An end of week recap

“It’s a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those.”
– Iain M. Banks (born 16^th February 1954)

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.

* Three Things… Resurrected *

Three Things… #5: The Mashup: After a six-year hiatus, I return with my sporadic post covering all manner of things I have recently read, watched and done with my days. However, this time it is less an inflexible, orderly list than a selection of variegated observations. For now, at least.

* Devise Your Double Fantasy *

Coming up next month is Chris Lovegrove’s annual tribute to two British fantasy greats (sadly no longer with us but still widely read and admired), namely: Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett. March Magics 2025 commences on “the first day of March and continues for the following thirty days” with much reading of old favourites and sharing of thoughts on blogs and other platforms (please use the #MarchMagics2025 hashtag when mentioning the event on social media). Chris has plans aplenty for Calmgrove Books, including reviews of some “new-to-[him] Discworld titles” and a repost of almost all “Diana Wynne Jones’s standalone fantasies” from his old Calmgrove blog. Everything you need to know about taking part can be found at #MarchMagics2025 advance notice, so please prepare to trip the light fantastic with an expectation of sudden wild magic!

* Almost Overlooked *

This week I have two briefly under-the-bookdar reviews from last November. (1) Ex-librarian and keen wildlife enthusiast, Alyson Baker critiqued Pretty Ugly by fellow New Zealander, the novelist, essayist, short fiction writer and professor of creative writing, Kirsty Gunn. A collection of fourteen unsettling short stories “exploring the origins and boundaries of ‘a person,’” some of them “entertaining, some disturbing, one devastating” – all allowing the author to pursue ‘reading and writing ugly’. Questions such as: “Where do writers’ ideas of identity come from?” are raised, and the reader’s “preconceptions [are] abruptly cut through” when, for example, the author enquires: “is a cluttered house due to contraband or a hoarding disorder?” Alys “loved reading” this collection and was much impressed by “Gunn’s beautiful rhythmic writing.” You will find the full post at alysontheblog’s Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn – 2024. (2) In his in-depth review of Lost Wonders for The Inquisitive Biologist, Leon Vlieger portrays Tom Lathan’s analysis as an “emotional gut punch of a book” in which an “unconventional approach” is used to investigate ten species recently vanished from the world. To examine what led to their loss, he “momentarily” restores each one to life and “speaks to the people who tried to save them.” With chapters averaging 30 to 40 pages (all opening with “a tastefully executed pencil-and-ink drawing by Lathan’s partner Claire Kohda”), the question of what we should do to “turn the tide” on this continuing destruction is raised. Lost Wonders, says Leon, “is an incredibly moving book that tugs at the heartstrings.” Discover why at Book review – Lost Wonders: 10 Tales of Extinction from the 21st Century.

* 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 creating high-quality book features and reviews, it was difficult to pick only these two – which were published in recent weeks:

Madame Matisse by Sophie Haydock – English teacher Kate Campbell of Currently Reading found reading Madame Matisse, Sophie Haydock’s latest historical novel about three women who find themselves for various reasons in the studio of French visual artist Henri Matisse, left her craving further details about the lives of these “bold and brave” characters whom, she says, will remain with her for a long time to come.” Set in the 1930s, Matisse’s wife Amelie drives the narrative – “a woman that defied society by marrying ‘beneath’ her,” yet who always supported her “husband’s passion and dreams.” Haydock is “adept at creating characters with all their nuances and flaws” and she expertly “imagines [their] interactions and relationships.” Despite the book having at its “centre a male artist,” the “women […] are the true focus” and are “at the heart” of all that happens. Indeed, Kate found this novel, which is based on a true story, to be “fascinating” and enjoyed exploring “the lives they inhabited” on the French Riviera during this period.

Review by Lou of The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger – Louise Cannon of Bookmarks and Stages shared her thoughts on John Ironmonger’s cli-fi story The Wager and the Bear, a companion to his widely enjoyed 2015 novel, The Whale at the End of the World. Describing it as “so beautifully and urgently” written that the reader cannot help but be “swept up in its flow,” this profound tale for “our times” (set in Cornwall) has the feel of “someone sitting in a pub” recounting events, which “eases you into the book in an unexpected way.” Protagonist Tom is a young idealist who, one day makes a show of politician and “climate denier” Monty – a character, we are told will “make your teeth grind together with sheer frustration” – setting off a lifelong feud between the men. It seems safe to assume that Louise enjoyed this novel of “lush scenery, love and topical climate events”.

* 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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The Brooklyn Rail: Tove Jansson’s Sun City – “Tove Jansson’s unconventional 1974 novel” Sun City, newly reissued in Thomas Teal’s translation is, says Vanessa Lily Chung, “set in a “retirement community in St. Petersburg, Florida—a place of ‘pensions, cremation, and legal problems,’ where it is ‘always summer.’” 

Weird Walk: WW BOOK CULT: Stone Lands by Fiona Robertson – Fiona Robertson’s Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places, “an inspiring tour of Britain’s megalithic landscapes,” is described here as “a very human journey into grief, hope and love.” She speaks to WW about her explorations of “megalithic marvels.”

The Walrus: My Guilty Pleasure: Wasting Time with Lists – Karen Solie sees lists as “little anarchic reminders to love what is incomplete.”

ABC News: Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch had an enormous impact. It’s still felt 50 years on – Fifty years after it was first published, Nicola Heath looks back at Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, a book described as “a relic of its time and a marker of a particular moment in history, but it is also still shockingly relevant in so many ways.”

Dostoevsky Book Club: About Optina Monastery in the novel The Brothers Karamazov – This piece on certain aspects of the Russian classic The Brothers Karamazov is concerned with “the prototypes of Elder Zosima, and Dostoevsky’s visit to the [Optina Monastery] after the death of his son Alyosha,” says story-reader and storyteller Dana.

Literary Review of Canada: Confessions of a Bookseller – In this brief essay, James Lindsay discusses his years as a bookseller in Toronto, holds-forth on titles he has never read and considers Lisa Moore’s 2009 historical novel February.

The Conversation: How the real murders behind the hit novel Butter exposed Japanese media misogyny – “A court found Kanae Kijima guilty of murder. Japanese society also blamed her for the way she looked.” Martina Baradel on the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer who inspired cult Japanese bestseller, Butter.

The Hudson Review: The Sense and Sensibility of an Ending: Accepting the Evitable – Alexandra Mullen reviews Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey’s Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, which provides original and engaging interpretations of “Austen’s endings.”

The Korea Times: Chung Bora’s ‘Your Utopia’ nominated for Philip K. Dick Award – Your Utopia, a collection of short stories by author Bora Chung, is Korea’s first work to be nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, one of the top honours for science fiction books published for the first time in the USA as a paperback original.

The Nation: Vigdis Hjorth and the Novel of Ugly Love – “In If Only, the Norwegian novelist distils a story of romance into all its private discomfort and claustrophobia. Its intense ambivalence [about] love feels truer to life,” writes David Schurman Wallace.

N+1: Mission Drift – Matthew Porges attempts to answer the question: “What would an authentic spy novel be authentic about?”

World Literature Today: The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been by Lorri Neilsen Glenn – “The scenes [Canadian poet and essayist Lorri Neilsen Glenn] plucks from her life [for her memoir, The Old Moon in Her Arms – a hybrid book of fragments] illustrate complex relationships and ways of being,” says Marcie McCauley (yes, our very own from Buried in Print).

A Narrative of Their Own: ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ – Kate Jones discusses “the work of 20th century women writers and their relevance to contemporary culture.” In this post, she turns a scholarly eye on Lee Israel’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger.

The New Yorker: What We Learn About Our World by Imagining Its End – “Some fear we’ll be buried in brimstone; others expect to be extinguished by A.I. But is there comfort to be found in our apocalyptic visions?” asks Arthur Krystal in his review of Dorian Lynskey’s exploration of our fantasies about the end of the world, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World.

History Today: The Englishman Who Cried ‘Let Ireland Go’ – “In 1920 the English writer Jerome K. Jerome set out the arguments in favour of Irish home rule,” says Oliver O’Hanlon.

The New York Times (via DNYUZ): ‘Demon Copperhead’ Explored Addiction. Its Profits Built a Rehab Center. – “Barbara Kingsolver has put royalties from [Demon Copperhead] her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to work in the region it portrayed, starting a home for women in recovery,” writes Alexandra Alter.

The Indian Express: Amitav Ghosh on the Salman Rushdie attack: ‘Horrified yet awed by his resilience; we’ve forgotten our shared humanity’ – In an interview with Cherry Gupta, “Amitav Ghosh discusses the solitary nature of writing, why recognition and awards should not constrain artistic expression, the challenges of writing in the digital age, and the balance between free speech and sensitivity.”

The Artifice: The Quietly Subversive Poems of Gwen Harwood – Regarded as one of Australia’s finest poets, the late Gwen Harwood was, according to academic Lydia Gore-Jones, a “(quietly) subversive” poet whose “transforming art [was] hidden” within the “apparent banality and triviality of her subject matter.”

Big Think: Nathan Thrall on how to immerse readers in nonfiction writing – “‘The only requisite for nonfiction is that it’s true,’ says Nathan Thrall, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.”

The i Paper: Eimear McBride changed modern literature – her new novel reminds us why – “The City Changes Its Face may be more of a mood piece than a novel,” says Ellen Peirson-Hagger, “but this author shows us how powerful that can be.”

Brittle Paper: Voices from the Continent: The Importance of Reading African Literature – Delina Yemane Dawit looks at the reasons why “African Literature historically hasn’t been able to keep up with the literary developments of the West.”

Caught by the River: On Meteorites – “As her book The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space & Deep Time is published by Profile Books, Helen Gordon shares her fascination with these ancient, extra-terrestrial rocks.”

Arts Hub: Book review: Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks – David Burton finds Memorial Days is “a memoir about grief by [an Australian] writer at the top of her form.”

LARB: Dino Buzzati’s Fantastic Universe – Valentina Polcini reviews The Bewitched Bourgeois, a new collection that gathers 50 fantastical short stories by Italian writer Dino Buzzati (1906–72). The anthology has been compared by some to “Poe and Kafka meet The Twilight Zone.”

The Arts Fuse: Book Review: “Making No Compromise” — The Story of the “Little Review” That Could – David Daniel on Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the Little Review, an “absorbing” analysis that “underlines the important cultural role little magazines played, and how women were central to their existence as founders, editors, contributors, critics, and patrons.”

New Lines Magazine: Taiwan’s Literature Is Having a Moment in Central and Eastern Europe – “Publication of contemporary fiction in Slavic languages is a sign of growing political support for Taipei,” reports James Baron.

The Minnesota Star Tribune: In ’After the North Pole,’ explorer chronicles impossible challenges – Cory Oldweiler describes Erling Kagge’s After the North Pole: A Story of Survival, Mythmaking, and Melting Ice as an “engaging history of the quest to reach the North Pole from a Norwegian explorer who knows all about extreme trips.”

Unknown Literary Cannon: Sapphic Overtones in Heterosexual Literature – The always engaging Jo, who is on a mission to “catalogue lesbian literature,” scrutinizes Lalla Romano’s 1957 A Silence Shared – an historical novel “set in Italy, during World War II” with added “sapphic elements.”

Publishers Weekly: New Historical Fantasies Reimagine the Past – Liz Scheier finds books in which “tales of magic and mayhem find grounding in historical settings.”

The Critic: Blood, squalor, and a taste of things to come – “Japan’s brutal invasion of China [was] witnessed by four very different literary adventurers,” says Jeffrey Meyers.

The New York Times Magazine: Janet Malcolm Understood the Power of Not Being ‘Nice’ – “The writer is remembered, above all, for her ruthlessness. But when [Katie Roiphe] went looking for it, [she] found something much more complicated.

Vox: A major book publisher announced a change. The industry freaked out. – Constance Grady explains why “those little quotes on book covers became a flashpoint.”

Asian Review of Books: “The Dead Sea: A 10,000 Year History” by Nir Arielli – In The Dead Sea: A 10,000 Year History, “Arielli writes a millennia-long history focusing on how the Dead Sea’s unique geography has driven its history.”

El Mundo: Camilla Läckberg: “Where are the nasty aunts in the novels? I miss them” – “The Swedish author completes her ‘Faye Trilogy’ with Dreams of Bronze, a thriller whose heroines strike first, push all limits and, in the end, discover the value of friendship between women.”

Beyond the Bookshelf: How I Learned to Love Short Stories – Melissa Joulwan offers five tips to turn you on to short fiction, which will also “work for collections of nonfiction essays, too.”

Portland Press Herald: At a fictional Maine college, a popular professor fights campus politics – “Robert Klose’s entertaining satire Trigger Warning pokes fun at academia”, says Thomas Urquhart.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: This Is a Golden Age for University Presses – According to Derek Krissoff, “the focus on efficiency and innovation misses the point: We are producing fabulous books.”

Storymaps: Stephen King’s Maine – A map of Stephen King’s fictional Maine – “Sharon Kitchens in collaboration with the Durham, Maine Historical Society [mixes] fictitious and real-life places in the King of Horror’s literary world” (oldish piece but interesting).

The Home of Agatha Christie: Investigating Agatha Christie’s Travel Novels – Many of Christie’s most famous novels are set on modes of transport: Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile to name a couple. Host of the All About Agatha podcast, Kemper Donovan explores these mysteries and considers what makes them so popular.

Bookforum: Reader, I Divorced Him – Hermione Hoby shares “narratives of marriage and its dissolution.” 

Publishers Weekly: Falling in Love in Indie Bookstores – Judith Rosen profiles 24 couples who proposed, or held their weddings, at independent bookstores in Bookstore Romance: Love Speaks Volumes.

Dirt: An IKEA bookshelf’s third coming: The third time may not be the charm – “Rachel Davies on the design history and lacklustre relaunch of a cult IKEA shelf” – not a positive review!

Nation Cymru: Quirky Welsh phrasebooks sell more than 100,000 copies – “Back in 2018, Welsh artist Anne Cakebread approached Y Lolfa” with the unusual suggestion of publishing Teach Your Dog Welsh, a “pocket-sized phrasebook, beautifully illustrated, to help people learn Welsh with their pet.” Six years on, the series has taken off in a big way. 

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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: #MarchMagics2025, Diana Wynne Jones, Geraldine Brooks, Iain M. Banks, John Ironmonger, Kirsty Gunn, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, March Magics 2025, Nir Arielli, Sophie Haydock, Terry Pratchett, Tom Lathan, Tove Jansson