An end of week recap

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”
– Jeanette Winterson

I hereby present a bulging start-of-month digest. Rather annoyingly, its corpulent contents meant I was unable to squeeze everything in this time. Ah well, I suppose there’s always next week, but I strongly suggest you slip into a hard hat and steel-capped boots before attempting to read next Saturday’s offering.

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.

* Dewithon Goes Marching On *

I am chuffed to little mint balls to report that Reading Wales (aka Dewithon), the annual celebration of literature from and about Cymru, will henceforth be hosted by popular South Walian book blogger, Karen of BookerTalk. As most of you already know, after six happy years of hosting this event, I decided (with heavy heart) to step back as chief organiser (see Time to Say ‘Hwyl’). I was therefore delighted when Karen stepped into the breach, since her extensive knowledge of Welsh writers, not to mention many years of book blogging experience, make her the ideal MC.

She will be “kicking off” this “reading adventure” on 1^st March and will, for the remainder of the month, “give you an opportunity to discover literature connected to the nation of Wales.” So, without further ado, I urge you to head over to Reading Wales Month — Picking up the baton to obtain all the gen on what will be happening and to give Karen a colossal Croeso!

* Almost Overlooked *

I have several nearly neglected posts to share with you this week: (1) In a critique of Malachy Tallack’s historical novel, That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz (last October), reviewsrevues’ Phil Shanklin tells us of Jack, its 62-year-old protagonist – an introverted Shetlander who “avoids social interactions” and “sometimes regards [his life as] hopeless.” He is, however, “a huge fan of American country music and once had ambitions to be a singer.” One evening, a box is left on his doorstep, the contents of which “gradually [result in] him coming out of his shell.” In That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz- Malachy Tallack (Canongate 2024), Phil describes the story as being a “very quiet” tale of “opportunities passing by and of seeking to make the best of things.” Little happens in Jack’s “solitary life,” yet it is “hard to put [the book] down” and he “appreciated [its] introspection.” Indeed, it is “written with a sensitivity and gentleness” that is “intoxicating.” (2) Since it was Holocaust Memorial Day last Monday, I should like to draw your attention to Peter Wild’s review of Adieu Birkenau: Ginette Kolinka’s Story of Survival, which he shared with followers of Bookmunch last November. In “A humbling Holocaust memorial” – Adieu Birkenau by JD Morvan, Victor Matet, Cesc & Efa, he describes the work as “a beautiful […] graphic adaptation of a memoir by […] Ginette Kolinka who survived the Nazi deathcamps and then went on to share her experience with generations of children.” He concludes with the words: “This is a story that needs to be passed on, perhaps now more than ever.” │ In brief, a few other posts worth reading from months past include: (3) Joanna Park’s review of adult fantasy novel, The Rainfall Market by Korean author You Yeong-Gwang. (Over the Rainbow Blog) (4) A detailed piece from Lisa Hill on Eleanor Dark: A Writer’s Life – Barbara Brooks’ 1998 biography of the life (far more than the literary output) of the Australian novelist. (ANZ LitLovers LitBlog) (5) And finally (for now), Jo B’s low-down on Sarah Brooks’ The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, a fantasy novel set on a grand express train travelling between Beijing and Moscow. (Jo’s Book Blog)

* 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 recent weeks:

Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch, 2023 – David of The Reading Bug’s appraisal of Irish author Paul Lynch’s dystopian novel, Prophet Song appeared three weeks ago (meaning I just caught it in time to include in this section of my post). Winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, this “impactful” work is “set in Dublin shortly after the election of a far-right nationalist Government” whom, we are told, introduce “martial law” and establish a “quasi-military police” force with “far-reaching powers to quash […] dissent.” They arrest Larry – a teacher, trade unionist and father of the Slack family (the novel’s narrators) – holding him without charge merely for attending a protest. Soon after, he “becomes one of the disappeared, a non-person whose existence is denied by the state” – leaving behind his wife and family. Prophet Song, we are informed, is an “extraordinary” and “challenging” book, which at one point became so “traumatic” for the reviewer it was necessary for him to set it aside “for 24 hours.” Nevertheless, comparisons are made here with Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid’s Tale, no less, and Lynch’s tour de force is enthusiastically recommended despite being “a difficult read.”

* 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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Los Angeles Times: The latest Nobel laureate’s work is haunted by questions. Don’t expect answers – “In We Do Not Part, Han Kang explores a friendship that certainly spans distance, and perhaps planes of existence,” writes Leigh Haber. 

Mexico News Daily: In conversation with Margaret Atwood in San Miguel de Allende – “Literary icon Margaret Atwood spoke in San Miguel de Allende on dystopian fiction and today’s world,” reports Ann Marie Jackson, who was able to chat with the author about “issues of importance to Mexico.”

A Reading Life: Issue 104: The Reading Life of… Celine Nguyen – “This one,” says Petya K. Grady, “will leave you with a reading list AND the aching desire to upgrade your note-taking game.”

Full Stop: Fair to Look Upon – Mary Belle Freeley – “Without Eve’s disobedience, there would have been no progress, advancement, or human intelligence, and for that, in Freeley’s view, Eve deserves ‘a profound salaam of admiration and respect’ as ‘the first courageous, undaunted pioneer woman of the world.’” Margarita Diaz re-examines Freeley’s 1892 novella, Fair to Look Upon, which explores the stories of notable women from biblical narratives (now republished by ITNA press).

Asian Book Review: “Ten Indian Classics” – David Chaffetz describes the anthology, Ten Indian Classics – Murty Classical Library of India (with a foreword by Ranjit Hoskote) as “a tribute to the literary diversity of India” in “ten excerpted classics.”

NPR: Newly discovered poems show Virginia Woolf as a fun aunt – A researcher stumbled on two poems by Virginia Woolf. The pun-filled, speedily drafted verses were written for her niece and nephew sometime after March 1927.

Plough: Life without Magic – “In H. G. Parry’s novel The Magician’s Daughter, a sixteen-year-old chooses to leave a magical island for the wider world,” finds James Smoker.

The Atlantic (via MSN): Why Reading Lolita in Tehran Holds Up – A new film adaption of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books “vindicates Azar Nafisi’s humane literary ethos,” says Arash Azizi.

The Montréal Review: The Case of Percy Bysshe Shelley – “If we agree with the assumption that few people actually read poetry, then what are the criteria which keep certain poets on the tip of every educated tongue?” asks Karen Alkalay-Gut.

BBC Culture: ‘The truth is she did the right thing’: The mystery of why Jane Austen’s letters were destroyed – by her own sister – “Austen is one of the greatest writers in the English language, but [according to Neil Armstrong,] relatively little is known about her. And that’s partly because of an act that infuriates many to this day – which is the subject of new TV drama Miss Austen.

Ford Knows: Why I ❤️ James Joyce’s Dubliners – Dr. Kathleen Waller of The Matterhorn: truth in fiction writes about Dubliners, James Joyce’s 1914 story collection reflecting the lives of ordinary Dublin-dwellers at the turn of the last century.

Publishing Perspectives: Wales’ Dylan Thomas Prize Names Its 2025 Longlist – The longlist for the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers, the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, has been announced, with authors from across the world including the UK, Palestine, India, the Netherlands and Ireland.

TLS: Literature as life – “This collection of correspondence between the novelist Shirley Hazzard and the scholar and translator Donald Keene is an exercise in high-minded curiosity and sophisticated largesse,” writes Declan Ryan in his piece on Expatriates of No Country: The Letters of Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene, edited by Brigitta Olubas.

LARB: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the End of Earnestness – “Siobhan Maria Carroll reviews The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024,” an “overview of short genre fiction [from] the United States,” published towards the end of last year.

The Invisible Head: Yeats, Shaw, and Florence Farr – “A Golden Dawn adept amid the literary currents of her time” – Alan Horn on English polymath Florence Farr.

Aeon: The truth about fiction – “What distinguishes fiction from nonfiction? The answer to this perennial question relies on how we understand reality itself,” says Hannah H Kim.

Hadassah Magazine: The Enduring Mythology of Anne Frank – “More than any other work of literature, Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl helped the world comprehend the tragedy of the Holocaust. But in recent years, Anne’s name seems to be invoked more often in reference to forms of prejudice other than antisemitism,” writes Ruth Franklin in an excerpt from The Many Lives of Anne Frank.

The New York Review: Urgent Messages from Eternity – “An exhibition of Franz Kafka’s postcards, letters, and manuscript pages [showing at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the New York’s Morgan Library and Museum] rekindles our sense of him as a writer deeply connected to his own time and place,” finds Deborah Eisenberg.

Hyperallergic: Timely Lessons From 18th-Century British Printmaking – The Radical Print, a book about 18th-century and early 19th century printmaking by Esther Chadwick “reframes the work of five artists who used the form to satirize and lampoon, actively dismantling power systems in the process,” reveals Bridget Quinn.

Ethiopian Times: The beautiful ones, the eccentric writers and journalists of yore – In The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ayi Kwei Armah’s historical novel set in Ghana in the 1960s, the author “portrays the rampant corruption that characterized everyday life in his country by depicting ordinary characters that are trying to cope with ordinary life,” says Mulugeta Gudeta.

Los Angeles Times: Opinion: Los Angeles and the literature of the apocalypse – “[Joan] Didion and [Octavia E.] Butler are just two of the many writers who have approached Southern California through the lens of its disruptions” – a city that “exists amid a wildfire ecology and in a seismic landscape where faults regularly slip,” writes David L. Ulin.

The New Indian Express: My mother instilled a deep respect for history, Literature: Rohan Murty – “As the world tour celebrations [kicked off last Tuesfay] in B’luru […] to mark the 10th anniversary of the Murty Classical Library of India, founder Rohan Murty [spoke to Vidya Iyengar] about situating South Asia’s literary classics within larger cultural circulations, his family’s role in this ambitious project, and navigating controversies along the way.”

Jane Austen’s World: Celebrating 250 Years: Jane Austen’s Bookshelf – Rachel Dodge delves into Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, a “much-anticipated book by Rebecca Romney,” which “provides Janeites with a brand-new perspective on the female authors Jane Austen would have read during her lifetime.”

The Conversation: The acquisition of Text Publishing by Penguin Random House is part of a worrying trend in Australian publishing – Alice Grundy warns that mergers within the Australian publishing industry have significant implications for its literary culture.

Asymptote: Tomoé Hill Reviews The Oceans of Cruelty: Twenty-Five Tales of a Corpse Spirit (A Retelling) by Douglas J. Penick – Douglas J. Penick’s reworking of the Tales of the Vetāla – 25 tales and legends within a frame story, from India, and known as “one of the oldest collections of stories in the world” – captures “the essence of what makes retold stories endure,” says Tomoé Hill in her review of The Oceans of Cruelty.

Arrowsmith Press: Life on the Exhale: Victoria Amelina – This is how Krzysztof Czyżewski met Ukrainian novelist and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina. “In wartime, all it takes is one meeting.”

Poetry Foundation: Walking the Fault Line – “In Mojave Ghost, Forrest Gander recounts his 800-mile journey into the slow time of grief.”

Faber: Essay: The Joy of Rereading – “Emily Rhodes explores the pleasures of rereading and just what it is that compels us to return to favourite books again and again.”

Literary Hub: Underground Barbie – An excerpt from Croatian author Maša Kolanović’s Underground Barbie, a coming-of-age novel set during the Yugoslav Wars of the ‘90s.

Japan Forward: BOOK REVIEW | ‘Kaleidoscope Japan: A Nation through the Lens of its Literature’ by Richard Nathan – Peter Tasker discovers that Richard Nathan’s essay collection, Kaleidoscope Japan, “offers a delightful wander through Japan’s literary wealth, with witty digressions and anecdotes that reveal new facets even to seasoned readers.”

Miller’s Book Review: Trapped in a World You Didn’t Choose – “The choice to escape: [Joel J Miller scrutinizes] Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange” – both “man-versus-society narratives.”

Index on Censorship: A story of forgotten fiction in Vietnam – “The country’s rich literary history has been plagued by censorship and book bans,” says Thiện Việt.

Publishers Weekly: Indie Booksellers Launch Ambitious Global Bookstore Crawl – Ed Nawotka reports: “Independent bookstores in more than 30 cities across six continents will participate in the first synchronized Global Bookstore Crawl on April 26, coinciding with Independent Bookstore Day in the U.S.”

Penguin: Debut novels of 2025: discover the year’s breakthrough new voices – “Introducing 13 new Penguin authors as they share the inspiration behind their debut novels.”

Humanities: Portrait of Constance Fenimore Woolson – “She once wrote best-selling fiction, but Woolson is remembered now as Henry James’s confidant and muse,” says Alyson Foster.

History Today: Who to Blame for Early Modern Climate Change? Timothy Grieve-Carlson looks back at Johann Arndt and his writings on the “changing climate of the Little Ice Age [that] forced radical thinkers to reconsider humanity’s place in the universe.”

The Phnom Penh Post: Window to the world: Young woman bringing books to rural communities – “Third-year Khmer literature student Chhem Sreykea is pursuing her passion for sharing the joy of reading with a series of Reading Tours’ – and “has even established seven volunteer-run libraries across the Kingdom” of Cambodia.

The Arts Fuse: Book Column: Spotlighting Masterful Literary Translations – Tess Lewis “shines a spotlight on recently published translations of literary works that deserve more attention and readers.”

Men’s Journal: James Bond Author’s Lost Writing Will Finally Be Published This Year – Talk of the Devil: The Collected Writings of Ian Fleming, “a collection of rare Ian Fleming’s nonfiction will hit this May,” reports Ryan Britt.

Hedgehog Review: The Story of Advice: Narrative Wisdom in a Fragmented World – “One is encouraged to curate—if not outright fabricate—details from one’s personal life to present to the market,” divulges Alexander Stern.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator: International Armenian Literary Alliance Awards $8,500 in Grants – “The International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) has awarded $2,500 to Lori Yeghiayan Friedman for her work-in-progress, How to Survive a Genocide, and $3,000 to Taline Voskeritchian and Christopher Millis to co-translate of Deserts of Heaven by Krikor Beledian, and to Lilit Hayrapetyan to translate Aftershocks by Nadia Owasu.”

Jaylit: 11 African Fantasy Books to Get You Hooked – “The genre of African fantasy offers a reader a rich kaleidoscope of magical worlds, mythical creatures, and unforgettable adventures,” writes Bongiwe T. Maphosa as a preamble to her selection of “11 thrilling African fantasy novels to add to your TBR.”

Eurozine: Why are books so boring now? – “The conglomerate publishing industry sets conservative parameters on what it considers will sell. Repeating a winning ‘trending’ formula is high up on its list.” However, John Merrick observes, “blobby, multi-coloured book covers lining supermarket shelves aren’t the only result of industry homogenization – independent presses are negotiating gaps in the market, spearheading literary excellence.”

Ars Technica: George R.R. Martin has co-authored a physics paper – The American author, television writer and television producer (best known as the creator of a series of epic fantasy novels), George R.R. Martin has “peer-reviewed [a] physics paper [he co-authored for] the American Journal of Physics” on the “dynamics of a fictional virus” at the centre of “the Wild Cards series of books.” 

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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: #ReadingWales, Dewithon, Dewithon25, Ginette Kolinka, Han Kang, Holocaust Memorial Day, Jane Austen, Jeanette Winterson, Lisa Ridzén, Lottie Mills, Malachy Tallack, Paul Lynch, Reading Wales 2025, Rebecca Romney, You Yeong-Gwang