An end of week recap

“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.”
– Michael Crichton

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.

* A Bonnets Up for Janeites *

In Stories & Shout Outs #73, Bronwyn of This Reading Life suggests hosting an exciting, year-long “reading project”, namely: Reading Jane Austen 2025. At present she’s still unsure of its exact format but is keen to know if others would be interested in helping her celebrate Austen’s 250^th birthday by reading one of the author’s books every second month at the rate of “a chapter-a-day.” She will also include “movie and TV adaptations, spin-offs, retellings, […] biographies” and whatever else takes her (and your) fancy between now and then. Would you care to join Brona’s Janefest? Please share your #ReadingAusten2025 thoughts and suggestions in the comments section of her post.

* Celebrate Ibero Literature This Month *

Already under way at Winstonsdad’s Blog is Stu’s annual Spanish Portuguese Lit Month, which has appeared in various guises since 2010. He intends, this year, to “review a book from Charco Press as they have brought out so many great books translated from Spanish and Portuguese from around Latin America” and then, during the final week of July, he will encourage participants to select and review “a book by the Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes” – however, the choice is yours and Stu says he is looking forward to discovering which authors and works you choose to read. For all the gen on taking part, please head over to Spanish Portuguese lit month the 2024 Edition and select either one or both of the striking images to adorn your blogs.

* Irresistible Items *

Umpteen fascinating articles appeared on my bookdar last week. I generally make a point of tweeting/x-ing (not to mention tooting and 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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Dedalus Books: Robert Irwin (1946-2024) – The British scholar and writer Robert Irwin, most widely known for his 1983 fantasy novel The Arabian Nightmare, passed away on 28^th June at the age of 77. 

The Millions: Most Anticipated: The Great Summer 2024 Preview – “Summer has arrived, and with it, a glut of great books. Some we’ve already read in galley form,” says editor Sophia Stewart, “others we’re simply eager to devour based on their authors, subjects, or blurbs. [She hopes] you find your next summer read among them.” 

The Guardian: Anita Desai: ‘After I left India, I had to train myself to express my opinions’ – “At 87, the Indian author has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times and has written her first novel in a decade. She talks [to Emma Brockes] about leaving India to teach and write around the world – and feeling like a stranger everywhere.” 

Brisbane Times: Simon set out to walk the entire length of the Brisbane River. Then the rains came – A 344-kilometre journey during the 2022 floods proved an education, to say the least. Simon Cleary shares what he learnt in Everything is Water.

MERIP: Speculative Climate Futures in Arab Literature – “There is no fixed terminology used for cli fi (climate fiction) in Arabic,” says Marcia Lynx Qualey, though there are “works concerned with the […] long-term shifts in weather patterns sparked by greenhouse gas emissions, [which] might be called adab taghayyur al-manakh (‘literature of climate change’) …”

New Eastern Europe: Exploring crime fiction, war and Ukrainian literature – Kinga Anna Gajda interviews crime author Kseniya Tsyhanchuk.

Inverse: Hollywood’s Newest Money-Making Scheme Is… Books – “Buying and selling movie scripts,” says Zach Schonfeld, “has been a thing since Pulp Fiction, but now, Hollywood is transforming the trend from a nerdy side-hustle to a source of revenue and prestige.”

High North News: Icelandic Author Couple: Literature Allows Us To Explore Everything, Including the End of the World – Icelandic authors Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir and Jón Kalman Stefánsson debate “the resilience in the North” as part of the High Noon series hosted by Arne O. Holm.

BBC Wales: Climate-crisis journey wins Wales Book of the Year – “A book exploring the impact of climate change has been named Wales Book of the Year.”

InsideHook: “Jaws” Turns 50 Next Year, and It’s Getting a Documentary – “The film, directed by Spielberg documentarian Laurent Bouzereau, will also cover Peter Benchley’s novel.”

Literary Hub: Dragon Heists and Choose-Your-Own-Futures: July’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books – Natalie Zutter with some “summer stunners” ranging from Peng Shepherd and Aliette de Bodard, to China Miéville and Keanu Reeves.

Nation: Why we are celebrating Ngugi wa Thiong’o – “Ngugi’s work deepened my understanding of resistance,” says conflict resolution strategist Mukurima Kariuki.  “His impact on literature in Africa cannot be overstated.”

Slate: The Fall – Gail Godwin broke her neck at age 85. The result: [Getting to Know Death: A Meditation is] a slim, powerful, beautiful book about the final years,” writes Laura Miller.

Deadline: Harry Potter Cover Art Fetches Record Price Of $1.9M At Auction – “The original watercolour illustration for the cover of Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in author J.K. Rowling’s famous series, is now the most expensive piece of Potter-related memorabilia ever sold at auction,” reports Bruce Haring.

CBC Books: Alicia Elliott and Brandi Bird among winners of 2024 Indigenous Voices Awards – “Since 2017, the [Indigenous Voices Awards] have recognized emerging Indigenous writers across Canada for works in English, French and Indigenous languages.” This year, “Mohawk writer Alicia Elliott and Treaty 1 territory-based writer Brandi Bird are among [the] winners.”

TNS: Rediscovering an icon – Sara Danial on “bringing to life the prose and narratives that define Hijab Imtiaz Ali’s work” in Belles-Lettres: Writings of Hijab Imtiaz Ali.

ABC News: Miles Franklin Literary Award 2024 shortlist: Book experts on the surprises and likely winner of Australia’s biggest literary award – “The shortlist for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award has now been announced, with six authors selected from the longlist to vie for Australia’s most prestigious literary award.”

Cleveland Review of Books: The Size of Life: On Dino Buzzati’s “The Singularity” – In his pioneering work of Italian science fiction, The Singularity, Ben Cosman discovers the novelist, short story writer, painter and poet Dino Buzzati-Traverso (1906-1972) makes a case for the necessary limitations of the “wretched flesh” in which we experience life.

The Conversation: Shirley Jackson: celebrating 75 years of taut, ambiguous, disturbing stories – “In June 1948, readers of The New Yorker magazine were confronted by one of the most disturbing short stories of the 20th century [:] The Lottery, written by a young writer named Shirley Jackson,” recalls Bernice M. Murphy.

Qantara.de: The absurdist frame – Marcia Lynx Qualey writes: “In Mohamed Choukri’s varied and experimental collection Tales of Tangier the hyperreal meets the bizarre. The off-kilter stories put forward by the late author seem to be set spinning on their edges, so fast and wild they might just fly off the page.” 

Women’s Prize: Summer Reading Recommendations 2024 – “What are your essential ingredients for a good summer holiday?” Here are a some suggested “must-have holiday books” from a few “Women’s Prize pals.” 

Los Angeles Times: Meet the translator turning American readers on to Latin American superstars – “Are you an English-language reader of Latin American literature?” asks Jim Ruland. If so, he invites you to “meet Megan McDowell, a translator working with literary stars.”

Radio Free Asia: Censored back home, Hong Kong authors are publishing in Taiwan – “The city’s authors are taking their thoughts and memories elsewhere, as a new publishing base emerges in exile,” reports Chen Yee-ching.

Independent: Albania’s world-renowned novelist Ismail Kadare dies at 88 – The acclaimed Albanian novelist, Ismail Kadare – author of The General of the Dead Army – has died in a Tirana hospital after suffering a heart attack.

Jacobin: The Devil and Dennis Potter – “In Dennis Potter’s banned TV play Brimstone and Treacle, the Devil is very real indeed,” says Dominic Fox – and, what’s more, “it was too much for the BBC to handle.”

Big Issue: Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin review – Parisian feminism through the ages – In Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding, “two couples live in the same Paris apartment, in 1972 and 2019, emphasising the passage of time.”

Open Book: Lunar Forests, Interplanetary War, and Cyberpunk Heroes Are Just the Beginning in Ben Berman Ghan’s Debut Novel – “How does an author ponder the important questions of our time while creating a speculative, fictional world that hums with intelligence and humanity? It’s a tall order, but one that [Canadian] author Ben Berman Ghan is more than willing to take on “in The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits.”

BBC Europe: ‘Russia now is like 1984’: Inside a Russian dystopian library – Steve Rosenberg visits The George Orwell Library in Ivanovo, which was opened two years ago by businessman Dmitry Silin to “create a space where Russians could ‘think for themselves, instead of watching TV’”.

HKW: Award Winners Internationaler Literaturpreis 2024: Meine Katze Jugoslawien – Described by the jury as an “idiosyncratic” book bursting with “all the complexities that the realm of human emotions has to offer,” Finnish author Pajtim Statovci’s LGB novel Meine Katze Jugoslawien (My Cat Yugoslavia) has won this year’s Internationaler Literaturpreis – a major German prize for a work in translation.

The Skinny: Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? by Leah Cowan – “Leah Cowan’s latest radical book [Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? – reviewed here by Paula Lacey] is a historical look at the entanglements between the feminist movement and carcaral state, tracing narratives of both resistance and complicity.”

Reactor: The Joy of Reading Books You Don’t Entirely Understand – Molly Templeton feels it “really should be acceptable and normal to say, ‘I don’t entirely understand what I just read, but I loved it.’”

Jing Daily: How brands are harnessing luxury’s love for literature in China – Fashion writer Bethanie Ryder reports: “Brands are leaning into books and literature to show off their intellectualism and boost cultural capital. As the trend booms in China, which novel approach is resonating with consumers?”

Caught by the River: The Caught by the River Book of the Month: July – “Kathleen Jamie’s Cairn — a collection of micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments newly published by Sort of Books — is [Caught by the River’s] Book of the Month for July. With its bursts of beautiful brilliance, it is something akin to lightning, writes Annie Worsley.”

The Asahi Shimbun: Noted Japanese author Haruki Murakami is happy with first animated adaptation of his short stories – The “renowned Japanese author” Haruki Murakami has praised the adaption of his short story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by American film director Pierre Földes.

Pop Matters: Strolling Down the Beatles’ Penny Lane and Through Strawberry Fields – “Jonathan Cott provides a concise overview of two of the Beatles’ greatest songs in his book Let Me Take You Down: Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.”

ANF News: Nerîman Evdikê: We need more literary critics – Northern and Eastern Syria Literature Council spokesperson Nerîman Evdikê says: “books written in Kurdish still face many difficulties […] outside of Rojava.”

Engelsberg Ideas: The true sources of Soviet conduct – In his review of Sergey Radchenko’s To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Rodric Braithwaite learns that the Soviet Union “believed that it was manifestly destined to lead the world to a higher future but that ambition masked profound insecurities about its economic, political and military status as a great power.”

Artnet: New Study Finds Ancient Egyptian Scribes Suffered Back Pain Just Like Us – “Joint issues were caused by hours spent bent over papyrus,” finds Adnan Qiblawi.

Strange Matters: Pulitzer Bait – Max Ornstein and John Michael Colón poke fun at the recent phenomenon of “Pulitzer Bait” book titles.

Chron: Meet the dogs helping shoppers find their next reads at Houston bookshops – “These pups bring something special to these indie booksellers,” says Meredith Nudo.

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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: #ReadingAusten2025, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Aliette De Bodard, Ann Napolitano, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Charco Press, Jane Austen, Michael Crichton, Portuguese Literature, Reading Jane Austen 2025, Robert Irwin, Spanish Literature, Spanish Portuguese Lit Month 2024