An end of week recap

“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.”
– Seneca

I am packing my bag and preparing to catch a train to Oban on Tuesday to spend a few days with friends, meaning, unfortunately, there won’t be a wind up on 5^th April. It’s a fair few years since I last visited this small Scottish seaside town on the Firth of Lorn, so I’m very much looking forward to reexploring all its historic sights and attractive coastline. I plan to return to you refreshed on Saturday 12^th April, when normal service (or something like it) will be resumed.

As always, 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 Noteworthy Ö *

As part of the ongoing Tove Trove project, I share my musings on Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä’s memoir of sorts, Notes from an Island. Hopefully, this will be the first of many Tove-related posts from me over the coming months. Although, as ever, much depends on life, strife and ‘the wife’ (i.e. Mrs Jotter arranging unexpected jollies). >> Read: An Island of Note >>

* Almost Overlooked * 

This is “going to be a big year for books written by immigrant authors […] from the Soviet Union” who now live in North America, says journalist and author Sasha Vasilyuk in her piece for Punctured Lines – a blog specialising in post-Soviet literature “in and outside the former Soviet Union.” Since nobody else has thought to do it, she has, for the past four years, “kept a running list of books” coming out of the Ukrainian and Russian immigrant communities, chiefly because she feels that as the “war drags on and the public’s attention [wanes],” it is essential for “voices [to] be heard.” Here she presents an assortment of titles ranging from “poetry to dystopian novels to short story collections, nonfiction, and a cookbook memoir” – arranged in order of publication date. Please head over to 2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors to read Sasha’s enticing descriptions. 

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

Sebald’s Silent Catastrophes, Part 1 – Twenty-four years after the death of German writer and academic W.G. Sebald at the age of 57, retired art museum director and curator, Terry Pitts of Vertigo, examines the first English translation (by Jo Catling) of Silent Catastrophes, an amalgamation of a duology of essay collections covering “two centuries of Austrian literature” – and, it would seem, quite the “achievement, resulting in more than four hundred pages […] of Sebald’s difficult, angular critical prose and ninety pages of combined Notes and Translator’s Notes.” While there are “paragraphs of mind-numbing academic verbiage scattered throughout” this “rewarding book” discussing the writers who shaped Sebald’s life and work, it is immensely “accessible for literary criticism.” Look out for Part 2 appearing “shortly.”

Living With Jane Austen by Janet Todd – It must be at least a fortnight since I last shared a fellow blogger’s Jane Austen-related content. Not wishing to appear Austen-averse, especially on her 250^th birthday, I will this week highlight a piece by Nancy A. Bekofske of The Literate Quilter. Her subject? Janet Todd’s personal memoir Living with Jane Austen which, we are told, is arranged “by theme,” enabling her to explore the ways “Austen connects with readers.” Todd has been much “inspired” by the famous novels, and she explores the author and “her contemporaries, connecting her own experiences to Austen’s thoughts.” To discover which topics are covered in the book, please see Nancy’s review of this “timely” and “intimate work.”

* 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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Guardian Australia: The Clinking by Susie Greenhill review – a stunning, devastating debut – Bec Kavanagh finds “the Richell prize-winner’s novel, [The Clinking by Susie Greenhill] set in a near-future lutruwita/Tasmania, asks what does it mean to have hope in the face of climate crisis?

Laura Thompson’s Substack: Dear Muriel Spark – Laura has been “reading and relishing” Frances Wilson’s new biography of Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist and all-round “goddess” Muriel Spark. Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark is, she says, a “fan letter” to the late but never to be extinguished Spark.

The New York Times Style Magazine: Why Are We So Obsessed With Blue? – Who recalls me rabbiting on about a “blogfestation of blues” back in February ’24 (WUTW #364)? Well, I’m rather pleased to say others have picked up on it too, including Amanda Fortini who remarks: “The color has an unshakable hold on musicians, artists and writers.” See, I told you!

Buzz: Cloudless insightfully depicts the troubled lives of a north Wales farming family – “Set on a rural farm in Llandudno, Rupert Dastur’s Cloudless explores the lives of a family living under the cloud of the 2004 invasion of Iraq,” says Rhianon Holley in this brief review. 

Tove Jansson: What does a life sound like? Tove Jansson and her music – “For Tove Jansson, music was a foundation that ran like a red thread throughout her life, says singer and actor Emma Klingenberg, who has written a book [not yet translated into English] about music in Tove Jansson’s life.”

Commonweal: Long Horizons: Bruce Chatwin’s apocalyptic imagination – Helen Rouner, an editor at Penguin Press, finds everything written by Bruce Chatwin, author of In Patagonia (1977), displays an effort to understand people who find themselves at the end of a way of being.

The Unhurried Reader: In retrospect: 11 March 2020 – Five years ago, on “the day that the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a global pandemic,” the unnamed author of this piece read Hisham Matar’s memoir A Month in Siena, “a book about art” set in the Tuscan city. We eavesdrop on their memories.

Publishers Weekly: Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman Acquire the ‘Rumpus’ – The married writers will assume ownership of the online literary publication from Alyson Sinclair, who has served as its publisher since 2022. Gay, who is founding editor of the Rumpus, described the acquisition as “a truly full-circle moment.”

The Polis Project: Waiting for the Fear: Oğuz Atay’s Short Fiction Stories Follow Protagonists On The Sidelines Of Society, Looking In – Waiting for the Fear, a recently republished short story collection by Oğuz Atay, “one of the most prominent writers of 20th-century Turkey, […] known for his experimentation and linguistic dexterity” is, according to Areeb Ahmad, “an arresting and surreal portrayal of life and its idiosyncrasies.” 

Mental Floss: 7 Fascinating Facts About Isaac Asimov’s ‘I, Robot’ – Lorna Wallace writes: “From what he originally called the fix-up sci-fi collection to the words he invented in its stories, here’s what you need to know about Asimov’s I, Robot, which turns 75 this year.” 

The Tyee Weekender: Why Read Novels? ‘To Feel More Fully,’ Says Jack Wang – The Canadian writer’s new work of historical fiction, The Riveter “is a cross-cultural love story and moving exploration of what it takes to fight for your own humanity.” Here, Harrison Mooney conducts a Q&A with Jack.

Miller’s Book Review: A Scrambled Story and a Puzzle to Solve – Jeff Goins attempts to get “inside Vladimir Nabokov’s head-scratcher classic Pale Fire.”

Caught by the River: Elegy, Southwest – “Against a backdrop of climate change, Madeleine Watts’ Elegy, Southwest is a lament for a world, a relationship, and the American road-trip novel, writes Abi Andrews.”

The Arts Fuse: Book Review: “The Last Tsar”– Last Train to Pskov – In his review of The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs, Tom Connolly writes: “Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s towering achievement is to show that, while Nicholas II was betrayed, he lost his throne because he had made it impossible for anyone who loved Russia to be loyal to him.”

RLF: Living by her pen: how the forgotten Gothic writer Regina Maria Roche’s legacy lives on – Samiha Begum reveals the history and influence of this forgotten Irish Gothic writer.

Words Without Borders: “A Road to the Sea”: Despair and Renewal in Laura Vinogradova’s The River – “Laura Vinogradova’s achingly beautiful and hypnotic novella The River, originally published in Latvian in 2020, explores loss, belonging, and grief, all while presenting a master class in crafting a bucolic setting,” writes Wayne Catan.

Nippon.com: Rana Seif: The Translator Bringing Japanese Women’s Lit, Manga, and More to Middle East Readers – “Japanese-Arabic translator Rana Seif feels driven to bring contemporary Japanese novels by women writers to readers in the Middle East, saying that the problems women face are similar in Japan and Egypt. She also translates manga as a way of fighting back against low-quality pirate versions.”

University of Cambridge: Modern magic unlocks Merlin’s medieval secrets – “Fragments of a rare Merlin manuscript from c. 1300 have been discovered and digitised in a ground-breaking three-year project at Cambridge University Library,” reveals Jessica Keating.

Africa is a Country: The forgotten women of slave revolts – “Rebecca Hall’s Wake uncovers the hidden history of African women warriors and their role in resisting the transatlantic slave trade,” says Desiree Dawson.

AnOther: Charlie Porter’s Debut Novel Is a Poignant Story About Love, Loss and HIV – In this interview with Nick Levine, British writer Charlie Porter “discusses his first work of narrative fiction, Nova Scotia House, which is about a survivor whose life partner was snatched away far too soon – but is also a cathartic tribute to the many others lost to HIV/Aids.”

The Rowling Library: Levi Pinfold announced as Jim Kay’s replacement for Harry Potter Illustrated Editions – “Bloomsbury has announced that Levi Pinfold will be the new illustrator for Harry Potter.”

Dirt: The novel cover changes and changes – “One writer’s love for collecting Italo Calvino paperbacks offers a glimpse at how book design twists and turns over the decades” – Bekah Waalkes on “what her collection of Italo Calvino novels says about the shifting winds of design in book publishing.”

Chicago Review of Books: Diving into the Deep in “Ultramarine” by Mariette Navarro – Translated from the French by Eve Hill-Agnus, “Ultramarine is a taut exploration of how the imaginable confronts the unbelievable,” writes Carr Harkrader of this magical realism novel.

Arc: The Ugly and Beautiful Gods – “Our greatest modern poets insisted they were in dialogue with—or even channeling directly—the divine. Would we like what these gods had to say?” questions Blake Smith.

The Hedgehog Review: Jane Austen’s Anti-Romantic Art of Happiness – Joshua Hren talks “comic realism and relationships” in his review of Inger Sigrun Brodey’s Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness.

The Conversation: Ten years of A Little Life – what’s behind the enduring popularity of Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘trauma porn’ novel? – Natalie Wall argues that the trauma plot, and its exploration of the depths of victimhood and suffering, has been a passport to notoriety for A Little Life.

Creative Confidence Clinic: My Books Have Been Stolen – Daisy Buchanan is “raging against the machine” – or in this instance, LibGen. She can see her novels “lined up” on a shelf in front of her eyes, yet feels as though she’s “been mugged [but still has her] handbag.” The AI bots strike again!

Three Chairs: Are there larger things than Independence? – “What is independence, and is it what we need right now? Thoughts from Iceland, and Halldór Laxness’ Independent People,” from Michael Rance.

BBC Culture: ‘In my novels, there is more kindness than you might see in other books’: Author Ann Patchett on writing amid chaos – “In the latest episode of Influential, US writer Ann Patchett shares how seeing kindness around her influences the way she approaches her characters.”

Rain Taxi Review: A Prague Flâneur – “Writing in a kind of critical-poetic journalism, Czech surrealist writer Vítězslav Nezval captures his beloved city of Prague on the brink of the Nazi invasion” in A Prague Flâneur.

Arts Hub: Book review: Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy – “Internationally acclaimed and best-selling Australian writer Charlotte McConaghy returns with Wild Dark Shore, perhaps her darkest novel yet – a mystery literary fiction seeded in climate change,” according to David Burton.”

The Wall Street Journal: ‘Memory Lane’ Review: Remember to Forget – “The ability to recollect experiences and information is a fundamental function of the brain. The task of assembling the memories we keep means throwing away others.” Julian Baggini reviews Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy’s Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember.

Poetry Foundation: The Art Life – “The first English-language translation of Tove Ditlevsen’s poetry [There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die] distils the intensity and mordant humour that make her one of Denmark’s most revered exports,” writes Joyelle McSweeney.

On the Seawall: On Translating Robert Seethaler’s The Café With No Name, with an excerpt from the novel – Nancy Naomi Carlson talks to Katy Derbyshire about her latest translation from German, The Café With No Name, Robert Seethaler’s historical novel set in 1960’s Vienna.

Scroll.in: Winners of 2025 Women AutHer Awards announced in fiction, nonfiction, debut, children’s categories – “Author and translator Shanta Gokhale was awarded this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her ‘timeless contribution’ to Indian writing.”

Everything Is Material – Jojo’s Substack:”I need my character to talk to me and tell me things because there’s so much I don’t know.” – Jojo Moyes enjoys a “conversation with bestselling novelist Lisa Jewell about trusting your subconscious to come up with your plot.”

South China Morning Post: Review | From Hiroshima to Fukushima, Yuko Tsushima’s novel Wildcat Dome is strangely riveting – “Now in English translation, Yuko Tsushima’s novel [Wildcat Dome] explores radiation, racism and personal conflict against a backdrop of nuclear disaster.”

Literaria: And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the Daffodils. – Nicole Raimondi with “spring book recommendations by women writers.”

Church Life Journal: Constellation of Genius: Miłosz, Camus, Einstein, and Weil – Czeslaw Milosz tore himself apart over whether he should defect from Stalinist Poland. “But in the end, he [voted] for Prometheus,” says Cynthia L. Haven.

Esquire: Why Is Everyone Reading ‘Lonesome Dove,’ an 858-page Western From 1985? – Lonesome Dove, “Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic is experiencing a renaissance. This makes more sense than you might think,” says Michael Sebastian.

Air Mail: The Yin to John Lennon’s Yang – “Half a century after co-writing Imagine with her Beatle husband, Yoko Ono is finally getting the recognition she deserves.” David Sheff’s new book, Yoko: A Biography, sets the record straight.

Kirkus Reviews: The Unpredictable Joys of Reading Internationally – Editor-in-chief Tom Beer has a few interesting suggestions for reading more widely.

Locus: L.J. Smith (1958-2025) – “Lisa Jane Smith, an American author of young adult fiction best known for her popular series The Vampire Diaries, has died at the age of 66 following a long illness.

The Public Domain Review: Chaos Bewitched: Moby-Dick and AI – Eigil zu Tage-Ravn asks a GTP-3-driven AI system for help in the interpretation of a key scene in Moby-Dick (1851). Do androids dream of electric whales?

Nation Cymru: US journalist makes public apology for calling Dylan Thomas Irish –American journalist Neil Steinberg made something of a faux pas in a piece he wrote for the Chicago Sun Times by naming Dylan Thomas as an Irish poet. Oops! 

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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: #ToveTrove, African Literature, Austrian Literature, Halldór Laxness, Icelandic Literature, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austen, Janet Todd, Maria Reva, Post Soviet Literature, Rebecca Hall, Seneca, Susie Greenhill, Tove Trove, W.G. Sebald, Yūko Tsushima