An end of week recap

“People are built like houses inside- they have stairwells, spacious halls, vestibules that are always too weakly lit to count the doors into the rooms, row upon row of apartments, damp chambers, slimy, tiled bathrooms with cast-iron baths, steps with handrails taut as veins, artery-like corridors, joint-like landings, passages, guest rooms, draughty chambers into which a sudden current of warm air flows, closets, twists and turns and cubby-holes, and larders full of forgotten supplies.”
– Olga Tokarczuk

With Blue Monday looming Dementor-like over the start of next week, I thought it may be fun to make a list of happy bookish happenings to have occurred throughout history on 20^th January. Rather disappointingly, when I sat down to do some research, I was faced with a litany of wars, abductions, abdications and murders, but nothing much by way of cheerful literary events. Since it was obviously not one of my better ideas, I abandoned it forthwith. However, on the plus side, Danish poet and playwright Adam Oehlenschläger died on this day in 1850 – so at least we have something upon which to focus.

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 publications, see what folk have on their nightstands 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 Letter from the King for Mrs Dalloway *

A devotee of vintage books, Neeru (from A Hot Cup of Pleasure) is hosting a challenge to celebrate some of these lovelies reaching their one-hundredth birthday. Hundred Years Hence Reading Challenge runs until 31^st December, and you are encouraged to start right away. In order to participate, simply “read a text that was published for the first time in 1925” – selecting from novels, works of non-fiction, memoirs, essays, plays, poems and stories – then share your thoughts (being “as brief or long-winded as you want”) on a platform of your choice, before leaving a link to your post/s at Announcing: ‘Hundred Years Hence’ Reading Challenge. There are plenty of titles from which to choose by writers such as Mihail Bulgakov, Willa Cather, Ford Madox Ford, Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Marcel Proust, Edith Wharton, P. G. Wodehouse, Kate Roberts (just thought I’d throw a Welsh author into the mix), F. Scott Fitzgerald and of course, Virginia Woolf. Please use the #HYH25 hashtag when discussing the event on social media and ensure you upload your final reviews on or before 7^th January 2026.

* More? Are You Quite Sure? *

As promised in WUTW #407, here is a second crop of book blogging events currently taking place. They are: 1. 2025 SFF Title Challenge, 2. 2025 Finishing the Series Challenge, 3. Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, 4. 2025 European Reading Challenge, 5. Virtual Mount TBR 6. BookBound 24/25, 7. TBR 25 in ’25 and, breathe…

* Almost Overlooked *

I have two noteworthy, if hitherto neglected posts for you this week. (1) A fabulous piece of writing appeared at Reading In Translation last October penned by Katherine E. Young, a “literary translator from Russian” who has become the “English language voice of Azerbaijan’s most important writer” – namely, Akram Aylisli, an Azerbaijani writer, playwright, novelist and former member of parliament. In Decolonizing the Caucasus: The Curious Case of Akram Aylisli, she admits to being unable to “speak a word of any of the languages of Azerbaijan” and explains how she has achieved such a remarkable feat under these circumstances. Katherine discusses the author’s background and his books at length and has much to say on the subject of “colonialism.” Well worth a read. (2) In his post Stories from Taiwan: ká-sióng, Part 1 last November, David Hebblethwaite of David’s Book World introduced us to an appealing new publishing project from the University of East Anglia, comprising “a collection of five [translated] tales from Taiwan.” The complete set, Not Your Child by Lâu Tsí-û, Cage by Qiu Miaojin, Mountain Rat by Lulyang Nomin, Social by Lamulu Pakawyan and Cloud Labour by Sabrina Huang (of which David appraised the first three) are, he says, “strikingly designed chapbooks” and his reviews are proof he thoroughly enjoyed reading them.

* Lit Crit Blogflash *

I am going to share with you a couple 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 these two – both of which were published in the last week or so:

Agatha Annotated: Investigating the Books of the 1920s: Obscure Terms and Historical References in the Works of Agatha Christie (2023) by Kate Gingold – Over at Cross Examining Crime, vintage crime fiction blogger Kate Jackson investigates Kate Gingold’s 261-page Agatha Annotated, “a glossary of over 1800 words/phrases” covering the first decade of Agatha Christie’s wildly popular whodunits. “Providing the essential social, historical and cultural context for understanding these terms,” it is “interspersed with mini essays, [each one] centred on a different thematic topic.” Kate focuses on these in her review, with choice words added “into the mix.” In considering “the book as a whole,” she finds “the author’s literary analysis is less surefooted than her understanding of social and cultural history” but, nevertheless, deems the guide “useful” for those stumbling across “unfamiliar terms” in Christie’s works from the 1920s. For those who may be interested, there is also an Agatha Annotated website associated with the book, complete with blog and Word of the Week newsletter.

The Last Day: Jaroslavas Melnikas – Described by Suroor Alikhan (of Talking About Books) as a collection of “absurdist short stories,” The Last Day by Ukrainian writer, literary critic and philosopher Yaroslav Melnik (who currently resides in Vilnius) is, according to its cover, a “Contemporary Lithuanian Classic.” The predominantly male protagonists “are victims of circumstance, caught up in strange situations that they cannot control,” though the few women making an appearance are “fairly two-dimensional.” These are “strange [tales] about ordinary people […] who suddenly find themselves in bizarre situations” and appear to “go along with whatever happens to them.” Both “haunting and surreal,” yet “narrated in a completely matter-of-fact” manner, which merely “emphasizes the strangeness of all that is happening,” Suroor finds this book has “echoes of the totalitarian state.”

* 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, here are a selection of interesting snippets: 

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Dirt: The Age of Deer – “An eerie analogue for our own existence” – Norah Rami talks with Erika Howsare about her book, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors.

HIMĀL Southasian: Where does Ravan fit in Sri Lanka’s imagined past? – “Sunela Jayewardene’s search for Ravan’s presence in Sri Lanka offers a counter to Sinhala Buddhist appropriation of the mythic king but comes with its own pitfalls,” says Dhanuka Bandara.

Nation Cymru: Review: Let a Sleeping Witch Lie; Welsh Gothic Stories by Elizabeth Walter – Let a Sleeping Witch Lie is a collection of supernatural stories inspired by Elizabeth Walter’s (1927-2006) knowledge of the folklore, history and ancient traditions of the South Wales border region.

A Narrative Of Their Own: How does a writer earn a living? – Kate Jones reflects “on how author’s low wages may lead to less diversity in publishing.”

New Writing North: The Lamb: Interview with Lucy Rose – Helena Davidson talks to Lucy Rose, whose debut horror novel/folk tale The Lamb is a “gripping, lyrical coming-of-age story set deep in the Cumbrian fells.”

LARB: The Lost Utopia – “Zach Gibson revisits cult novelist Marguerite Young’s 1945 study Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias.

Open Culture: In 1894, A French Writer Predicted the End of Books & the Rise of Portable Audiobooks and Podcasts – “According to at least one French mind active” at the end of the nineteenth century, books would “sooner or later fall into desuetude.”

Caught by the River: Shadows & Reflections – “Sue Brooks spent much of 2024 in search of Elizabeth Tuckniss — an unknown woman in a long line of unknown women to have shared their lives with extraordinary artists” – in this instance, the other half of Welsh historian, author and travel writer, Jan (originally James) Morris.

Verso: The Fire Boom – “Mike Davis’s essay on LA as a locus of ecological destruction, taken from his classic work Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster.”

Jane Austen’s World: Celebrating 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth –The Georgian Era, hospitality, empire, & the formation of British identities through food – “Renowned British food historian, Ivan day, and […] Dr Sarah Fox, senior lecturer and researcher at Edge Hill University” write about 18^th century eating and dining etiquette.

Asian Review of Books: “Voices of the Fallen Heroes” by Yukio Mishima – Christopher Corker reviews Voices of the Fallen Heroes, a new selection short stories from Japanese literary icon Yukio Mishima that centres on “a séance conducted by two monks that inadvertently conjures the angry spirits” of dead soldiers.

Practising Hope: An Interview with Shahnaz Habib: Author of “Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel” – “What does it mean to travel when we live in the ruins of colonialism, capitalism and climate change?” asks Shagufta Pasta in the interview she conducted with Shahnaz Habib, author of the travel memoir Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel.

3 Quarks Daily: The Past and Future of Close Reading – “What do swimming, running, bicycling, dancing, pole jumping, tying shoelaces, and reading all have in common? According to John Guillory’s new book On Close Reading, they are all cultural techniques,” reveals Derek Neal.

The London Magazine: Evading Capture: On Writing Two Experimental Memoirs – “There can be many different ‘correct’ translations of the same text: I think that we each have not only multiple stories we can tell about our lives, but many forms for them, too.” Jen Calleja, author of Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode and the forthcoming Fair: a literary translator memoir, “on writing experimental memoir.”

The Nation: Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s Exhibitions of Absurdity – “In Gretel and the Great War, an antic epistolary novel set in early 20th-century Austria, the writer tries to make sense of a society gone mad.”

The Conversation: Hidden women of history: the Australian children’s author who captured the bush – before May Gibbs’ Australiana empire – Louise Anne Meredith drew her literary inspiration from the Australian landscape and crafted her own ‘brand’ in its image. May Gibbs, who did the same, began publishing after her death.

The Walrus: I List Therefore I Am: Letting Go of Reading Goal Anxiety – “What,” suggests Tajja Isen, “if tallying up books at the end of the year was less about numbers?”

The National: Winner of 2024 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize recognised for Egyptian prison memoir translation – Katharine Halls, an “Arabic-to-English translator from Wales has won the 2024 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.”

Laura Thompson’s Substack: Thompson-Bywaters: In memoriam – It is 102 years since “Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were hanged simultaneously for the murder of Edith’s husband, Percy.” Biographer Laura Thompson, author of “two books about the Thompson-Bywaters case: Rex V Edith Thompson and, most recently, Au Revoir Now Darlint,” revisits the case.

London Review of Books: In LA – Colm Tóibín remembers the late Gary Indiana’s personal library – destroyed in one of the massive fires that ravaged Los Angeles.

BBC Culture: Thrilling debuts to big-name authors: 40 of the most exciting books to read in 2025 – “From the most anticipated literary debuts to the return of heavyweights like Stephen King and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there’s plenty to add to your TBR pile this year,” says Clare Thorp.

Jewish Review of Books: Boy Meets Girl Meets Apocalypse – Akiva Schick reviews with a dark humour Next Stop, an apocalyptic novel by Benjamin Resnick in which a black hole consumes the State of Israel and bizarre events occur in major cities around the world.

Literary Hub: Tartufo – “Tranquil old-world elegance is boasted by a wall of sanded stone. An operatic drama of arched windows. Gold lettering winks from polished glass.” An excerpt from Tartufo, Kira Jane Buxton’s amusing novel set in an Italian village.

Reactor: Trying and Failing to Figure Out “Escapism” in Books – “What is escapist lit? Every answer [Molly Templeton has] read is incomplete, because it’s not one thing.”

Los Angeles Times: 10 books to add to your reading list in January – “Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising new titles — fiction and nonfiction — to consider in January.”

The Markaz Review: In Killing Gilda Yahya Gharagozlou Tells an Intriguing Iranian Tale – Killing Gilda, the recently published historical novel by Yahya Gharagozlou is “a compelling portrait of a royal lineage whose decline has significantly shaped the contemporary world,” says Azadeh Moaveni.

Nautilus: Pico Iyer’s Wide-Awake Silence – “The author on losing his home to wildfire, finding strength in solitude, and his new book Aflame.”

World Literature Today: Command Performance by Jean Echenoz – In this review of crime novel Command Performance by French author Jean Echenoz (translated by Mark Polizzotti), Kai Maristed poses the question: “how would you feel if a shower of heavy bolts from an ancient Soviet satellite fell at thirty yards per second through the atmosphere, to crash-land three blocks from your apartment?”

Creative Nonfiction Collective: Interview with Caroline Topperman – Hollay Ghadery interviews European Canadian writer Caroline Topperman about her new non-fiction book, Your Roots Cast a Shadow: One Family’s Search Across History for Belonging, a personal narrative beginning with a move from Vancouver to Poland.

Tokyo Weekender: Author Natalie Jacobsen Unveils the World of Meiji-Era Kyoto in Debut Novel, Ghost Train – The American author speaks to Melissa Boyce-Hurd about her debut novel Ghost Train, “a story about yokai, demons and the Meiji Restoration.”

Poetry Foundation: For the Love of the Word – “Hannah Arendt was the rare philosopher who saw how limited her discipline could be. Poetry offered her another outlet for thinking,” says Daegan Miller.

The Guardian: The mysterious novelist who foresaw Putin’s Russia – and then came to symbolise its moral decay – “Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist?” asks Sophie Pinkham.

Life and Letters: Imaginary Letters – Julianne Werlin on “Richardson, Laclos, Burney” and the epistolary novel.

Scroll.in: ‘Ma is Scared’: Anjali Kajal’s short stories step into the lives of ordinary women in northern India – “The stories [in Ma Is Scared, and Other Stories], selected and translated by Kavita Bhanot, represent a writing career spanning two and a half decades,” writes Areeb Ahmad.

Historical Essays: Book burning before and during the English Revolution, 1641–1660 – “It’s a common misconception […] to think of public book burnings only in terms of censorship,” says Ariel Hessayon. Because “when performed before large crowds they were simultaneously spectacles with a message.”

The Irish Times: I loved Alice Munro but recent revelations have tainted her legacy forever – Rosita Boland is convinced that “everything written about Munro after revelations about her daughter’s sexual abuse will record the Nobel Prize-winning author’s failure as a parent and human being.”

Air Mail: Of Course It Kills Them – Amanda Vaill – who “was asked to write an introduction to a new Vintage Classics edition of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms” – reveals the “secret inspiration for Ernest Hemingway’s greatest novel.”

Independent: George Orwell celebrated on new ‘Big Brother is watching you’ coin – The UK has minted a new £2 George Orwell coin to mark the 75th anniversary of the author’s death.

Financial Express: ‘Despite selling well, crime literature has been looked down upon’: Writer Surendra Mohan Pathak – “Writer Surendra Mohan Pathak won the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the genre of crime writing with over 300 novels at the second edition of the Crime Literature Festival in India in Dehradun,” reports Garima Sadhwani.

BBC News: Neil Gaiman faces more sexual assault allegations – “Best-selling British author Neil Gaiman has reportedly been accused of sexual misconduct by eight women, including four who previously spoke out,” reports Paul Glynn.

Arts Hub: Book review: Grace and Marigold, Mira Robertson – Set in the 1970s, Madeleine Swain declares Grace and Marigold a “moving and intriguing period novel of awakenings and secrets that strikes true,” by Australian writer Mira Robertson.

Deseret News: Perspective: A frustrated reader visits America’s oldest bookshop – Ethan Bauer asks: “Are Americans turning the page on bookstores and books?”

Far Out: “In love for life”: The poet who changed Leonard Cohen’s life – “Days spent on remote Greek Islands, writing countless collections of poetry and novels, helped hone the skills of a lyricist widely considered music’s greatest,” says Callum MacHattie. “However, decades [earlier], Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was forging the path upon which Cohen’s lyrics would follow.”

Psyche: How to think differently about love – “Poets, philosophers and scientists all tell stories about the nature of romantic love. It can be liberating to critique them,” says Arina Pismenny, co-editor of The Moral Psychology of Love – Moral Psychology of the Emotions.

Counter Craft: Recommendation: The Odyssey (Read by Ian McKellen) – Lincoln Michel checks out “an obscure book nobody on the internet knows about.” 

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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: #HYH25, Agatha Christie, Akram Aylisli, Anjali Kajal, Azerbaijani Literature, Erika Howsare, Hundred Years Hence Reading Challenge, Kate Gingold, Katherine E. Young, Kavita Bhanot, Kira Jane Buxton, Olga Tokarczuk, Reading Challenges, Shahnaz Habib, Taiwanese Literature