An end of week recap

“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
– George Bernard Shaw

The Irish celebrate the feast of Patrick their patron saint on 17^th March, which means it is only two days away. As a mark of friendship and respect for my Celtic cousins, this Welsh book blogger wishes all literary leprechauns a lively and joyful St. Paddy’s Day!

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.

* Almost Overlooked * 

Brace yourselves for a double-dip: (1) At the start of the year (with Reading Ireland Month at the forefront of her mind), Cathy Brown shared Irish Fiction to Look Out for in 2025! at 746 Books. She included a mixture of “big hitters” and “fantastic sounding debuts” in her wonderfully eclectic list, such as Elaine Garvey’s The Wardrobe Department, Eoin McNamee’s The Bureau, Oisín Fagan’s Eden’s Shore, Elaine Feeney’s Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way and many others among a “raft of interesting books.” (2) In January, Brad, a ‘lifelong student of the mystery genre’ (according to his profile on X) and blogmaster at Ah Sweet Mystery! set about reorganising his mystery books, “numbering around a thousand volumes.” While busy dealphabeticalizing (sorry, my cobbled creation, not Brad’s) and generally making his shelves more “aesthetically pleasing,” his gaze was drawn to his cherished Dell Book Mapback’s collection, which in turn led to a bout of reminiscing about the “Little sisters,” i.e. Constance and Gwenyth Little (aka ‘queens of the wacky cozy’) – but in particular, their 1944 Australian mystery novel, Great Black Kanba. To learn more about the siblings and their “twenty-one mysteries”, please read Brad’s entertaining article: Finding a Little Something on the Shelf: The Great Black Kanba. 

* 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 producing high-quality book features and reviews, it was difficult to pick only this one – which was published in recent weeks:

On the comedy of Jane Austen (1905) – Australian ‘bush capital’ resident and passionate Janeite, Sue T from Whispering Gums reveals the story behind her discovery of G.E. Mitton’s Jane Austen And Her Times, 1775-1817 – a title first published in 1905 which, thanks to the fortuitous acquirement by a fellow member of her local Jane Austen group, found its way to their February gathering. Seemingly, when a friend of this lucky gentleman downsized, he was given the book (a first edition, no less) and brought it along to show the others – all of whom were “intrigued” as not one of them had previously come across either book or author. Sue’s detective skills kicked-in and she imparts something of the biographer’s background from subsequent research but, more importantly, she shares chunks of Mitton’s opening paragraph. You will find out why these words are of interest by reading her post.

* 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 is a selection of interesting snippets: 

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The Seaboard Review: “Green to Grey” Explores Environmental Impacts Through Short Fiction – “Pollution, environmental degradation, and the loss of starlight are among the scenarios depicted in the thirteen stories in Green to Grey: An Environmental Anthology, a collection of short stories from the independent Canadian publisher, Guernica Editions.

The Mit Press Reader: Emily Dickinson’s Playful Letterlocking – “Emily Dickinson used envelopes and seals to turn letters into poetry, layering hidden messages and playful forms.”

Aeon: Dark books – “What’s more wholesome than reading? Yet books wield a dangerous power: the best erode self, infecting readers with ideas,” declares novelist and historian Tara Isabella Burton.

Orwell News: Imposter! – An essay by Matthew Longo on winning The Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2024 for his book The Picnic, in which he reflects on the act of writing and “the role of ‘unsurety’ in George Orwell’s work.”

LARB: A Language for Sharing – “Sumana Roy considers Michel Chaouli’s Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins,” an account of criticism written in the form of a philosophical essay.

Literary Hub: Margaret Atwood on Victoria Amelina, Who Recorded the Lives of Ukrainian Women Under War – In this excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s introduction to Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women, Looking at War, she remembers the “award-winning writer who sacrificed her life for justice.”

Undark: Review: When the USSR and America Joined in the Search for ET – “Mixed Signals by historian of astronomy Rebecca Charbonneau, “explores an unusual period of Soviet-U.S. cooperation in the hunt for aliens,” says Dan Falk.

The Christian Science Monitor: A sweet-natured hare wins the heart of a writer – Raising Hare: A Memoir, Chloe Dalton’s “paean to her wondrous,’ life-changing communion” with a wild hare, is, says Heller McAlpin, “a welcome addition to [the recent “bounty of beautiful”] stories of transformative, interspecies trust-building.”

BookTrib.: “Casablanca” Meets the Spy World in WWII Story of Love and Espionage – In The Librarians of Lisbon Linda Hitchcock finds “Suzanne Nelson captures the allure, glamor and excitement of the glittering city and conveys the sense of intense danger as WWII was being fought on many far-flung battlefields.”

Nation Cymru: On Being a Writer in Wales: Matthew Yeomans – Author of the forthcoming Seascape: Notes from a Changing Coastline, Matthew Yeomans talks about his writing journey and his love of Wales.

Heavy Feather Review: “Alas, Heroic Yorick”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Timothy Schaffert’s Novel The Titanic Survivors Book Club – Timothy Schaffert’s historical novel, The Titanic Survivors Book Club is the tale of the Titanic librarian whose survival altered the course of his life. It is also concerned with the radical power of books in addition to underlying themes of censorship and suppressed sexuality.

Miller’s Book Review: 5 Reasons to Write in Your Books – “Scandalized by writing in books? C.S. Lewis did it. So should you,” according to Joel J Miller.

minor literature[s]: Living Things by Munir Hachemi (trans. Julia Sanches) – Living Things by Spanish writer Munir Hachemi “is many things: a satiric literary manifesto, a dystopian eco-thriller about factory farming and gmo foods, and a look at precarious employment. But mostly it’s a summer roadtrip novel,” says Adam McPhee.

The Hedgehog Review: Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein – “Ravelstein is not simply a reactionary call to return to characteristically premodern ways of life,” says Matt Dinan. He reflects on “the man [and] the novel.”

Boston Review: Ugly Truths – Emmett Rensin, author of The Complications, with a lengthy but engrossing essay on “the politics of the mad memoir.”

The Artifice: Eco-feminism in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer – Laurika Nxumalo writes: “Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Prodigal Summer is a deep exploration of interrelated themes such as ecology, feminism, and human relationships, making it an ideal body of work for studying eco-feminism.”

Liberties: Mannhood: The Coming Revival of Democracy – Morten Høi Jensen’s latest Mannhood column, running all year on Liberties Sidebar in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann’s birth, looks at the author’s tour of America in the 1930s.

Pop Matters: Ayşegül Savaş’ Weirdo Artists and Anxious Women – “For Turkish author Ayşegül Savaş, a midway point between ‘normalness’ and artistry seems both bridgeable and impossible,” says Elif Sinem Erdem.

Milkweed Editions: Surviving One Breath at a Time: Celebrating the Launch of Creature Needs – Brianna Reed writes: “On February 27th, Milkweed Editions and the University of Minnesota Press hosted a book launch to celebrate Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation, in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Creature Conserve.”

Arts Hub: Tributes and celebrations for Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary – “It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the Regency writer continues to inspire” Australian readers, finds Thuy On.

NPR: From pointy hats to murder of innocents, ‘The Story of Witches’ revives the past – Gabino Iglesias finds Willow Winsham’s new book on witches past and present, The Story of Witches Folklore, History and Superstition, “offers a fun, fast, well researched historical summary that is also a stunning work of art.”

Engelsberg Ideas: How to revive our reading culture – “Technology has become a convenient scapegoat for the decline of literacy,” says Tiffany Jenkins. “The real problem lies in our society’s approach to reading as a shallow mode of self-expression rather than as a tool of searching, critical self-improvement.”

Laura Thompson’s Substack: Don’t Tell Alfred – Biographer of the Mitford sisters (Take Six Girls, among others), Laura Thompson writes “in praise” of Nancy Mitford’s lesser-known 1960 novel, Don’t Tell Alfred.

BBC Africa: Athol Fugard: Death of a great South African playwright – The anti-apartheid icon “Athol Fugard, who has died aged 92, was widely acclaimed as one of South Africa’s greatest playwrights,” reports Farouk Chothia.

Radio Prague International: Ondřej Pilný: I’m planning to learn Irish properly the third time around – “Ondřej Pilný is a professor of English and American literatures at Prague’s Charles University, where he also heads the Centre for Irish Studies.” Here he discusses with Ian Willoughby the literary links between Czechia and Ireland.

FictionMatters: Reading in Public No. 66: How to criticize a book well – Sara Hildreth suggests “strategies for crafting thoughtful and helpful negative reviews.”

Granta: Rural Hours – In this extract from Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann, Harriet Baker describes English novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner’s life in the country.

49^th Shelf: Most Anticipated: Our 2025 Spring Fiction Preview – “All the fiction you’re going to be falling in love with during the first half of 2025,” say the Shelf Staff at this popular Canadian book blog.

The Conversation: Africa’s newest book prize is named after Andreé Blouin: who was she? – Andreé Blouin was erased from history despite her pivotal role in African independence. Today she has a book prize named after her, finds Tinashe Mushakavanhu.

BBC Culture: ‘Lying drunk in a field’: Douglas Adams on the unlikely origins of the cult space comedy that inspired Elon Musk – “Douglas Adams’s epic series of comic novels, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is loved by scientists and tech executives, including Elon Musk. In 1986, the author talked to the BBC about the unlikely origins of a wildly successful multimedia franchise.”

Mining the Dalkey Archive: “When Will Latvians Witness Those Times?” by Nora Ikstena – Publisher of Open Letter Books and editorial consultant for Dalkey Archive Press, Chad W. Post does his bit to give “Latvian literature its moment.”

Vox: The great American classic we’ve been misreading for 100 years – “The Great Gatsby is more than cocktail parties and color symbolism,” says Constance Grady.

The Dial: The Impossible Assignment – “The truth about truth […] is that truth is an endless paradox,” observes Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. Fiction, however, is the shaping of lies. What is a writer to do?

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide: Where There’s a Will – “Translated from Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns,” Fathers and Fugitives is an “arresting novel” by S. J. Naudé about “absent, flawed, or destructive fathers” and their control over their sons.

A Narrative Of Their Own: Sylvia Plath in New York – In her ongoing analysis of “the work of 20th century women writers and their relevance to contemporary culture,” Kate Jones discusses Elizabeth Winder’s Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 and looks back at the “poet’s month at Mademoiselle.”

Cherwell: Lessons in Censorship: A Cautionary Tale against Bodleian Blacklists – “For some authors, the Bodleian Libraries have not always been a safe haven for their work. Although marginalised texts are no longer demarcated with the phi symbol on their spines, with many having re-entered the undergraduate canon. Sophie Price discusses the valuable lessons we can learn from the Bodleian blacklist which remain pertinent today.”

Exacting Clam: Nazi Lovers – Many years after the death of his great aunt Dorle Soria, David Winner discovered love letters written to her in the 1930s secreted about her apartment. Researching these for his book Master Lovers, he was sent on “a long, twisty journey,” making him question his “own connection to evil and the nature of evil itself.”

Options: Tash Aw puts his spin on the Asian epic with a quartet of reads, starting with ‘The South’ – The South “introduces a family falling apart, like the crumbling farm they inherited.”

Arab News: Review: Arab Australian debut cultivates hope, solidarity in rural New South Wales – “Escaping personal strife, a Muslim single mother carves a space for herself in the heart of rural Australia in Translations, an engrossing debut novel by Australia-born Palestinian-Egyptian writer Jumaana Abdu,” writes Sumaiyya Naseem.

Columbia Journalism Review: The Glossy Mirage – “When American magazines pulled out of Russia, the editors stuck around and remade them for the country left behind—without mentioning war,” discovers Andrew Fedorov.

3 Quarks Daily: Touching Words: on Poetry in Memoir – The Braille Encyclopaedia is “a curious book, not easily categorized,” consisting of “a collection of ‘brief essays,’ with “each entry ranging from personal anecdote or recollection to etymology and jargon all the way to scientific fact and even Yiddish,” says TJ Price.

The Critic: How I was hounded out of publishing – Ursula Doyle worked in publishing for thirty years until she was driven out of her job. She now argues that the current “culture of groupthink and ostracization must be challenged.”

El Paso Matters: El Paso author Richard Parker dies days after release of his book, ‘The Crossing’ – Richard Parker, the award-winning journalist and author of newly published The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America’s Forgotten Origin Story, has died of an ongoing heart condition.

Franceinfo: “Less time unpacking boxes, more time advising customers”: booksellers decide to make “a truce” in the purchase of new books – “Last year, for six months, about twenty bookstores stopped shopping. This year, they will be double.”

Newsweek: ‘Harry Potter’ Reboot Series Has Reportedly Found its Professor McGonagall – It has been rumoured that Janet McTeer OBE is set to take on the role of Professor McGonagall (played in the movies by the late Maggie Smith) in the new Harry Potter Max Original series, due to commence filming this summer. 

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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: #readingirelandmonth25, Christopher Kondrich, Constance Little, David Winner, Dell Book Mapback, Elaine Feeney, G.E. Mitton, George Bernard Shaw, Gwenyth Little, Heidi Wicks, Ian Thomas Shaw, Irish Novels, Jane Austen, Lucy Spelman, Matthew Yeomans, St Patrick’s Day, Susan Tacent, Tim Niedermann