An end of week recap

“I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.”
– E.M. Forster

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.

* Lit Crit Blogflash *

I am going to share with you one of my favourite 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:

Rural Hours – The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann by Harriet Baker – In her review for Shiny New Books of this “beautifully written” biography following phases in the lives of three pioneering writers, Gill Davies describes Rural Hours as “deeply researched” and “drawing on insights from a wide range of writing including diaries, letters, and notebooks” – which must surely have benefitted from the availability of fresh archival materials. A study of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann moving to the countryside, each “separated by intervals” of varying lengths, the author examines the ways in which they “responded to […] their rural settings,” finding “new meanings which nourished them and stimulated their writerly imaginations.” Although Gill “wasn’t wholly convinced that [these periods in their lives] transformed their writing practice,” she found the text both “critically perceptive [and] evocative.” Indeed, she concludes, it is “a book to savour.”

* 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: The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes review – follow your own path – “A woman searching for solitude runs into her sisters in this brilliant, brainy tale,” says Ruth Gilligan in her review of Irish novel The Alternatives.

Condé Nast Traveler: The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World – “With iconic architecture, impressive art collections, and lush gardens, these libraries have more than just books on display.”

The Telegraph (MSN): The glamorous twins pursued by Camus, Orwell and Koestler – “The Quality of Love is Ariane Bankes’s tribute to her mother and aunt, the twins who charmed the European intelligentsia in the 20th century,” writes Sarah Watling.

The Berliner: Jessica J. Lee: “On some level, there is an activist project behind my nature writing” – Alexander Wells “spoke to award-winning writer Jessica J. Lee about her newest essay collection Dispersals and why nature writing has a diversity problem.”

The Common Reader: Andrew Lang and the catawampus of Romance – In this essay, Anna McCullough – “an expert in Victorian children’s literature and the way it presents and uses ideas of evolution” – explores “evolution in Victorian fairy tales.”

JSTOR Daily: But Why a Penguin? – “Penguin Books built on an already strong tradition of branding through cute mascot ‘media stars’ when they introduced their cartoon bird in 1935,” says Matthew Wills.

Open: Lost and Found – Kanika Sharma shares her thoughts on Indian author Namita Gokhale’s new novel Never Never Land, a story about a woman searching “for meaning in the Himalayas.”

Swedish Book Review: Latest Translation: From My Book World by Kerstin Ekman – Introduced and translated by Linda Schenck, we meet one of the most prominent voices in twentieth and twenty-first century Swedish literature, Kerstin Ekman, who enters into dialogue with her own literary heroes, detailing the works that have influenced her own reading and writing life.

Sydney Review of Books: A Lotus with a Long Stalk – Luke Carmen reviews Hospital, a novel originally written in Bengali by Melbournian writer Sanya Rushdi and translated into English by Arunava Sinha, which unflinchingly tackles psychosis.

The Conversation: Margaret Busby: how a pioneering Ghanaian publisher put African women’s writing on the map – Margaret Busby “became the first Black female publisher in the UK at 20 when she co-founded Allison and Busby in 1967.”

Public Books: Interpret or Judge? John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism – Professing criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study “is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I’d like to hope that it’s not, that it’s just an innovation, historically,” award-winning teacher and scholar John Guillory explains to Nicholas Dames and John Plotz.

Evening Standard: Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan review: a thrilling, picaresque tale of London life – For the Scottish novelist and non-fiction author, Andrew O’Hagan, Caledonian Road is a way to fight political misinformation, conspiracy theories and outright lies. Hamish MacBain shares his thoughts on “a book that instantly feels like a box set waiting to happen.”

BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight: Jane Austen: volunteers wanted to transcribe brother’s biography – “Jane Austen enthusiasts are being asked to help transcribe a handwritten manuscript biography of her brother Francis.”

Electric Literature: “The Stone Home,” My Second Novel, Was Crafted From Shocking Historical Truths – In The Stone Home, her coming-of-age novel that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history, Crystal Hana Kim “wanted to represent the abuses that occurred [without speaking] for the survivors.”

Counter Craft: Yes, People Do Buy Books – “Despite viral claims, Americans buy over a billion books a year,” insists Lincoln Michel in his rebuttal to Elle Griffin’s No one buys books, which was featured in WUTW #375.

Caught by the River: The Horse – “Willy Vlautin’s The Horse, soon to be published by Faber, is a triumph of hard, chiselled, beautiful language; of a great novelistic imagination and a huge heart, writes Will Burns.”

The Times of Central Asia: The Art of Words: Writer Andrei Orlov Discusses the Development of Kazakhstan’s Literary Industry – In this interview, writer Andrei Orlov “offers his perspective of how the art of the written word shapes a nation’s cultural heritage and stimulates the development of its literary scene.”

Russia Beyond: Ivan Goncharov’s ‘Oblomov’: A short summary – Oblomov “is considered one of the most famous Russian novels and is a delicate view on the nature of a typical Russian man. The main character’s name, meanwhile, became a byword of laziness and lack of will for life.”

Transfuge: Him by Murray Bail, the Defector review – Damien Aubel reviews Australian author, Murray Bail’s Him, which he describes as “a short text by a great writer” and “a masterpiece of density, splendour and intelligence” recounting “a life at the opposite end of the spectrum.”

49^th Shelf: Experimental (and Exploratory) Storytelling – “Experimental writing tells a story in unexpected and surprising ways. That’s it, that’s the tweet,” says Canadian writer, Carleigh Baker – author of the short fiction collection Last Woman – in a piece in which she shares her recommended experimental fiction reading list.

The Dial: César Aira’s Magic – “How the eccentric Argentine author took over Latin American literature.”

Forward: How a Jewish son of Prague became a 101-year-old historian of human ideals – Following the death of intellectual historian Peter Demetz, Benjamin Ivry recalls the way he “survived close calls during wartime to become a scholar of German literature.”

The Official Daphne du Maurier Website: The Birds in Fiction – Many people are unaware that Frank Baker authored a novel called The Birds in 1936 – quite some time before du Maurier published the famous short story in her collection The Birds and Other Stories. Here Ann Willmore shares reviews of both books plus a new novel, The Parliament by Amie Pokwatka.

Variety: All Seven ‘Harry Potter’ Books to Be Recorded as Full-Cast Audio Productions With More Than 100 Actors, Will Release Exclusively on Audible – Audible and Pottermore Publishing have joined forces to produce an audiobook series for J.K. Rowling’s seven Harry Potter stories.

Publishing Perspectives: Book Ads on French TV? Publishers Differ With Government – “Despite the misgivings of France’s publishers’ association, the culture minister opts for a two-year trial period allowing book ads on TV,” reports Eric Dupuy.

Grub Street: Where Writers Went to Gossip and Everyone Was Having an Affair – “At Café Loup [in ‘80s New York], you’d order a drink and wait for the evening to begin,” Vivian Gornick tells Hilary Reid.

The Marginalian: How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing – “It is a strange thing, desire,” says Maria Popover in a piece in which she immerses herself in the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset’s posthumous collection of “superb newspaper essays,” On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme.

Engelsberg Ideas: An early modern guide to information overload – “The sense of being overwhelmed and constantly distracted is nothing new,” says Iskander Rehman. “Historians and policymakers should look to the 17th century for guidance on how to grapple with information overload.”

National Review: A Small ’Stute Fish, and Other Kipling Creations – For Sarah Schutte, “what still stands out about the Just So Stories is Rudyard Kipling’s extraordinary use of language.”

Salmagundi: From the River to the Sea: Getting it Right, Getting it Wrong – Robert Boyers speaks to Susie Linfield, author of The Lion’s Den: Zionism & The Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky – a history of the State of Israel and its conflicts with the Arab world.

Nashville Review: Silence Shapes What is Said: An Interview with Claire Jiménez – Nathan Blum talks to Puerto Rican storyteller and cultural critic Claire Jiménez about living in Nashville, winning the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award and her new mystery novel What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez.

Reactor: Five Vintage Works of SF From Women Writers – “Women have written science fiction for as long as the field has existed; here,” says James Davis Nicoll, “are five highlights from days of yore…”

BBC: Shardlake series author CJ Sansom dies age 71 – Emma Saunders reports: “Chris Sansom, Scottish author of the popular ‘Shardlake’ historical crime series, has died at the age of 71.”

Inverse: The Unexpected Resurrection of Harlan Ellison – “Harlan Ellison died in 2018. Now, thanks to J. Michael Straczynski [and the newly published Greatest Hits short story collection], he’s back. And louder than ever,” says Ryan Britt.

AP News: Paul Auster, prolific and experimental man of letters and filmmaker, dies at 77 – Paul Auster, the award-winning author of ‘The New York Trilogy’, has died of lung cancer at the age of 77.

World Literature Today: What to Read Now: Irish Books to Move Us – Ethel Rohan, author of The Weight of Him, explains: “The following recent books, centred in Ireland, connect us so fully to story, place, and character, they illuminate how the specific is universal.”

Dirt: Nigeria has a bookshop problem – “It gave me the impression that I was present in the previous life,” says Chidinma Iwu on the recent “influx of open-air markets and thrift booksellers” in Nigeria.

Vanity Fair: Claire Messud’s Family Had Secrets. It Sent Her Searching for Answers in Her New Novel, This Strange Eventful History. – “Over lunch in Manhattan” last month, Erin Vanderhoof discovered “the acclaimed writer drew inspiration from her grandfather’s self-published memoir to examine the triumphs and disappointments of the 20th century” when working on her historical novel This Strange Eventful History.

The National: Twenty of the best Arabic novels that are available in English – Saeed Saeed recommends twenty Arabic novels from “the many countries and cultures that make up the region.”

European Review of Books: What an animal isn’t – Madeline Gressel compares “two vastly different [novels] — one a picaresque tale, the other a dystopian meditation — both [recounting] a transition from human to animal or from animal to human.”

The Spinoff: Inside the home of New Zealand’s greatest crime writer – “Ngaio Marsh House is one of Christchurch’s best kept secrets – and contains more than a few mysteries of its own,” finds Alex Casey.

TNS: New poets on the block – According to Zubair Ahmad: “A new wave of poets is set to invigorate the Punjabi literary scene.”

The Smart Set: Let by-lines be bylines – Steven G. Kellman on “a history of [writers] getting credit” – or not…

The Public Domain Review: Professor Megalow’s Dinosaur Bones: Richard Owen and Victorian Literature – Victorian scientist Richard Owen first coined the term ‘dinosaur’ and “claimed that he could identify an animal, even an extinct one, from inspecting a single bone.” Here “Richard Fallon revisits other Owen-inspired fictions — [for instance, The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore by R. D. Blackmore] — and finds literature layered with scientific, religious, and political interventions, spurred by the discovery of prehistoric life.”

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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: Aimee Pokwatka, Andrew O'Hagan, Caolinn Hughes, E.M. Forster, Harlan Ellison, Harriet Baker, Rosamond Lehmann, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Virginia Woolf