, Independent Publishers, Indie Press Network, Marina Donovan, Reading Wales 2024, Short Fiction, Téa Obreht