An end of week recap

“I finally found a setting for despair…So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything…”
– Philip K. Dick

We are heading off to Liverpool this weekend to spend time with friends and celebrate a wedding, which is the reason why this post is a little (ahem!) early. However, I hope to see you at the usual time next Saturday.

As ever, 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.

* Where Will All the Love Go? *

On 5^th November, as we waited to see who would be elected 47^th President of the United States and Leader of the Free World, Michelle, a Midwest teacher and blogger, posted a short but thoughtful piece about her sense of being “torn between anxiety and fear and anger.” While her reflections do not relate to books (so arguably don’t belong here), I feel her words are well worth reading, even after the event. >> Going to Bed Not Knowing What World I’ll Wake Up To >>

* Almost Overlooked *

Following a thoroughly enjoyable Moomin Week (26^th August to 1^st September), our official Moominmistress, Mallika Ramachandran of Literary Potpourri, along with Emma from Words and Peace, set off on a fresh Moomin adventure in the form of a sequence of buddy reads. Since Emma had only followed the original series of books as far as Comet in Moominland, it was decided they would start immediately with Finn Family Moomintroll and continue thereafter at the rate of one a month. The discussions were “divided up into four posts, each focusing on two chapters” and they appeared alternately on Mallika’s and Emma’s blogs. To follow their thoughts on and insights into this delightful series, you should begin with Diving Deeper into Moominland: Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson: Buddy Read before moving on to Buddy Read: Finn Family Moomintroll chapters 2 and 3, up to the most recent Buddy Read: The Exploits of Moominpappa: chapters 5 and 6. The challenge is ongoing, so please look out for the next installment, which a little bird tells me should appear in “early December”.

* Books Right Up Your Street *

Preparations for the third Dean Street December are underway at Adventures in reading, running and working from home, and host Liz Dexter is especially excited this year because Dean Street Press – “the indie publisher […] devoted to finding and republishing good fiction and non-fiction” – has revived Furrowed Middlebrow, its imprint dedicated to women writers of the early and mid-twentieth century. Commencing 1^st December, a special page will be created where you can share posts about DSP books read during the month. Before you upload these features to your blogs and other platforms, Liz would appreciate you creating a link back to the official DSD challenge hub, then leaving her a comment with a link to your review. She also requests that you use “the hashtag #DeanStreetDecember24” when mentioning the event on social media. For full details, please make your way down Dean Street December is coming again for 2024!!

* 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 this week:

Book review – “The Days of Abandonment” by Elena Ferrante (And my 500th post!) – I am pleased to feature Julia Rice’s 500^th post for Julia’s Books: a review of the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante’s 2002 novel The Days of Abandonment, about a woman living in Turin whose husband unexpectedly walks out on her after fifteen years to hook up with the “daughter of a friend” (described here as being “barely an adult”). Her “mental state becomes increasingly precarious and her behaviour erratic” once he has gone, and she struggles to care for “her two children and the family dog”. The storyline allows Ferrante to explore “themes of women’s place in marriage […], male fecklessness, and social expectations of the sexes”. Julia found it “intense” and “inexorably bleak” in places, bringing back painful memories of her own, but despite it being translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, the writer’s “powerful authorial voice” came through and the narrator’s “interior world [provided] fertile ground” for her imagination. The book, we are told, is both “visceral and […] deeply feminine.”

* 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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The Conversation: Michelle de Kretser writes back to the ‘Woolfmother’ in Theory & Practice – Celebrated Australian novelist Michelle de Kretser’s latest book, Theory & Practice, about young woman arriving in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf, blends “fiction, essay and memoir, [using] a hybrid form to comment on form itself” and “functions as a potent reminder that the purpose of art is not always distinct from the purpose of life”. 

Literary Review: Changed in a Minute – For the first time, in The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath edited by Peter K Steinberg, all Plath’s surviving prose has been gathered in a single volume. Fiona Sampson sifts it for evidence of how the young poet became the iconic figure familiar to us now.

Reactor: Grief Is the Thing Worth Feeling: On Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story – Sarah McCarry explores cult classic children’s book and film The Neverending Story, as well as how German writer Michael Ende’s experience living under Nazism informed his writing on resistance and grief.

The Telegraph: Margaret Atwood: ‘I wouldn’t want to live forever’ – “The author’s dystopian thriller series has inspired a new visionary ballet by choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor and composer Max Richter”, finds Mick Brown.

The Minnesota Star Tribune: ‘Canoes’ may be the best collection of short stories this year – All “eight tales are exquisite”, says May-lee Chai of the French author Maylis de Kerangal’s new short story collection, Canoes.

The Marginalian: A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the Relationship Between Creativity and Democracy – “The English novelist, essayist, and broadcaster E.M Forster”, Maria Popova tells us, examined the “humanity we call empathy”, which is brought to the fore in times of crisis, in a piece of writing entitled ‘What I Believe’ – an essay included in his 1951 collection, Two Cheers for Democracy.

The Washington Post: The heartbreak behind Dorothy Parker’s wit – “How the resident quipster at the Algonquin Round Table became American literature’s cautionary tale.”

Aeon: Is beauty natural? – “Charles Darwin was as fascinated by extravagant ornament in nature as Jane Austen was in culture. Did their explanations agree?” asks Abigail Tulenko.

Le Monde: Kamel Daoud wins Prix Goncourt literary award for ‘Houris’ – “Daoud is the first Algerian to win the prestigious French award. His novel [Houris] is a gripping evocation of Algeria’s ‘black decade’ (1992-2002)”, says Gladys Marivat.

Washington Independent Review of Books: Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare – “This debut collection [Megan Kamalei Kakimoto’s Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare] is a rich tapestry of occupation, resistance, and Hawaiian identity”, reveals Molly McGinnis.

Literary Hub: Magical Birds, Small Fortunes, and Time Loops: November’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books – Natalie Zutter with a “cornucopia of new books from Carrie Vaughn, Tasha Suri, Haruki Murakami” and others.

The Guardian: Siri Hustvedt to write a book about her late husband Paul Auster – Lucy Knight reports: “The American writer is 120 pages into a memoir about her relationship with the New York Trilogy author, entitled Ghost Stories”.

BBC Culture: Alan Hollinghurst: The Booker Prize-winning writer whose novels unbutton the sex lives of Britain’s gay social elite – “Ever since his 1988 debut The Swimming-Pool Library caused a stir, Hollinghurst has captured the hedonism of affluent gay men with both candour and literary elegance”, says Lillian Crawford.

Aeon: The city of wisdom – In this fascinating piece on storytelling being integral to the success of doing science, Jamie Zvirzdin argues against being “intimidated by physics [as] it is made of stories and metaphors.” Indeed, if we learn these,” she says, “the field will open up” to us.

Asharq Al-Awsat: Fading Literature: Delhi’s Famed Urdu Bazaar on Last Legs – “Today, streets [in Old Delhi] once crowded with Urdu bookstores abuzz with scholars debating literature are now thick with the aroma of sizzling kebabs from the restaurants that have replaced them.”

Portland Press Herald: Booker finalist ‘The Safekeep’ is a moving look at history’s horrors – Yael van der Wouden’s historical novel, The Safekeep is, says Talya Zax, “about a Dutch woman in 1961 forced to address her family’s past.”

Words Without Borders: “The Value of Your Body”: Selfhood and Ownership in Suzumi Suzuki’s Gifted – The Japanese novella Gifted “explores what it would require for a woman to fully own her own body,” writes critic Rebecca Hussey.

The Korea Times: Brother Anthony, pioneer in Korean literature translation – Brother Anthony tells Kim Ji-soo: “More important than Nobel recognition is writing authentic, interesting work”.

TNR: Jessica Mitford’s Escape From Fascism – “Hons and Rebels might easily be mistaken for a freewheeling memoir of aristocratic life.” However, as Noah McCormack discovers, “it’s also a study of intense ideological conflict in a family.”

The American Scholar: Masters of Horror and Magic – “The German folklorists who helped build a nation” – Anne Matthews on The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by Ann Schmiesing. 

The Telegraph: One journalist’s extraordinary search for a ‘lost’ continent – “Laurence Blair’s history of South America, Patria, mixes vivid historic detail with travels so intrepid they could have their own TV series”, says Alex Diggins.

The Believer: An Interview with Kate Zambreno – Danielle Dutton talked on Zoom to American novelist, essayist and critic Kate Zambreno about “shitty landlords, celebrity, the publishing industry, genre anxiety, notebooks, foam” and much more.

Counter Craft: Angela Carter and the “So Fucking What?” Approach to Writing – The Bloody Chamber tends to be described as a “book of feminist fairy tale retellings, although it’s a bit looser than that”, says Lincoln Michel in this piece on Angela Carter’s willingness “to be lush, to break rules, to bend form.”

Africa Is a Country: Writers for a new world – “The debacle around Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest book [The Message] shows us that no matter a writer’s individual acclaim, the liberal media establishment will never tolerate anything that fundamentally challenges its racist edifice”, writes Fezokuhle Mthonti.

The British Columbia Review: Tragedies and statistics – Ryan Frawley reviews Black Sunflowers, the debut novel of Cynthia LeBrun, which is based on family memories and probes the “pitch-black reality of the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine that is estimated to have killed up to five million Ukrainians in the early 1930s.”

Commonweal: When Books Were Handmade – Tom Verde on The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts, in which “Christopher de Hamel profiles the people behind a millennium of medieval manuscripts”.

New York Journal of Books: The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts – Louis Bayard’s historical novel The Wildes – described by the author as “biographical fiction” – is “a powerful family portrait” of Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright’s imprisonment for homosexuality.

ZYZZYVA: ‘Bad’ Women: ‘Shame on You’ by Melissa Petro – Melissa Petro’s “investigative memoir,” Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, is an in-depth investigation into the modern epidemic of shame in our society – reviewed here by Mieke Marple.

NLR Sidecar: Yellow Butterflies – In an edited extract from Vijay Prashad’s forthcoming book, Ten Books That Changed My World, we are introduced to Garcia Márquez’s Colombia.

Guardian Australia: Rapture by Emily Maguire review – tale of medieval female pope feels fresh and intimate – Rapture by the Australian author Emily Maguire is, says Bec Kavanagh, a “sensual account of a woman seeking knowledge and God in a man’s world”, which “brings us close to matters of faith and the body”. 

LARB: A Weapon Straining Against Its Nature – Shinjini Dey shares her thoughts on Navola, an historical fantasy novel (the sort for adults but with dragons) by Paolo Bacigalupi.

The MITT Press Reader: Rosmarie Waldrop: ‘Other Influences’ – In this essay excerpted from Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry, edited by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone, the “celebrated poet explores how her early experiences influenced her understanding of form and the role of silence in poetry.”

Beyond the Bookshelf: From Bean to Brew and Beyond – Matthew Long explores “coffee’s influence on culture and creativity” in Mark Pendergrast’s Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World.

Notebooks: Asphalt literature – German writer and lecturer Norman explains asphalt or metropolitan literature thus: “Asphalt is closely linked to European modernity, to the automobile, to the electrified city.” 

Air Mail: Varieties of Humbug – What makes The Wizard of Oz so fascinating? More than a century after L. Frank Baum first authored the story, Errol Morris explores Dorothy and Toto’s enduring magic.

Asian Age: Sarala Puraskar for Eminent feminist writer Sarojini Sahoo – “Renowned feminist author Sarojini Sahoo [has been] awarded the esteemed Sarala Puraskar”, which “honours Odia literary talent”.

The Walrus: IYKYK: When Novels Speak a Language Only Part of the Internet Gets – “Every time the names of products or microcelebrities appear in a book, they prick us like a targeted ad”, observes Greta Rainbow.

The Asahi Shimbun: Chinese expats open bookstores in Japan to meet growing demand – “Bookstores and publishing firms operated by and for Chinese residents in Japan are on the rise”, reports Saori Kuroda.

The Verge: Kindle Colorsoft owners complain of a yellow bar on the e-reader’s screen – “Amazon says it’s looking into customer reports that its first color Kindle e-reader’s display has a discolored band on the bottom.”

The Seattle Times: Seattle-area romantasy convention brings together readers, authors – At the Books, Gowns & Crowns convention, Jackie Varriano and Ana Sofia Knauf found an enthusiastically geeky community and seriously impressive cosplay.

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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: #DeanStreetDecember24, Buddy Reads, Carrie Vaughn, Dean Street December, Dean Street Press, Elena Ferrante, Furrowed Middlebrow, Laurence Blair, Michelle de Krester, Moomin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Philip K. Dick, Tove Jansson