Winding Up the Week #392

An end of week recap

“No one who loves life can ignore literature, and no one who loves literature can ignore life.”
– Laura Esquivel

I’m rather behind with everyone’s announcements at present but will attempt, over the next couple of weeks, to catch up with those that should already have been mentioned. In addition, of course, to all the usual book blather. For those curious to know about the recent Moomin-themed wedding, a post is in the pipeline.

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.

* Almost Overlooked *

I would like to share a handful of features from weeks deceased, which shouldn’t have gone unmentioned at the time as they were thoroughly engaging. These include Jan Hicks’s Boulder at What I Think About When I Think About Reading, her in-depth review of the Spanish poet and writer Eva Baltasar’s continued exploration of “what it means to be a gay woman in the 21st century” (from a novel of the same name) – described by Jan as “a dramatic story that [she] couldn’t look away from.” Over at This Reading Life, in Voyagers | Lauren Fuge, Brona made a plucky attempt to tell us about the “compelling climate and environment narrative” in Voyagers: Our journey into the Anthropocene whilst in the midst of moving into her new home in the Blue Mountains’ region of New South Wales. At The Rivendale Review, the ever-engaging Michael Graeme shared a few memories of a rainy day in Keswick in his charmingly entertaining piece, On my bookshelf – The Rain Horse – Ted Hughes. Other slightly older features worthy of your perusal, I would suggest, are What Rules? Virginia Woolf’s The Years (Victoria Best, Tales from the Reading Room); New Books: Autumn 2024 (Anna Iltnere, Sea Library Magazine); Unearthing (2023) by Kyo Maclear (Claire McAlpine, Word by Word) and… Oh dear, there are far too many past posts deserving to be read. Perhaps, in future, I should make this section (or something similar) a semi-regular presence in my wind up. What say you?

* A Sad End to Summer *

For a decade Cathy Brown of 746 Books has diligently hosted 20 Books of Summer, a season-long reading event that challenges participants to clear a sizeable chunk of books from their tottering TBR stacks within a three-month period. Speak to almost any book blogger around the globe and you generally find they have taken part in at least one of these summertime readathons – though, a good few of them have joined in all ten. In Cathy’s final post from her most recent quest, A Goodbye to 20 Books of Summer (in more ways than one!), we discover she is to “bow out of hosting duties for the final time” due to “work pressures and family needs”. Much as she loves organising the “challenge and the sense of community it fosters,” she has “struggled in the past” to “give it the time [she believes] it deserves.” Nevertheless, she is happy for the event to continue with another blogger (or bloggers) at the helm – indeed, she may well become a participant next year. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank Cathy for all the fun, camaraderie and bookish wisdom imparted over the years. Our community of lit lovers will miss her good humour and expert guidance.

* One Hundred Years of Joan Aiken *

With all that has been happening recently, I missed sharing Lizza Aiken’s delightful post about her mother’s centenary: Joan Aiken’s Centenary – A Life in Stories. Born on 4^th September 1924, Joan Aiken, the much-loved British author specialising in supernatural fiction and children’s alternative history novels, “spent years honing her craft, practising first on her younger brother, and then of course on her children, for whom she realised stories became like a bandage to protect [them] from terrible unhappiness in the real world, and also to create the strongest family bond of shared memories.” Whether an Aiken aficionado or merely inquisitive about her remarkable body of work, I strongly suggest you read this touchingly personal piece celebrating her writerly life.

This all ties in rather well with a reminder that Witch Week is set to return at the end of October. Co-hosted by Chris Lovegrove and Lizzie Ross, the event this year, according to Chris’s recent feature Joan Aiken 1924–2004, will be “specially extended [to include] posts by guest bloggers on Joan’s life and work”. In addition, says Lizzie, “a read-along discussion of The Serial Garden” will take place. Please see WUTW #381 for my original announcement of Witch Week 2024.

* Sci-Fi Month Will Be Out of This World *

Imyril of There’s Always Room For One More is heading back to Earth on the 1^st November with the always well-received SciFiMonth – an “annual celebration of all things SFnal.” Those joining the crew can look forward to “a month of shared geekery and joy” with “more adventures through time, space and strange dimensions.” The event, which takes place “across blogs and social media”, is created for those with “a soft spot for science fiction”. There will be much “watching, listening to, playing through and talking about tales of first contact and ancient civilisations, scientific exploration and misdemeanours, alternate timelines and parallel dimensions,” as well as “reviews, interviews, book tags, recommendations, and rapidly expanding TBRs”. What’s more, everyone is invited “along for the ride.” So, please head over to the landing site at Back to the future: SciFiMonth 2024 for all you need to know about time travel taking part.

* 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 earlier this month:

The Iris Murdoch Society Conference 2024 – I couldn’t resist sharing Liz Dexter’s description of participating in the Eleventh International Iris Murdoch Conference, which took place at the University of Chichester between 30^th August and 1^st September. In Adventures in reading, running and working from home, Liz tells us she “submitted an abstract” for the event “back in the spring,” after rereading all Murdoch’s novels for her tremendous literary challenge: The Great Iris Murdoch Readalong Project November 2017 – December 2019 – which left her feeling she could probably “make something out of the way [she’d] aged past the characters in the novels [since first reading them] and how [she’d] shared [her] readings in different ways”. Submission accepted, we receive the lowdown on all that happened over the three days, from her journey there and campus accommodation to fellow attendees and her successful delivery of Ageing into Murdoch’s Main Characters: Pluralities of Re-readings and Disseminations. Well done, Liz. I only wish I could have been there to see you present your thought-provoking paper. (N.B. If you would like to read Liz’s paper, please contact her and she will happily share it via email.)

* 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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Scremes Report: .010 This reading experience changed me – Shawn Creemer “went to the woods with 16 strangers and no cell coverage [on a literary retreat with Page Break] and came back a new man.”

JSTOR Daily: When Aldous Huxley Dropped Acid – “In Hollywood, the esteemed ex-pat made the acquaintance of Alfred Hubbard, a Kentucky-born smuggler of ill-repute who introduced him to a brave, new world,” finds Paul Lindholdt.

The Yale Review: Is Blasphemy Illiberal? – Len Gutkin on “Salman Rushdie’s thoroughly modern controversies.”

BBC Culture: ‘Rubbish and dull. Pointless’: How Lord of the Flies was rescued from the reject pile – “William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies was first published on 17 September 1954 and is now recognised as a classic. In History looks at how Golding’s story of English schoolboys and their descent into barbarism narrowly escaped being thrown in the bin.”

The Walrus: Self-Diagnosis Is Making Memoir Too Predictable – “The joy of reading memoir is to watch another mind puzzle through its inner mechanics [but if] the outcome is already decided, why bother?” wonders Tajja Isen.

Persuasion: Scenes From The Literary Blacklist – According to Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings: “Widespread censorship is killing writers’ careers before they begin.”

Slate: Station Eleven, 10 Years Later – “Emily St. John Mandel on [Station Eleven] her eerily prescient sci-fi classic—and what she’d change about it now.”

Poetry Foundation: In Defense of Mimicry – Johannes Göransson on “translation, the body, and excess.”

Tablet: Judith Butler vs. Judy! – Blake Smith shares his views on how “the queer theorist went from celebrating ironic distance and deconstructing drag shows to straight-faced gender totalitarianism.”

JSTOR Daily: L. M. Montgomery’s Plain Jane – “Though not as well known as Anne of Green Gables,” Emily Zarevich finds “Montgomery’s Jane of Lantern Hill also explores domesticity, freedom, and, yes, Prince Edward Island.”

Aeon: Laughing shores – “Sailors, exiles, merchants and philosophers: [Giordano Lipari on] how the ancient Greeks played with language to express a seaborne imagination.”

The Bookseller: Michael Malay, Helen Czerski and Katya Balen win Wainwright Prize 2024 – This year’s Wainwright Prize winning books highlight the exploration of nature on a global scale through migration, finding beauty in the everyday and celebrating the deep connections between humanity and nature through powerful storytelling.

Dissent: The Literature of Uyghur Disappearance – Nic Cavell discusses three recently published books offering “a searing portrait of the calculated brutality of the ongoing Uyghur genocide” in China.

The Marginalian: The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning – Bulgarian writer, Maria Popova, shares her thoughts on Something in the Woods Loves You, Jarod Anderson’s “poignant meditation on surviving the darkest recesses of human nature…”.

Hedgehog Review: The Analyst and the Bard – In her review, Anna Ballan describes Stephen Greenblatt’s and Adam Phillips’s Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud as “a fresh injection of lifeblood into a conversation now very old” and “a work that raises more questions than it can possibly be expected to answer.”

Brittle Paper: These are the African Books Longlisted on Prestigious French Prizes Prix Goncourt and Prix Renaudot – “The longlists for the 2024 Goncourt and Renaudot Prizes feature five African authors, reports Francophone literary platform Afrolivresque.”

Empty Railroad Gulch: Literary World – Aaron Lake Smith recalls “New York publishing in the late-aughts.”

The Print: Is Hindi literature adapting to survive? It has more Chetan Bhagats than Omprakash Valmikis – “Greats such as Premchand, Nirala, and Nirmal Verma loom large in Hindi literature. Dalit-Bahujan voices like Omprakash Valmiki and Tulsiram shook status quo, but a new canon is still missing,” believes Krishan Murari.

ArtsHub: Charlotte Wood Shortlisted for 2024 Booker Prize – “The beloved author [of Stone Yard Devotional] is the first Australian writer to be shortlisted in a decade. No Australian woman has ever won the prize,” says David Burton.

AP News: Leading Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury dies at 76 – “Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury who dedicated much of his writings to the Palestinian cause and taught at universities around the world, making him one of Lebanon’s most prominent intellectuals, has died” at the age of 76,” reports Bassem Mroue.

Literary Hub: The Woman Who Invented “Dark Fantasy.” How Gertrude Barrows Bennett Popularized the Fantastic – In an excerpt from The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories, Lisa Yaszek discusses “the woman known as Francis Stevens, an early female pioneer of American genre fiction.”

Vulture: Garth Greenwell’s Grand Romance – “The author explores the tender side of long-term partnership amid a health crisis in [Small Rain] his best novel yet,” writes Sarah Thankam Mathews.

Literary Hub: On the Yemeni Jewish Tradition of Musical Storytelling – Ayelet Tsabari, author of Songs for the Brokenhearted, “finds her literary voice through her ancestors.”

NPR: Russian publishers in exile release books the Kremlin would ban – “In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, writing about certain subjects […] can mean prison time. But for a new generation of Russian writers living in exile, efforts to resist censorship are alive and well,” says Michele Kelemen.

Publishers Weekly: 2024 National Book Award Longlists Announced – Sophia Stewart shares the National Book Foundation’s longlist for the 2024 National Book Award in five categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature.

Vintage: Where to start reading Roberto Bolaño’s books – “From novels to short stories, Bolaño’s writing is characterised by its raw honesty, unflinching exploration of human nature, and a touch of the surreal. Discover Latin America’s voice of a generation with this essential guide to his work.”

TIME: There Will Never Be Another Sally Rooney – “With Intermezzo comes the latest wave of envy and desire to replicate the superstar author’s sales and popularity. But she stands alone,” says Kate Dwyer.

The Washington Post: Yuval Noah Harari takes on AI – “In his latest book, Nexus, the historian examines the history of information networks and the challenges posed by the AI revolution,” finds Justin Smith-Ruiu.

Bookforum: Zoom and Doom – Adam Wilson reviews My First Book, “Honor Levy’s piety-defying debut” short story collection.

The Dial: Don’t Take Advice From a Habsburg – “Eduard Habsburg, with the help of his royal ancestors, wants to fix your marriage, your soul, and your politics,” writes Natasha Wheatley.

Five Books: The best books on Mountaineering – The award-winning author and climber Anna Fleming shares with Cal Flyn, “five fascinating mountaineering books that combine history, nature, and sheer adventure.”

The Connexion: Has tomb of French poet Joachim du Bellay been found 500 years on? – “Some researchers are convinced that the tomb belongs to the ‘missing’ Renaissance poet,” finds Hannah Thompson.

The Telegraph (via MSN): Mariana Enriquez: ‘In Argentina, an entire generation was gaslighted’ – Claire Allfree reveals the words of “the new superstar of South American horror on Falklands propaganda, death squads and the evil she ‘can’t stop writing about.”

Reactor: Jo Walton’s Reading List – “From Le Guin to Agatha Christie, new time travel novels to terrible twee Victorian fairy tales, all of these books are interesting (if not strictly good) …” – The Welsh Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer Jo Walton selects her favourite reads from last month. 

National Post: Giller Prize drops Scotiabank’s name from the literary prize title after Israel-related protests – Canada’s Giller prize (formerly known as the Scotiabank Giller prize) has decided to keep the bank as its main sponsor but remove the name from its prize, reports Nicole Thompson.

Atlas Obscura: What Researchers Learned From the World’s Oldest Cookbook – “Now, you can view—and cook from—these nearly 4,000-year-old ancient Babylonian recipe tablets,” says Diana Hubbell.

The Guardian: Surgery, shame and self-erasure: four female writers on the tyranny of impossible beauty standards – “How did Botox become so popular? And why are teenage girls using anti-wrinkle cream? As a new film, The Substance, considers our obsession with youth and good looks, writers reflect on how this has shaped their lives.”

Independent: The name’s Bond… ‘Biffy’ Bond? The real-life sailor, spy and friend of Ian Fleming who ‘inspired 007’ – Emma Guinness discovers the “Bond-like adventures of Biffy began in 1916 in Russia and appear straight from the pages of 007 thrillers.”

The Conversation: What is Australia looking for in its poet laureate? Literary and popular poetry don’t always intersect – “The inaugural Australian poet laureate will be appointed in 2025”, says Peter Kirkpatrick. “But there is still no clear indication of how a suitable candidate will be selected, what criteria will be used, and the precise nature of the role.”

Slate: Inside the Heated Controversy That’s Tearing a Writing Community Apart – Laura Wheatman Hill discovers that “bestselling authors are distancing themselves from NaNoWriMo after the nonprofit released a statement that appeared to endorse the use of bots to write novels.”

The Home of Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie: For the Love of Dogs – To celebrate Agatha Christie’s birthday on 15^th September, the author’s official website traced her “love of pets from an initial 5^th birthday present of her own puppy to her care for dogs that continued well into her older years at home with Max, and throughout her stories.”

The Korea Times: Writers’ clan chief pushes for digital shift to revitalize Koreans’ reading habits – In an interview with Baek Byung-yeul, president of the Korean Writers’ Association Kim Ho-woon “advocates for responsible AI use in creative fields.”

Deadline: ‘Good Omens’: Production Paused On Amazon Drama From Neil Gaiman – “Production has been paused on the third and final season of fantasy drama Good Omens, the Neil Gaiman drama for Amazon that’s shooting in Scotland,” reveals Lynette Rice.

Language Arts: Bottoms Up: Fall Books & Bespoke Cocktails – “Something for the ghosts, divas, and neurotic artists within us all” – a selection of cocktail recipes to pair with your autumn reads.

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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.