An end of week recap

“We are the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities.”
–  Rudyard Kipling

It is the last Saturday in April, which can mean only one thing – it is Independent Bookstore Day in North America. This springtime tradition is an opportunity for booklovers in the USA and Canada to celebrate the sheer joy of reading and the role independent bookshops play in conserving local culture and helping neighbourhoods thrive. I hope nobody will object if the rest of us join in the fun.

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.

* To Cut a Long Story Short *

Over at ANZ LitLovers LitBlog Lisa Hill is toying with the idea of hosting a new literary challenge later this year. She is soliciting your views on the possibility of a little something in September, namely: Short Story Week. Her initial thoughts are that participants could share short story reviews, perhaps from a favourite collection, but she is open to suggestions. The definition of a short story is, according to Oxford Languages, a narrative “with a fully developed theme but significantly shorter and less elaborate than a novel.” It is also, says Lisa, “one that can be read in under an hour,” thus making it relatively easy to finish during a lunch break or similar. “Authors could be from anywhere in the world”, she suggests, which means it has the potential to “be a beaut resource if enough people contribute.” What say you? Please join the conversation and share your thoughts at Expressions of Interest: Short Story Month.

* Three’s a Charm *

I was sincerely chuffed to be invited by popular Australian book blogger, Kim Forrester of Reading Matters, to take part in Triple Choice Tuesday – her “semi-regular series” in which “some of [her] favourite bloggers, writers and readers [are asked] to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them,” with the intention of raising “the profile of certain books and [introducing] readers to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.” A simple but inspired concept, it was first dreamt up by Kim in 2010 – at a time, as she accurately points out, when few people “even knew what a ‘blog’ was”. Follow this link to look back at the names of previous participants, check out the questions and maybe fill in the form to take part yourselves. >> Triple Choice Tuesday (mark II): Paula Bardell-Hedley >>

* Almost Overlooked * 

I have a couple of previously neglected posts for you this week: (1) “Five dead” is the stark opening statement from The Lockmaster: A Short Story of Killing by Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr. In a review of this dystopian novella for roughghosts last November, Canadian book blogger Joseph Schreiber describes the scene of a world “set in some indeterminate future time, when sea levels are rising […,] inland regions are drying out” and “water is a precious resource to be defended by force.” When a longboat plummets over the Great Falls, drowning all on board, a son blames his father for the tragedy. This book’s “oddly discomfiting narrator” is “not a readily sympathetic” person, we are told, and neither “the characters nor the political and environmental dimensions are fully fleshed out”. He is, however “plausible” and “suitably unnerving”, adding to the “gloomy undercurrents” that drive the story. To find out more about this “dark speculative folktale,” head over to The reversal of the currents: The Lockmaster by Christoph Ransmayr. (2) In a review last December for This Reading Life, Brona of the Blue Mountains describes Humpback Highway: Diving Into the Mysterious World of Whales as her “walking backpack book”. Like its author, the much-admired wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirott, she has “a fascination with whales and ocean life in general” but was “put-off” the book somewhat by the “constant and over-enthusiastic use of ‘so cool’ and ‘super’” on every other page. She eventually decided to read it as if it were a potential gift for her two animal-loving teenage nieces, and fortunately this did the trick. In her post, Brona concludes Pirotta’s non-traditional scientific backstory could well be “useful and inspirational for teenage readers” showing, as it does, “passions” can sometimes lead to “satisfying and engrossing” careers. Follow the link to Humpback Highway | Vanessa Pirotta to discover why the book ultimately “hit all the right notes.” 

* Lit Crit Blogflash *  

I am going to share with you one of my favourite posts from around the blogosphere. There are a great many talented writers producing high-quality book features and reviews, which made it difficult to pick only this one – which was published in recent weeks:

Emma’s Anticipated Treasures: April 2025 – I strongly suggest delving into this book-brimming roll call of highly “anticipated” April releases posted to Emma’s Biblio Treasures’ blog last month. As Emma herself says, “there are some exciting debuts” forthcoming, not to mention “new releases from authors [she loves]” – among them, Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser, The Eights by Joanna Miller, The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley, Mere by Danielle Giles, A Line You Have Traced by Roisin Dunnett and oh, so many more. Emma aims with her blog to “share [her] passion for books and connect with other book lovers” and I can confirm this, and indeed all her posts, are well worth further investigation.

* 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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Historia: Writing and researching naval fiction – Katie Daysh, author of the historical novel, A Merciful Sea, discusses her research into naval history at the time of Nelson, which involved “taking in a lot of technical details.” But as she points out, “when writing naval fiction, character must come first.” 

The Fantasy Hive: ICE by Anna Kavan (BOOK REVIEW) – First published in 1967, Anna Kavan’s Ice is “an all-encompassing, genre-defying work of art”, says Jonathan Thornton, and “one of the key works of speculative fiction of the 20th century.” It has now been republished by Pushkin Press Classics with a foreword by Jeff VanderMeer. 

Jane Austen’s World: Jane Austen’s Desk: A New Website – Brenda S. Cox invites you to explore Jane Austen’s desk and room at a new website created by “Inger Brodey and her amazing team at the Jane Austen Collaborative.” At present, you can pay a virtual visit to the beta version (already displaying “lots of great information”) before it morphs into a fully-fledged portal.

4Columns: Perspective(s) – French author Laurent Binet’s historical novel, Perspective(s), “combines metafiction, baroque allegory, erudite citation, genre pillage, and the novel of aesthetic ideas,” says Brian Dillon.

AP: Book Review: ‘Hope Dies Last’ visits visionaries fighting global warming – In Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future, the award-winning environmental journalist Alan Weisman “has found an all-world cast of scientists, engineers and environmentalists who have dreamed big and worked passionately to repair some of the world’s wrecked ecosystems”. Their efforts, says Jeff Rowe, “can save us from writing a catastrophic next chapter for our earth.”

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator: To Go on Living: Public Reading and Conversation with Narine Abgaryan – “Of all the republics of the Soviet Union, Armenia had the most difficult birth. The devastating earthquake of 1988, followed by the Karabakh conflict and economic collapse, left a lasting scar on the psyche of the nation which continues to this day. The devastating impact of these calamities have left their mark and reflection on all aspects of people’s lives, culture, arts and literature in particular.” The historical/war fiction short story collection, To Go on Living, is “one such work.”

Noted: Henry David Thoreau’s Economic Notes – “‘Say’s I to myself’ should be the motto of my journal.” English professor Jillian Hess on the journals of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau – in which he held “a life-long conversation with himself.”

Aeon: The truth about love – “In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates shares a theory of love from the teachings of a ‘non-Athenian woman’. Who was she really?” asks Classics professor Armand D’Angour.

Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko on why Ukrainians ‘don’t have to respect Pushkin’ – Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex by Oksana Zabuzhko, “one of Ukraine’s most prominent authors,” is widely considered among “the most significant works of independent Ukraine”. Here she discusses (among many other issues) “why Ukrainians should not feel obligated to respect Russian literature, the rightful place of classic Ukrainian female authors in the global literary canon […] and why it’s wrong to share a stage with Russian authors while the war continues.”

America Magazine: Review: Tara Isabella Burton’s fairy tale for grownups – “If what we need now is the kind of story that restores wonder to the world, Tara Isabella Burton’s Here in Avalon provides one avenue to that destination,” says Katy Carl.

Voegelin View: Eye for an Eye: A Review of Perestroika by João Cerqueira – Cerqueira’s historical novel “is a powerful story about fictional characters living in [the imaginary nation of] Slavia during the period of political unrest in the USSR/Soviet Union/Communist Russia,” writes Sarah Tillard in her review of Perestroika: An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth in the online arts and humanities journal of the Eric Voegelin Society.

Slate: When Is Your Creative Work “Done”? – “Teacher and author Maggie Smith discusses the “good trouble” of working on a piece until it’s truly finished and her new creativity advice book, Dear Writer.”

Words Without Borders: Unconscious Spells: On Mansoura Ez Eldin’s The Orchards of Basra – “What emerges throughout The Orchards of Basra is how fragile and prone to disintegration the borders of identity are,” writes critic Alex Tan” on Egyptian “chronicler of the chimeric,” Mansoura Ez Eldin’s historical fantasy novel.

Air Mail: The Mother of Surrealism – Behind the works of Paul Éluard, Max Ernst and especially Salvador Dalí was the latter’s wife, Gala, a Russian expat and visionary artist who gets her due in Michèle Gerber Klein’s new biography, Surreal: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí.

Futurism: Meta Says It’s Okay to Feed Copyrighted Books Into Its AI Model Because They Have No “Economic Value” – “How convenient!” says Frank Landymore.

The Conversation: 5 tips from an expert for choosing a self-help book that will actually work – The self-help category is one of the largest non-fiction book genres. However, as Dr. Joanna Pozzulo (Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University, Canada) explains, not all self-help books are evidence-based.

Publishers Weekly: Why a Homophonous Pair of Spanish Novels Were ‘Catnip’ to Open Letter – Daniel Yadin on a peculiar pair of novels with identical titles “dramatizing the lives of two writers devoted to their craft”, first published in Spanish 23 years apart. Attila by Aliocha Coll and Attila by Javier Serena were both translated into the English by Katie Whittemore.

The New York Times (via DNYUZ): The Marriage, and Ménage à Trois, That Changed Art History – Joanna Scutts describes French sisters (great-granddaughters of Gabriële Buffet-Picabia), Anne and Claire Berest’s historical novel, Gabriële, as the story of “a writer and pivotal figure of the 20th-century avant-garde who nurtured the talents of others.”

ABC: The Stella Prize 2025: A reading guide to the six shortlisted books – “A novel that tricks its readers, another exploring the ‘incessant gnaw’ of grief after death, non-fiction about emigrating to Australia from Gaza, or the vital role of Black media: the powerful books shortlisted for one of Australia’s top literary awards.”

Edinburgh University Press: Q&A with the editors of Finnegans Wake – Human and Nonhuman Histories – “Richard Barlow and Paul Fagan discuss their exciting new essay collection [Finnegans Wake – Human and Nonhuman Histories] on the work of Irish author James Joyce.”

The Duck-Billed Reader: Narration and Voicelessness in The Woman in White – Claire Laporte attempts to answer the question: “What is the impact of Wilkie Collins’s multiple first-person narrators in The Woman in White?”

The Emancipator: In ‘To Save and to Destroy,’ a clarion call for literature of dissent – “Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new [collection of essays, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other] is an ode to literature and the radical politics of belonging for writers of color”, says Malavika Kannan.

BookTrib: Accidents Happen and Other Stories by F.H. Batacan – Linda Hitchcock reviews Filipino crime writer F.H. Batacan’s short story collection made up of “murder mysteries, uncanny disappearances, dystopian science fiction, criminal acts and a tale that tantalizes with a tinge of horror,” Accidents Happen, she says, is “ideal for readers who would like [something thrilling] but have limited time.”

Sydney Review of Books: The Value of Differences – “International literary prizes and book reviews are increasingly acknowledging the importance of translated work. However, as Jennifer Lindsay argues, while translators themselves are receiving acclaim, their art remains largely underappreciated.”

ARC: Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Strangers in a Strange Land – Lee Konstantinou finds “science-fictional notes on the ‘abundance’ agenda” in Abundance How We Build a Better Future – Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s “new [non-fiction] work of political imagination.”

Smithsonian Magazine: This New Book Reveals the Daredevil Lives of Four Italian Women Who Stood Up to Hitler and Mussolini – “By delivering newspapers, munitions and secret messages to resistance groups, among many other incredible tasks, the brave fighters strove for a freer world.” Sonja Anderson reviews Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis by Suzanne Cope.

Public Things Newsletter: Kill All Rebels – Matthew Lamb’s essay on Angela Nagle and Albert Camus examines “commonalities” between the two writers.

The Daily Star: Aparna Sanyal and the burden of representation in South Asian literature – Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal’s Instruments of Torture is a powerful literary collection that delves into the psychological and societal torments individuals endure, […] focusing on themes of beauty standards and the representation of women. Each story [is] named after a medieval torture device,” writes Namrata.

El Mundo (La Lectura): The meeting of four national prizes for Spanish Literature: “The book is the most important cultural invention of humanity” – “Writers Manuel Rivas, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Luis Landero and José María Merino talk [to Pablo Gil] about the state of reading and literature coinciding with the celebrations of Book Day.”

The Guardian: Interview: ‘Marriage feels like a hostage situation, and motherhood a curse’: Japanese author Sayaka Murata – “The Convenience Store Woman author is renowned for challenging social norms in darkly weird near-future fiction. She discusses sex, feminism and her struggles to be an ‘ordinary earthling’” with Lisa Allardice.

Electric Lit: 3 Debut Writers Discuss Craft and Obsession in their First Novels – As part of the debut craft series, Kyla D. Walker interviews “Mariam Rahmani, Jeremy Gordon, and Holly Brickley on the origins of their books and the circuitous paths to writing them.”

The Critic: Who are the household names now? – “It is not just that people read less widely and discriminatingly than they used to but that the fragmentation of mainstream book-world culture has been gathering pace since at least the early 2000s,” declares the Secret Author in his perceptive piece on why “cultural fragmentation has led to a decline in shared knowledge.”

LARB: Step Right Up and See This Ghastly Town – Cory Oldweiler reviews Ecuadoran author Natalia García Freire’s new magical realism novel, The Carnival of Atrocities (translated by Victor Meadowcroft), about the ‘legend of Mildred’.

3 Quarks Daily: Criticism as Anti-Tool – Christopher Hall questions why he ever thought he could “make being well-read a career.” However, as “the English degree craters, and the idea of the university itself is under assault”, he advances “the Black Hole argument for the study of literature” – that is to say, “we ought to study it because it is there”.

Realnoe Vremya: Not just Nonfic – Ekaterina Petrova reports on “what the International Fair of Intellectual Literature non/fictioNvesna [at Gostiny Dvor in Moscow] was like.”

The Bookseller: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld to be launched as graphic-novel series by Transworld and Puffin – Lauren Brown reports: “Transworld and Puffin have signed deals for three graphic-novel adaptations of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, marking the start of the ‘Discworld Graphic Novel Universe’.

Ancillary Review of Books: The People Are Us, the Time Is Always: Review of Natalia Theodoridou’s Sour Cherry – “From [the] opening—ripe with implication—the narrator signals that [Sour Cherry] is being actively crafted with the reader’s complicity,” says Roseanna Pendlebury of this “loose reimagining of Bluebeard”.

The Johns Hopkins News-Letter: Hopkins Lecture Series hosts Margaret Atwood in Virtual Conversation – On 10^th April, “the Hopkins Lecture Series hosted an event titled ‘An Evening in Virtual Conversation with Margaret Atwood’, in which the author “reflected on her decades-long literary career, discussed the role of dystopian literature in modern society, and offered insights into the political and environmental concerns that permeate her work.”

Swissinfo: Award-winning Swiss author and scholar Peter von Matt dies aged 87 – The multi-award-winning Swiss writer and former professor of German literature Peter von Matt, known “primarily for his books on literature,” passed away in Zurich last Monday at the age of 87, “following a long illness.”

The Washington Post: This 25-year-old horror novel captured the terrors of the internet – “Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is just as scary today as it was when it was published a quarter-century ago,” says Jess Keiser.

A Narrative of Their Own: Writer Friends – Kate Jones on “Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, and the importance of women supporting women”.

The Atlantic: What Does the Literature of the Working Class Look Like? – Rhian Sasseen examines On the Clock by French author Claire Baglin, “a new entrant to the genre of workplace literature [that argues] even mundane labor shapes your identity” – translated into the English by Jordan Stump.

The New York Times: Fantasy Novels for People Who Think They Don’t Like Fantasy – “Interested in dipping your toe into the genre? The author Leigh Bardugo recommends books that can get you started.”

The Verge: The first folding e-reader is smaller than a paperback – Andrew Liszewski reports: “The mooInk V features an 8-inch folding E Ink screen that’s been tested to survive over 200,000 bends.”

UnHerd: Spare us another Pride and Prejudice remake – Poppy Sowerby suggests “Gen Zs should just read the book”.

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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: Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal, Christopher Ransmayr, Emily Hauser, Independent Bookstore Day, Katie Daysh, Natalia Theodoridou, Rudyard Kipling, Samah Sabawi, Short Story Week, Tara Isabella Burton, Triple Choice Tuesday, Vanessa Pirotta