An end of week recap

“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer (born 22^nd February 1788)

A much shorter offering this week, I’m afraid. My 91-year-old mother is very poorly after innumerable health issues followed by a nasty fall (the worst of many), during which she cracked her head on the arm of a chair and broke her collarbone. She is currently in hospital, bed bound (hopefully not for good) and my stepfather (who has dementia) has been keeping us busier than usual. We are attempting to put in place various home-helps and what not, but in the meantime, the contents of my wind ups may be a bit hit and miss.

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.

* Are You Ready to Read Wales? *

Reading Wales 2025 is but one week away and host, Karen of BookerTalk, is keen to discover your plans for the event and share a few of her own. This “month long celebration of Welsh writers and their works” kicks off on Saturday 1^st March, from which point you will be invited to “read as much or as little as you want” from “fiction or essays; memoirs or travel fiction; poetry or plays.” Simply read your chosen text, post “your thoughts about [it] on your blog platform” and share your links “on your social media channel” (ensuring you tag @BookerTalk and use the hashtag #ReadingWales25). For full details on taking part and to find out what Karen herself will be reading, head over to Reading Wales ’25 — the countdown begins.

* Almost Overlooked *

Daniel Kurland read and reviewed Chuck Palahniuk’s latest novel – a “pitch black, postmodern social satire” – for horror blog Bloody Disgusting! early last October, describing it as “The Truman Show meets The Hunger Games meets Euphoria, with a touch of Alice in Wonderland thrown in for good measure.” A “beautifully misanthropic and nihilistic vision of the American Dream” in which “teenagers aspire to be owned by shady billionaires and world leaders [who] believe […] children are the future, but in the same way [as] a new iPhone,” Shock Induction is “full of twists and turns” but, Daniel warns, “not every reader will have the endurance to make it to the end.” However, “those that do will cherish the surreal experience and the novel’s savage critique on society.” Find out if this “reality-altering revenge story” is for you at ‘Shock Induction’ – Meta Mind Control Manifesto Is Chuck Palahniuk’s Strongest Work in Years.

* 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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Neil Perry Gordon: “I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK” – Host of Flash Fiction Weekly, Neil Perry Gordon’s alternative history novel The Seven Seeds: Shepherd of Souls, has been described as a “journey that pushes the limits of human nature and history [for] those seeking epic narratives that provoke thought and excitement.”

The Arts Fuse: Book Review: Surviving Stalin in “No Country For Love” – “In this compulsively readable novel, a Ukrainian Jewish woman does what she needs to survive in the nationalistic, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic Stalin-era Soviet Union,” says Peter Keough in his review of Yaroslav Trofimov’s historical novel, No Country for Love.

The Conversation: ‘A literary event’: Sylvia Plath memorabilia can fetch as much as $1m. A new book reveals a treasure trove of material – Sylvia Plath’s writing was witty, political, emotional and sharp. The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath edited by Peter K. Steinberg – a substantial new collection – includes more than 50 previously unpublished stories. 

Miller’s Book Review: Cat and Mouse in the Library – “Cats and books have had a long and curious relationship” and have “played countless roles in literature.” Joel J Miller on “medieval monks and mousers, Japanese woodblock cats, top cats in literature” and more.

032c: Fitzcarraldo Editions: The Biggest Little Press in the World – “Fitzcarraldo Editions is the biggest sensation in publishing in decades. Based in the Deptford district of London, the independent house has published four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature and counting. But what makes the press so successful outside traditional book circles?” asks Shane Anderson. “Is it their refined literary taste or their sleek, distinctive books that act as a cultural signifier?”

The MIT Press Reader: The Spiritual Hunt: Searching for Rimbaud’s Lost Manuscript – “A publisher contends with the mystery and myth of a possible forgery.” Could The Spiritual Hunt be Arthur Rimbaud’s lost masterwork?

The Telegraph (via Yahoo News UK): Russia killed this novelist – her book couldn’t be more urgent – “Looking at Women, Looking at War, a mix of diary and reportage by Victoria Amelina, makes for a harrowing portrait of Ukraine’s invasion,” says Julian Evans.

FictionMatters: Reading in Public No. 63: It’s not an English teacher’s job to make you love reading – “A long overdue rant on [former teacher Sara Hildreth’s] most contrary opinion.”

Literary Review: Among the Bandits – “There was little in Norman Lewis’s suburban upbringing to indicate that he would become one of the great travel writers of the 20th century. His long life took him to places as varied as Burma and Belize, Vietnam and Venezuela.” Nicholas Rankin joins Lewis on his travels via a new collection of his writings: A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis.

Contingent Magazine: How Rebecca Brenner Graham Does History – As part of a series on how historians “do the work of history,” Charlotte Gray profiles Rebecca Brenner Graham, author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany.

The Haitian Times: Frankétienne, legendary Haitian writer and artist, dies at 88 – “The pioneering author, playwright, and painter, known as the “father of Haitian letters,” leaves behind a towering literary and artistic legacy.”

InsideHook: Unearthing the Unexpected Corners of Viking History – Historian Eleanor Barraclough, “whose new book focuses on the lived experience of people” during the Viking Age, speaks to Tobias Carroll about the making of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age.

Literary Hub: “Only That Which Does Not Teach Is Irresistible.” Charlotte Wood on Faith, Mortality, and Her Booker-Shortlisted Novel – Eric Olson chats to Charlotte Wood, the Australian author of Booker shortlisted, Stone Yard Devotional.

The Marginalian: Living Against Time: Virginia Woolf on the Art of Presence and the “Moments of Being” That Make You Who You Are – “Living moments,” were described by Virginia Woolf as “moments of being,” says Maria Popova – and Moments of Being is the title of her “posthumous collection of […] autobiographical writings.”

The Dial: Bone Into Stone – Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Bone Into Stone, “on translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”

The Daily Star: Desire, Identity, and the boundaries of silence – Namrata on the “unravelling complexity of Saikat Majumdar’s literary universe.”

JSTOR Daily: The Post-Millennial Poe, or, Edgar Allan Holmes? – “In life, Edgar Allan Poe was best known as a literary critic. Today, he’s [mainly] remembered for his disquieting tales…but that may be changing,” teases Matthew Wills.

Hungarian Literature Online: Noémi Szécsi: “Jokay Maurus” or Mór Jókai Goes International – Jókai and women is “Noémi Szécsi’s portrait on one of Hungary’s best known and most prolific writers Mór Jókai who was born 200 years ago [this month].”

Jaylit: MaryAnn Ifeanacho Makes the 2024 Emma Press Literary Award Shortlist – “Nigerian writer Maryann Ifeanacho has been shortlisted for The Emma Press Literary Award for her novella An Estate of Ironies.”

The Atlantic (via MSN): When Robert Frost Was Bad – “Before he became America’s most famous poet, he wrote some real howlers,” reveals James Parker.

N+1: On Airless Spaces – Chris Kraus writes: “Sometime in 1997 Beth Stryker, who was one of [Shulamith Firestone’s] younger friends, sent us the manuscript. Would Semiotext(e) like to publish [her] new, second book? I think we said yes right away before even reading it. But when we finally did, I was just blown away by the way that Airless Spaces wasn’t a memoir.”

Huck: “Welcome to the Useless Class”: Ewan Morrison in conversation with Irvine Welsh – “For Emma — Ahead of the Scottish author’s new novel, he sat down with Irvine Welsh for an in-depth discussion of its dystopic themes, and the upcoming AI ‘tsunami’.”

Heavy Feather Review: Nonfiction Review: Hollay Ghadery Reads Pamela Mulloy’s Essay Collection Off the Tracks – Hollay Ghadery was “enchanted” by Canadian writer Pamela Mulloy’s “stories of adventure and misadventure” in Off the Tracks – a “meditation” on train journeys (recalled during the Covid pandemic).

Traveling in Books: Legends Come to Life – The Children of Gods and Fighting Men by Shauna Lawless “revolves around the perspectives of Gormflaith and Fódla, two immortals who hide from humanity in differing ways.” It is, says Kim (and, apparently, her Cat), “an excellent example of historical fantasy done right.”

City Journal: Stray Dog Poet – Darran Anderson finds “Anna Akhmatova’s work outlasted the regime that persecuted her.”

The Critic: How we devalue the Book – The Secret Author is concerned “literary culture is under threat from quarters meant to celebrate and promote it.”

The Nation: The Harrowing Ardor of Heather Lewis – “Her fiction was miscast as merely transgressive. Rather, her novels were interested in understanding life in its most unvarnished and unmediated,” writes Gracie Hadland in her review of Heather Lewis’s recently republished Notice.

Smithsonian Magazine: The Mystery of the World’s Oldest Writing System Remained Unsolved Until Four Competitive Scholars Raced to Decipher It – “In the 1850s, cuneiform was just a series of baffling scratches on clay, waiting to spill the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia,” writes Joshua Hammer, author of The Mesopotamian Riddle.

Le Monde: Author Antonine Maillet, the first non-European Goncourt winner and a figure of Acadia, has died at the age of 95 – “She was the first Francophone outside Europe to win the Prix Goncourt in 1979 for her novel Pélagie-la-Charrette [Pélagie: The Return to Acadie] and remains, to this day, the only Canadian to have won the prestigious French literary prize.”

The Indian Express: The British Raj through George Orwell’s eyes: How colonial India shaped the literary legend – “George Orwell’s years in the British Raj ignited a firestorm of ideas that would shape the world’s most iconic warnings against totalitarianism.” Aishwarya Khosla looks back at the “boy born in Bihar [who] became the voice that challenged empires, both seen and unseen.”

The New York Review: In Lieu of Love – In her review of Instead of a Letter, Vivian Gornick writes: “Diana Athill chose a life of sexual and intellectual exploration. Could she get it all down on the page?”

Public Books: “Who Made These Rules?”: Claire Messud on What’s Distracting from Good Writing – “I believe in the amazing complexities of what we can express and convey in language if people will only make the effort and take the time.” Sean Hooks talks to Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History.

Air Mail: Lisa’s Mystery Picks – Lisa Henricksson advises you not to miss this week’s “British espionage thriller, a whodunit featuring five real-life female mystery novelists, and a tale of a deadly conspiracy theory.”

The Guardian: Geoff Nicholson obituary – The English satirist, Geoff Nicholson’s “work examined the links between emotions, behaviour and location, notably in his novel Bleeding London.”

The Collector: Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus”: How to Find Happiness – “‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’ This is the last line of Camus’ famous essay on absurdity.” Mirjana Jojić explores an idea that “contradicts Greek myth.”

The Kyiv Independent: Plokhy argues in Chornobyl occupation book that Russia’s nuclear blackmail is ‘warning for the future’ – Serhii Plokhy Chernobyl Roulette: War in the Nuclear Disaster Zone is a disturbing account of Russia’s occupation of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants, “serving as a reminder of humanity’s capacity for self-destruction.”

Camilla Grudova: Review The Girls by John Bowen – Lesbian horror classic, The Girls (“a reissue, originally published in the late 80s”), about couple Janet and Susan “who live in rural Warwickshire in the 70s” is “one of those books that offers ways of being that aren’t soured by the essential for plot,” says Camilla Grudova.

CairoScene: How a Backyard Dinner With Friends Became Dubai’s Favourite Book Club – Hassan Tarek finds “Sophia Khalifeh’s informal book club, born over candlelight, has grown faster than she had ever expected.”

Gothamist: Joan Didion’s official archive is going on view at the New York Public Library next month – “The New York Public Library is opening up its archives of Joan Didion and her husband Gregory Dunne to the public beginning March 26, reports Hannah Frishberg.”

The Verge: Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books – “After February 26th, you can only download books from the Kindle store to your e-reader over Wi-Fi.”

It’s Nice That: Pentagram brings the magic and mischief of Roald Dahl’s stories to RDSC brand identity – Of the new Roald Dahl brand identity, Ellis Tree says: “The design system works across a wide range of formats for storytelling, catering to audiences both young and old – and even comes along with a new ‘puckish and playful’ custom typeface: Fantastic Mr. Font.”

ABC News: The Bride Stripped Bare caused a scandal in 2003. Author Nikki Gemmell says it nearly ended her career – It’s one of this century’s most notorious books. Australian author Nikki Gemmell reveals the story behind her bestseller, The Bride Stripped Bare.

Dirt: In walks my nose – “Nina Renata Aron on Moshtari Hilal’s Ugliness” and “the search for the future body.”

Creative Bloq: We need to talk about those controversial new Jane Austen book covers – “Is no author safe from the BookTok craze?” asks a horrified Daniel John. 

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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: #ReadingWales25, Alternative History, Arthur Schopenhauer, Chuck Palahniuk, Eleanor Barraclough, Essay Collections, Geoff Nicholson, History Books, Horror Fiction, Neil Perry Gordon, Pamela Mulloy, Reading Wales 2025, Satirical Novels