An end of week recap

“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre

I’ve had rather a full-on week and, as a result, neglected my usual Book Jotter duties – leading to this wind up being very much shorter than usual. Many apologies for this, and also, if I have failed to respond to a recent comment, email or something else of importance. I hope to take a firm grip of my tail over the coming days.

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.

* 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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BBC Wales: Judges unveil Wales Book of the Year shortlist – “A coming-of-age story on friendship, sex and drugs, and an author documenting his journey along Sarn Helen, an old Roman road connecting north and south Wales, are among those on the English language shortlist of the Wales Book of the Year 2024,” reveals Oliver Slow. 

Reactor: Myth, Fantasy, and Lives Shaped by Stories in the Work of A.S. Byatt – “The fantastical elements are always there in Byatt’s fiction, underpinning the fabric of the story and guiding the fates of her characters,” says Jonathan Thornton.

Independent: Alice Munro, Nobel literature winner revered as short story master, dead at 92 – Hillel Italie on the Canadian author Alice Munro, a 2013 Nobel Prize winner for literature, who has died at the age of 92.

The Conversation: African sci-fi: body hopping, artificial wombs and angry ghosts in a future Botswana – According to Nedine Moonsamy, Womb City, Motswana speculative fiction writer and poet Tlotlo Tsamaase’s debut science fiction novel, “interweaves the mythological and digital expanses of Batswana culture in dystopian fashion.”

The Critic: Alan Bennett at 90 – “From the small screen to the stage, Alan Bennett has been the poet of awkwardness and isolation.”

Bella Naija: Caleb Azumah Nelson Clinches Dylan Thomas Prize with “Small Worlds” – Small Worlds, a novel about a son-father relationship set between London and Ghana, has won its author the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize. 

Caught by the River: Lost to the Sea – “Lisa Woollett’s Lost to the Sea explores where mythology and reality meet on Britain and Ireland’s margins.  Its author has an eye for detail, finds Tom Bolton — and for the strange, the inexplicable, the funny and the unforgettable.” 

The Dial: Erdoğan’s Relentless Campaign Against Writers – “The legal case against Elif Shafak is part of the president’s wider crackdown on Turkey’s academics and press freedom,” says Kaya Genç.

Arts Hub: Book review: Thunderhead, Miranda Darling – Catherine C Turner describes Thunderhead, Darling’s pacy Sydney-based thriller, as a novella “inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway,” which “explores coercive control.”

Hyperallergic: Tracing the 500-Year History of the English Dictionary – “An exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York shows that lexicographers are just like us: petty, creative, and political,” finds Daniel Larkin.

Pop Matters: Zionism, Belonging, and George Eliot’s ‘Daniel Deronda – “George Eliot was not Jewish, but her 1876 novel Daniel Deronda took on the ‘Jewish question’ and brought forth the concept of Zionism with knowledge and grace,” argues Piper Dutton.

Quantara.de: Always subversive – “Playing with language in his short-short collection Sour Grapes – now in English translation – Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer doesn’t hesitate to employ the winking humour, quick reversals and archetypes that are a part of his wide appeal.”

NPR: My Octopus Teacher’s Craig Foster dives into the ocean again in ‘Amphibious Soul’ – “Nature’s healing power is an immensely personal focus for [Craig] Foster,” says Barbara J. King in her review of Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World. “He made his film [My Octopus Teacher] after being burned out from long, grinding hours at work. After the release of the film, he suffered from insomnia.”

JSTOR Daily: Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov – “Living in exile in Germany, the young New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield found solace in studying—and copying—Chekhov’s short stories,” says Emily Zarevich. 

The Idea Logical Company: Checking facts with players who are still in the game – Mike Shatzkin, an “acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry,” shares a few thoughts on the history behind publishing seasons.

Cleveland Review of Books: Ethics of “Serious Culture”: On Greg Jackson’s “The Dimensions of a Cave” – Nathan Motulsky burrows deep into Greg Jackson’s debut science fiction novel The Dimensions of a Cave – a journey into networks of power that puts humanity and idealism under the spotlight.

Quill & Quire: Misty Pratt’s own experiences inspired her book on women and the mental health–care system – Canadian author Misty Pratt’s All In Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women’s Mental Health is, says Anne Thériault, “wide in scope, touching on many ways that patriarchal systems have impacted both women’s mental health and the ways that the mental-health system treats women.”

The National: Arabian Nightmares: How a Lebanese publisher is reviving Arab horror with a new anthology – Razmig Bedirian reports: “The project has already surpassed its $10,000 Kickstarter goal, indicating a marked appetite for scary stories in the region.”

The Millions: Against ‘Latin American Literature’ – In this piece arguing against the term ‘Latin America literature,’ Nicolás Medina Mora writes: “…if one thinks about it for a moment, it becomes clear that “Latin America” does not exist as a material reality.”

DW: Jenny Erpenbeck: Germany’s least-known famous author – “She’s been shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize, tipped for a Literature Nobel and received worldwide acclaim — yet she’s relatively unknown in her home country of Germany,” finds Suzanne Cords.

The Daily Star: ‘Small World City’ Issue 04: Another dosage of the beautiful and the haunted – “The latest offering from the online literary journal feels, in many respects, like their most polished work yet,” says Raian Abedin.

CNN: These books offer breezy escapism. That doesn’t mean they’re silly – “What exactly constitutes a beach read? And where did that idea come from?” asks Harmeet Kaur.

Retail Gazette: BookTok made me buy it: How TikTok is driving a book-buying renaissance – Aoife Morgan looks at the way TikTok is currently boosting a book-buying renaissance in the UK.

Star Tribune: ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ writer Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler pulls back the curtain – “Nonfiction: Memoir And Then? And Then? What Else? finally reveals where that ridiculous pseudonym came from,” says Marion Winik.

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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: Books, Craig Foster, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lisa Woollett, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Nicola Davies, Wales Book of the Year 2024