An end of week recap

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
– W. Somerset Maugham (born 25^th January 1874)

This morning our coastal home is being soundly pummelled by Storm Éowyn – the UK’s fifth named storm of the season – and we have been warned that due to its severity, we may well lose power at some point, which is why this post is a day early.

For the curious, Storm Éowyn (pronounced ‘ay-oh-win’) was named by the Dutch weather forecasting service following a public naming event that allowed people to submit suggestions. However, for those wondering if there is a link to J.R.R. Tolkien’s noblewoman of Rohan from The Lord of the Rings, the Met Office has confirmed it wasn’t the reason the name was chosen.

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 Troll, Reader, But Not as We Know it *

‘Don’t Feed the Trolls’: As much to prove I’m not strictly moominogamous (i.e. not a one troll woman) as because I very much enjoyed reading this urban fantasy novel, I decided to share my thoughts on Troll: A Love Story by the Finnish science fiction and fantasy writer, Johanna Sinisalo.

* Book Birthdays & Other Literary Celebrations *

Fortunately for those of us in search of important forthcoming literary dates this year, the prolific book blogger and all-round good egg, Mallika Ramachandran of Literary Potpourri positively relishes her self-imposed task of “putting together [an annual] list of books and authors that celebrate anniversaries,” highlighting those “turning 50, 75, 100, 150, 200 or 250”. In her post, Book and Author Anniversaries 2025, you will find a “fair few notable books” and writers having big birthdays over the coming months, including C.S. Lewis, Georgette Heyer, Gerald Durrell, R. D. Blackmore, Patricia Highsmith, Anthony Trollope, Susan Cooper and, of course, the biggest of them all, Jane Austen. You will find many more super-scribblers cited here, so please ensure you bookmark Mallika’s page for future reference.

* The Mysterious Affair of Agatha’s Shorts *

So much did Fanda Kutubuku enjoy #AgathaChristieSS24 that she is again hosting the event at Fanda Classiclit. The Agatha Christie Short Stories Read Along involves “reading [and] reviewing Christie’s short stories as standalones” at the rate of two a month. The challenge kicked off at the beginning of this month (apologies for the lateness of this announcement, but thankfully you can jump in at any point) and runs until 31^st December 2025. Fanda has selected a list of twenty-four stories covering an equal number of the Poirot, Miss Marple and Tommy and Tuppence storylines, with the addition of several non-detective works. To take part, I suggest a close examination of the official Reading List and a thorough search for clues among the in-depth instructions at Announcing Agatha Christie Short Stories 2025 #AgathaChristieSS25.

* A Handful of Happenings *

In the event of you running low on literary challenges, I have a further three to keep you occupied: 1. Asian-Canadian Literature Challenge 2025, 2. Triple Choice Tuesday and 3. Classics Reading Challenge.

* Almost Overlooked *

Here are a couple of late but immensely enjoyable posts: (1) At the back end of October, Sue T from Whispering Gums reviewed the third novel of South African author Karen Jennings – someone she describes as “bubbling away in her little corner of the world writing books that grapple with the difficult questions.” Set in “Cape Town in the late 2020s, [Crooked Seeds] feels dystopian with [its] dire water shortages, fire on the surrounding mountains and ash falling.” Protagonist, “53-year-old Deidre van Deventer,” is an “unappealing woman fighting a world that is tough and difficult for those […] less advantaged,” and her problems are only exacerbated when she receives a call from the police about the discovery of human remains on land she once owned. This is a “spare” and “powerful” book in which the author paints a picture of “a society at odds with itself.” In fact, Sue finds it a “clever novel, with an ending that hits just the right note.” See Karen Jennings, Crooked seeds (#BookReview) for the full critique. (2) Last month, Biblioklept‘s Edwin Turner shared a splendid post on a newish edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Tove Jansson (first published “in 1966 for a Finnish audience”). With “illustrations on almost every page” and all “the classic characters” included, “Jansson’s figures [are reminiscent] of the surrealist Remedios Varo’s strange, even ominous” creations – and they perfectly tread “a thin line between whimsical and sinister.” To see what else Edwin has to say about this marvellous work, which includes many examples of Jansson’s “black and white sketches — doodles, portraits, marginalia — [in addition to colourful] full-pagers,” please read On Tove Jansson’s odd and touching illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

* 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 in the last couple of weeks:

Books Read: Waterblack (book 3 in the Cities of the Weft trilogy) by Alex Pheby – Rather excitingly, science fiction critic Ian Mond has published a preview of his forthcoming review of Waterblack for February’s edition of Locus Magazine on his personal blog, The Hysterical Hamster. According to Mond: “Not enough people in genre circles are speaking about this trilogy,” and for this he blames too few fantasy aficionados reading parts One and Two of British author Alex Pheby’s ‘Cities of the Weft’ series. However, he “genuinely” considers it “a classic of the epic fantasy genre” and believes readers “will be astounded by the outlandish ideas and the pyrotechnic set-pieces of Gods and Angels and Demons and Magical Dogs,” which he describes as “a battle between the rational and irrational.” He therefore encourages others to embrace this “masterpiece” – then hopefully “gasp and cheer and cry” as he did.

* 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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Rolling Stone: Octavia Butler Wanted to Prevent Disaster in Los Angeles. Instead, She Predicted It – “Many have called the science-fiction author a prophet for her futuristic prediction on L.A. fires in her novel Parable of the Sower, but her fans see a deeper meaning,” finds Meagan Jordan.

Aeon: Elegance and hustle – Max McGuinness – author of Hustlers in the Ivory Tower: Press and Modernism from Mallarmé to Proust – discusses why “French modernists from Proust to Mallarmé were alarmed and inspired by the voracious dynamism of the newspaper world.”

TNR: When America’s Top Spies Were Academics and Librarians – Greg Barnhisel, author of Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II looks at “how scholars achieved some of the most consequential intelligence victories of the twentieth century.”

The Conversation: What George Gissing’s fiction reveals about vegetarianism in Victorian London – Amid the rise of vegetarianism in late 19th-century London, George Gissing used meat-free characters to probe themes of poverty, morality and social contradiction.

Unknown Literary Canon: An Extraordinary Writer, An Ordinary Person – “There’s no one that wrote like Leduc. Her use of language may be as measured as some of the greats. Make no mistake, she should be one of the greats,” declares Jo in her fabulous post on one of my favourite books, La Bâtarde by the French lesbian writer Violette Leduc.

Publishers Weekly: Binnie Kirshenbaum Knows Life Is Stranger Than Fiction – “After losing her husband to dementia, Binnie Kirshenbaum survived by writing the most difficult book of her career.” Here Elaine Szewczyk profiles the US author and discusses her novel, Counting Backwards.

Medievalists.net: New Medieval Books: An Introduction to Jean Bodel – “Jean Bodel was a big name in French literary circles of the late twelfth century. This biography [An Introduction to Jean Bodel by Lynn T. Ramey] of a trendsetting and talented writer shows his contributions to several genres, including epic poetry, dramatic plays and fabliaux.”

Necessary Fiction: Softie: Stories – Softie, a debut short fiction collection from Megan Howell, “confronts readers with stories of loss and grief that eschew narrative tidiness in favour of detail, digression, and other material that […] might seem extraneous,” says Diane Josefowicz.

Asterism: 10 Books to Boost your Writing Habit – Joshua Rothes picks ten titles to help you meet those writing resolutions, with works from Barbara Guest, Renee Gladman and others.

Literary Hub: Betty Shamieh on the Next Generation of Palestinian Fiction – “The author of Too Soon considers her novel in relation to Etaf Rum, Hala Alyan, and the Politics of Influence.”

Pop Matters: Roger Célestin’s ‘The Delicate Beast’ Will Devour You – “Prolific writer Roger Célestin presents in his debut novel, The Delicate Beast a timely tale of how autocracy will devour you once the process has begun,” says R.P. Finch. 

The Millions: Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2025 Preview – “It’s cold, it’s grey, its bleak—but winter, at the very least, brings with it a glut of anticipation-inducing books.” Sophia Stewart brings you one-hundred suggested reads “to cozy up with this season.”

Wolfish!: Book clubbed – Australian writer Tash recommends substackian ‘book clubs’ – what we in blogland tend to call ‘reading challenges’ or ‘read-alongs’.

Prospect: What if George Orwell hadn’t died 75 years ago? – “He had at least a couple of big opportunities to perish before then—which might have altered his considerable legacy,” suggests Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

Theta Delta: A Guide to Understanding Russian Names – “Through the example of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, [Dana Oljós demystifies] the three parts of Russian names—first names, patronymics, and surnames—and their purpose.”

The British Columbia Review: From A (aliens) to Z (zombies) – “At its best, a debut collection of 15 stories is deeply unsettling, anxiety-inducing, and memorably character-driven,” says Zoe McKenna in his review of I Will Wander On: Terrifying Tales of Life, Love, & Death by Canadian author Ron Prasad.

Nepali Times: Laxmi Prasad Devkota in English – “Devkota’s collection of essays range from tirades, odes, satires, to experiments of the imagination,” finds Vishad Raj Onta.

Liberties: Mannhood: When Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig Had Lunch Together – “This essay is the first installment of Morten Høi Jensen’s Mannhood Sidebar Series on all things related to Thomas Mann, which will continue throughout 2025 to mark the 150th anniversary of Mann’s birth.”

Brittle Paper: Fatima Sadiqi on Orality, Art, and Indigenous Moroccan Writing – Jagravi Dave sat down “with Prof. Fatima Sadiqi, author of Women and the Codification of the Amazigh Language, to talk about her groundbreaking research into indigenous Moroccan languages and knowledge.”

Jacobin: The Black Book of Communism Is a Shoddy Work of History – “The Black Book of Communism has been hugely influential and sold millions of copies since its publication in 1997.” Yet according to Stefan Gužvica, “some of the dramatic claims made by its editor, Stéphane Courtois, were even rejected by his own contributors when the book came out.”

Southern Review of Books: A Gripping Historical Fiction of German American Internment – Nancy Jensen’s novel, In Our Midst, about a German American family held in an internment camp during World War II “arrives as a historical lesson and warning about the power of propaganda, the depths of unchecked hate, and the potency of suspicion,” writes Nicole Yurcaba.

The Polis Project: Eric Chacour On His Debut Novel What I Know About You – Benoit Landon speaks to Quebec writer Eric Chacour about his debut novel, What I Know About You, a love story between two men in 1980s Egypt. 

4Columns: The Suicides, Reinaldo Laddaga – “Unnamed narrator, unnamed menace: a new translation of [The Suicides, a] powerfully unsettling 1969 novel by Argentine writer Antonio Di Benedetto.”

The Guardian: Africa has no shortage of celebrated writers – so why is it so hard for African readers to get hold of their books? – “Across the continent books can be expensive and libraries scarce. But growing numbers of tech innovators and independent publishers are working to make African literature available and affordable.”

Publishers Weekly: Sex During Lockdown: PW Talks with Amy Shearn – In the novelist’s Animal Instinct, an app developer and recent divorcee experiments with online dating during the Covid-19 lockdown. 

The Japan Times: Japan’s most prestigious literary awards go to a trio of contemporary voices – Jose Ando and Yui Suzuki take home Akutagawa honours, while Shin Iyohara nabs the Naoki Prize.

Public Books: Our Last Supper – Mathias Énard’s The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild is, according to Maggie McGowan, “a novel that insists on the limits of what fiction can do. Its happy ending, the reader realizes, is no happy ending at all.”

The Point: Technical Sacrality – Barry Schwabsky remembers the Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright Pier Paolo Pasolini for his literature every bit as much as his films.

The Book Reader: The Queen’s Gambit – Walter Tevis – Hanne finds Walter Tevis’s 1983 historical novel The Queen’s Gambit “an engaging book about chess.”

Caught by the River: Shadows & Reflections: Christina Riley – “As she looks back on the year her Nature Library found a permanent home, Christina Riley celebrates libraries as places of limitless potential.”

Big Think: “Eucatastrophe”: Tolkien on the secret to a good fairy tale – Jonny Thomson tells us: “For J.R.R. Tolkien, the single most important element of a fairy tale was the dramatic reversal of misfortune in the story’s ending.”

Kyiv Post: Vasyl Symonenko at 90: A Personal Tribute. – The influential Ukrainian poet of the early 1960s, Vasyl Symonenko, would have turned 90 [on the 8^th January]. Here are some thoughts on him and what he and his colleagues represented,” from Bohdan Nahaylo.

BBC News: Author Cottrell-Boyce holds summit to warn about children’s happiness – Emma Saunders reports: “Best-selling author Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the current [UK] children’s laureate, is to spearhead a campaign to tackle a ‘recession in children’s happiness’ that he believes is caused by a decline in reading at a young age.” 

Julie Bindel’s Writing and Podcasts: Sexed: My review of Susanna Rustin’s book on feminism – The feminist writer Julie Bindel describes Susanna Rustin’s Sexed as: “Enjoyable, deftly written, and documented by someone who clearly has an investment in this indefatigable movement.”

Financial Times: The Sound of Utopia — how Stalin waged war on musicians – Matthew Janney reviews The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the Time of Stalin, “Michel Krielaars’ illuminating account of the composers and performers who navigated the repressive Soviet system.”

Girls on the Page: An interview with Margaret Atwood – “The literary icon discusses her career-spanning poetry collection, Paper Boat,” with Emma Leokadia Walkiewicz.

Oxford Mail: The World of Books money-making app that cleaned my house – “I am a great believer that there is no such thing as too many books, only not enough bookshelves.” Jade Wright is delighted with a recently discovered book-selling app.

ABC News: Korean books’ ‘quirkiness and subtle darkness’ captivate Australians – Erin Handley reports: “While K-lit might seem a world apart from its glitzy juggernaut cousin K-pop, its growing number of Australian fans say it is a thoughtful way to engage with Korean culture.”

Wanted in Rome: Rome’s Anglo American Bookshop closes its doors after 70 years – “Rome’s oldest English-language bookstore opened near the Spanish Steps in 1953” – last week “closed its doors for good.”

Radio Times: How to read Rebecca Yarros’s books in order ahead of Fourth Wing sequel release – “The release date for Onyx Storm is fast approaching.” Joanna Magill explains “how you can read all of author Rebecca Yarros’s previous books in order.”

Dazed: Bibliotherapy: Can reading help treat your depression? – “People have turned to literature for solace for centuries – now, some therapists are prescribing reading lists to help clients battling with depression and anxiety,” finds Caelan McMichael.

Scremes Report: .017: On Looking – Shawn Cremer takes “a slow approach to writing and living” during the winter months.

Dissent: Tolkien Against the Grain – “The Lord of the Rings is a book obsessed with ruins, bloodlines, and the divine right of aristocrats. Why are so many on the left able to love it?” asks science fiction, literature and popular culture expert Gerry Canavan. 

History News Network: Regency Sex Ed – Literature professor and bestselling romance writer Alexandra Vasti discovers how “women in 19th-century Europe [learned] about the birds and the bees.” 

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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: #AgathaChristieSS25, Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie Short Stories Read Along, Alex Pheby, Antonio Di Benedetto, Book and Author Anniversaries 2025, Fantasy Fiction, Feminism, J.R.R. Tolkien, Johanna Sinisalo, Karen Jennings, Lewis Carroll, Octavia Butler, Reading Challenges, Samrat Upadhyay, Storm Éowyn, Susanna Rustin, Tove Jansson, W. Somerset Maugham