An end of week recap

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
–  Walt Whitman (born 31^st May 1819)

Since it was on this day in 1669 that Samuel Pepys recorded the last event in his diary, citing poor eyesight as the reason, plus this is my first post in a fortnight, I thought it only right to offer a little something extra to round off the month – and with it the first half of 2025. (Is it really 1^st June tomorrow? How did that happen?) I hope you enjoy this week’s bonus book-blabber.

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.

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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.

* Speak to the Sea *

You may recall me featuring Anna Iltnere and her incredible Jūrmala-based Sea Library here in 2021 (WUTW #185), after hearing her speak on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book programme. Much has happened to Anna in the intervening years, from taking a job in the National Library of Latvia and writing a memoir to welcoming sea dog Nemo into the family, but in April, she announced her “magical room” by the Baltic Sea would “quietly” close its “physical doors” to visitors (see “It is not down on any map; true places never are.”). However, there is no need for sadness as the library’s “spirit remains wide open” and its aquatic collection will live on and continue to grow. Indeed, to mark its seventh anniversary on 4^th June, Anna has invited all those with an interest to “take part in a long-term project,” namely: Write a letter to the sea. “It can”, she says, “be a whisper, a memory, a confession, a question, a love note, a wave of grief or joy.” You should simply describe what the sea means to you in any language and snail-mail your handwritten response to her in the old-fashioned way. Your words will then be read, digitized and shared on sea-library.com. To participate, please see Call to sea community around the world: Write a Letter to the Sea and prepare for your coastal correspondence.

* Passez l’été à Paris *

Emma Cazabonne is planning her annual Parisian book and culture-fest, which takes place throughout the month of July at Words And Peace and its sister-blog, France Book Tours. She suggests you start packing your bags right away with all you intend to “read, cook, watch, listen to, etc.” – and, if you are a published author or preparing to release a book linked to this wonderful European city, please alert the host as “you could have your [work] featured throughout the event.” Should you feel a tad débordé, you may like to dirigez-vous en direction de last year’s recap, Paris in July 2024: all the links for “tons of great suggestions”. So, sans plus tarder, you are cordially invited to participate in Paris in July 2025. Once again, please excuse my appalling attempts at French. As a good friend of mine often says when she’s in my company, “God loves a trier” – I’m just not so sure about the rest of you!

* A Tome at Home in December *

Do you fancy indulging in “a really chunky read” before 2025 is out? If so, Laura Tisdall suggests you pick up a book of at least 350-pages (though, preferably one of those “500-page or 600-page + behemoths”) and join a reading challenge with the likely title of Doorstoppers in December. Anything goes (fiction, non-fiction, classics, short stories, essay collections, epic poems, and so on), provided the book is BIG! She is considering “having some kind of hiatus for Christmas but returning to the challenge to wrap up in late December/early January” and would like to keep the event “loose and easy”. Please head over to Doorstoppers in December? to look over Laura’s plans for reading one of these whoppers and share your thoughts and ideas with her.

* Almost Overlooked *

Last September, Canadian book blogger Karissa posted a review of Irish fiction writer, Alan Murrin’s debut historical novel, The Coast Road. Set in the early ‘90s in “a small town in Ireland,” the story focuses on the lives of two women: Izzy, “a housewife, married to a local politician” and Colette, “a poet [who has recently] left her husband and sons to be with another man.” However, when she returns to County Donegal to make a fresh start, her husband refuses her access to their children, which leads to her enlisting Izzy as a go-between. These events take place in the run-up to a “referendum in which the people of Ireland [vote]” on the proposed legalisation of divorce – resulting in “a heavy cost [for] this community, both socially and spiritually.” The author, says Karissa, “handles the various perspectives deftly, and shows “us carefully and subtly the various marriages that exist [at] a time […] when there is no other option” but to remain together “until one of them dies.” To find out why Karissa was surprised this book was “written by a man”, I suggest you take the scenic route over to Karissa Reads Books and check out Book Review: The Coast Road by Alan Murrin.

* Lit Crit Blogflash *  

I am going to share with three 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 these few – all published in recent weeks:

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge – British writer Frances Hardinge’s YA fantasy, Deeplight was bookforager Mayri’s choice for the Wyrd & Wonder reading challenge – which this year encouraged participants to immerse themselves in all things nautical. Set “beneath and beyond the islands of the Myriad,” where people once lived in fear of the gods (now gone) and great sea monsters rising from the Undersea, its protagonist, “young grifter” Hark, has numerous escapades involving “smugglers, scavengers and storytellers, and the ‘sea-kissed’ […] people who have varying degrees of hearing loss as a result of diving”. We are introduced to the diverse characters populating what Mayri describes as Hardinge’s “creepiest” tale to date – one that depicts “an immersive world”, into which she lowered herself with great “delight” – much as one might plunge “into cold water on a hot day”.

Interview | Madeleine Thien on Her Novel The Book of Records – Editor Larry Guo and Fiction Reader Yan Ruan interviewed the Canadian short story writer and novelist Madeleine Thien for The Brooklyn Review – a literary magazine from the Brooklyn College MFA in Creative Writing department – about her recently released historical fantasy, The Book of Records, in which a father and daughter “navigate the Sea, a building that mysteriously bridges great distances in time and space.” During their three-way conversation they touched on “writing and reading between teacher and student”, in addition to “this monumental new work”. While drafting the book, Thien says she had “the sense of the future haunting the past”, moreover, she has been informed by “almost everyone who has sat down [with her] to do an interview” that the novel feels “timely”.

Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky – A “curious little book”, just fractionally “bigger than [Kate W’s] pocket”, with a “striking [cover of] bright orange paired with aqua blue fore-edges”, Judith Schalansky’s Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will is “crammed with fascinating facts about islands that are essentially dots on a world map.” Cartophile Kate describes her favourites among the “50 remote islands” contained in its pages – each one accompanied by “an amazing story”, a full-colour map, points of historical interest and co-ordinates. If this fascinates you, please ‘ready about’ and sail in a southerly direction towards booksaremyfavouriteandbest where you will discover Kate’s “standouts” and find out why she was “totally captivated”.

* 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 Literary Edit: Sofka Zinovieff’s Desert Island Books – As part of her Desert Island Books series, Lucy Pearson recently spoke with Sofka Zinovieff, British author of the 2018 novel Putney, about her chosen titles for this fascinating piece “featuring an astounding collection of poetry, and the book [she rereads] every decade.”

BBC Culture: ‘People are still haunted by what happened’: How history’s brutal witch trials still resonate now – A new book, How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi, “brings a dark period of [Scottish] history back to grisly life – and an official tartan is being released to memorialise some of those who were tortured and killed”, writes Lindsay Baker. 

Arts Hub: Book review: I want everything, Dominic Amerena – Melbourne writer, Dominic Amerena’s debut mystery novel, I Want Everything, “tracks authorship and authenticity and the vagaries of the writing life”, says Richie Black.

Liberties: Woolfish Perception – On the one-hundredth anniversary of The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf’s collection of critical essays, Henry Oliver attempts to “cast off a century of accumulated interference” and celebrate a book in which she “gave us all that criticism ought to be.”

The Atlantic: The Summer Reading Guide – “The Atlantic’s writers and editors have selected books to suit every mood or fancy” – their list comprising “24 books to read before fall comes around.”

The Conversation: How Tove Jansson used her Moomins comic strip to critique the financial and creative pressures of being an artist – “The comic paid Tove Jansson enough to be financially stable but it put pressure on her creative work,” says Elina Druker, Professor in Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University.

The Arts Fuse: Book Review: Life in a State of Sparkle — The Writings of David Shapiro – “While David Shapiro’s criticism is audacious, his interviews are self-deprecating and offbeat, filled with surprising reveals”, says Michael Londra in his review of You Are The You: Writings and Interviews on Poetry, Art, and the New York School – a collection of pieces by and about the late American poet, literary critic and art historian (edited by Kate Farrell).

The Standard: De Beauvoir’s 1960s heroine shows little has changed since – “This is a new translation by Lauren Elkin of a shortish Simone de Beauvoir book, Les Belles Images [The Image of Her], first published in 1966”, which aimed “to identify the source of its heroine’s discontent. But on the journey inside her mind and life, we get a good account of how de Beauvoir saw the world in the 1960s — and in many ways, that world wasn’t a whole lot different from ours”, says Melanie McDonagh.

Vanity Fair: The Still Vital—and Still Complicated—Legacy of Susan Brownmiller – “The activist and author of the landmark rape study, Against Our Will, lived long enough to see the struggle is still just beginning” writes Joy Press. She died last week at the age of 90.

BBC News Russia: British and US bestsellers hit by purge in Russian bookshops – “A Russian book distributor has ordered bookshops to ‘return or destroy’ works by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffery Eugenides and the British bestseller Bridget Collins, among others, in the latest case of censorship targeting the country’s literary scene” reports Svetlana Reiter.

Largehearted Boy: Kerry Donoghue’s music playlist for her story collection Mouth – “The women in my stories go through hell in the name of love, destroying their sanity or bodies or futures in the process. I wanted their songs to honor those journeys”, says Kerry Donoghue of her debut short story collection, Mouth.

The New York Times: Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits – According to Michiko Kakutani, “tech power players and the global far-right are learning all the wrong lessons from The Lord of the Rings.”

RTÉ: Canadian author wins 2025 Dublin Literary Award – The winner of this year’s Dublin Literary Award is Canadian author Michael Crummey with The Adversary, his historical novel set in an isolated fishing village on Newfoundland’s northern coastline.

Volumes.: The World Beyond Your Head – “Efforts to personalise all the settings on our lives make us lonelier and more narcissistic than ever — but reading can help.” Matthew Morgan looks back at Jonathan Franzen’s 2002 essay collection, How to Be Alone.

The Critic: Time to rethink Martin Amis – Two years after his death, Jonny Ford reassesses the work of English novelist Martin Amis. He was, he concludes, “an entertainer. But only an entertainer.”

LARB: Opening the Pandora’s Box of Latin American Women’s Writing – Elaine Elinson reviews Kit Maude’s new translation of Argentine author Aurora Venturini’s We, the Casertas, an historical novel about Chela, “a brilliant misfit, wildly adventurous, even feral, attracted by the damaged and surreal. Spurned by mainstream society”.

Miller’s Book Review: Books Before Print, Paper, and Pixel – Joel J Miller on “the art and function of Medieval manuscripts”. Here he reviews The Lindisfarne Gospels, Imperial Splendor and Performing the Gospels in Byzantium.

Asian Review of Books: “The Book of Sana’a: A City in Short Fiction” edited by Laura Kasinof – The stories in The Book of Sana’a demonstrate the myriad ways that war and oppressive regimes have touched the lives of ordinary Yemenis. Rosie Milne describes it as a “brave and fascinating anthology that deserves to be widely read.”

Eurozine: Democracies depend on reading – Miha Kovač, a professor at the Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies at the University of Ljubljana, warns: “Growing reluctance to engage with books is endangering democracy and science. Deep reading boosts the human capacity for abstract and analytical thinking, protecting us from the corrosive effects of bias, prejudice and conspiracy theories.”

The Washington Post: The end of writing and reading will be the end of freedom – “For thousands of years, we have been finding words for ourselves, we have been writing our own story and, in the process, have done something far more radical than expressed ourselves: We have invented ourselves.” In this opinion piece, novelist Nicole Krauss explains why she finds graduation season so heartening.

BBC India: India’s Banu Mushtaq makes history with International Booker win – Cherylann Mollan reports: “Indian writer, lawyer and activist Banu Mushtaq has made history by becoming the first author writing in the Kannada language to win the International Booker prize with her short story anthology, Heart Lamp.”

The Walrus: How to Make a Living as a Writer – The answer, it seems, is “horse stories in the morning, erotica in the afternoon”, according to this excerpt from “Montreal-based writer, Gabrielle Drolet’s memoir, Look Ma, No Hands: A Chronic Pain Memoir.

The Adroit Journal: A Conversation with Chris Campanioni – Reuben Gelley Newman speaks to American writer Chris Campanioni about VHS, a “book that’s hard to describe but easy to get absorbed in.” He does, however, make a plucky attempt by comparing it to “a twisted cassette player of stories, with many snapshots and anecdotes but no singular narrative.”

Reactor: Magic Doesn’t Have to Make Sense – Molly Templeton writes in praise of “fantasy that embraces rebellious, lawless, and delightfully un-rulebound magic.”

The Irish Times: Can a name determine our fate? – Florence Knapp on her debut novel – “Debut novelist Florence Knapp on her remarkable new novel [The Names], the influence of Irish authors on her work, and that long journey into publishing fiction”.

NPR: Social media is influencing how authors promote their books. Here’s how – “Social media is changing the way writers are promoting their books,” says Brittney Melton. “Author Rebecca Makkai talks about her decision to take a break from writing the blurbs commonly seen on the backs of book jackets.”

ABC Arts: Charlotte McConaghy calls for climate change action in new novel Wild Dark Shore – “Charlotte McConaghy’s latest novel, Wild Dark Shore, is a propulsive literary thriller set in one of the world’s most remote and rugged locations.”

The Asahi Shimbun: VOX POPULI: Translators are an indispensable asset to the literary world – “In the past, Japanese authors available in translation were primarily limited to Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) and Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Today, however, novels by Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto and a wider array of contemporary Japanese writers are available in multiple languages.”

Books & Culture: Madness and Mirrors: Antoinette Cosway as Jane Eyre’s Gothic Double – “In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys creates an unforgettable response to Charlotte Brontë’s canonical Jane Eyre […], one that rewrites the colonial margins of the Victorian classic and reimagines its silences through the language of the Gothic.”

The Berliner: Oliver Moody recommends five books about the Baltic Sea – “Berlin correspondent for The Times, Oliver Moody [shares] five recommendations for literature on the political and cultural history of the increasingly relevant Baltic states.”

The Marginalian: Is Peace Possible – First published in 1957, Is Peace Possible? by Dame Kathleen Lonsdale – a British crystallographer (and Quaker), who in 1929 proved that the benzene ring was flat by X-ray diffraction methods – is the second title in Marginalian Editions. Maria Popova shares her “foreword to the new edition as it appears in on its pages.”

Commonweal: ‘The Great Unread’ – Gus Mitchell reviews Goethe: His Faustian Life – The Extraordinary Story of Modern Germany, a Troubled Genius and the Poem that Made Our World, A. N. Wilson’s “flawed, occasionally meandering and repetitive, but loving and ultimately valuable” biography of the influential German polymath.

SUMAÚMA: ‘La Casa de Verano’: a book that feels like home – “In Masashi Matsuie’s novel [Summer at Mount Asama], friendship, love, and creation unfold surrounded by beehives—nourished by Japan’s volcanic and unstable soil”, writes Gabi Martínez.

GameSpot: Tolkien Collectible Book Sets Are Up For Preorder – The Tolkien Myths and Legends Box Set: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur, Beowulf Box Set is set for release on 10^th June and “will be followed up by gorgeous new editions of The Great Tales of Middle-earth.”

A Narrative Of Their Own: ‘The Wedding People’ – Kate Jones describes Alison Espach’s contemporary romance, The Wedding People, as “a novel exploring female identity and the importance of creativity.”

ArabLit: On Liberation as Writing Technique – In wide-ranging discussion with Fatma Qandil, Adam Talib asks the Egyptian author about her debut novel Empty Cages, the method behind her writing, standing on the shoulders of other women writers and the joy of being read by a younger generation.

Psyche: Why our flawed, flexible memories come with social benefits – According to professors Gillian Murphy and Ciara Greene, co-authors of Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember: “Though relationships are grounded in shared memories, some gaps and inaccuracies can help us live well in a social world.”

Wardrobe Door: You’ve Got (Narnia) Mail! – “The Royal Mail announced special edition stamps to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, says Aaron Earls.

The Common Reader: How Muriel Spark became a late bloomer – Francis Wilson “has not tried to write a traditional biography”, says Henry Oliver. Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark “matches the strange power of its subject and ends with a beginning” – much as Spark “always started [her books] with the ending”.

The Japan Times: Truth is slippery in ‘Suspicion,’ a detective story based on a true crime – Suspicion, Seicho Matsumoto’s mystery novella (newly translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood), is based on 1974’s Beppu 300-million-yen insurance murder. It is, says Kris Kosaka, “as much about crime as it is about truth, human bias and belief.”

South Carolina Daily Gazette: An author responds: Why is sex so scary to book banners? – Malinda Lo, author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a lesbian love story set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1954 during the Red Scare, discusses the thinking behind book bans in America.

AP: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Kenyan author and dissident who became a giant of modern literature, dies at 87 – Hillel Italie reports that African literary icon Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, whose work spanned almost six decades, died on Wednesday at the age of 87.

Literary Review: After All This Time – Edward St Aubyn’s latest novel of ideas, Parallel Lines, touches on such areas as neuroscience, quantum mechanics and psychology, and has at its centre the relationship between a schizophrenic and his psychoanalyst.

BBC Media Centre: Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius reveals the surprising life and lasting impact of the groundbreaking author – ‘I stole her plot for Bridget Jones’ – “Explore how the author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma ripped up the rulebook and reinvented the novel”.

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications: Letters of recognition: the spatial inscription of literature in the Romanian street nomenclature – Mihai S. Rusu and Stefan Baghiu “examine the patterns of spatial inscription of literary figures in Romania’s urban street names.”

Andrew Doyle: Dennis Potter: television’s great dramatist – “His devotion to the medium sprang from his commitment to democracy”, says Andrew in this piece about the frequently controversial English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist.

Apollo: A novel look at Mantegna in Mantua – Christina J. Faraday reviews Danish author Inger Christensen’s recently republished The Painted Room, a short, experimental, three-part novel about the Italian Renaissance and, specifically, Mategna’s (1431-1506) time at the ducal palace of Lodovico III Gonzaga. Translated by Denise Newman, it explores the intrigue surrounding the artist’s frescoes on the walls of a famous bridal chamber.

Dirt: Where will the next literary movement come from? – The question discussed here (in part one of a two-part series) is, where will the next western literary movement come from? “The new world struggles to be born.”

Publishers Weekly: Fantasy MG Series Dragonborn Set for October Launch from Dutton – Scottish author Struan Murray’s new fantasy series Dragonborn, originally scheduled for release in spring 2026, is now due to be published this autumn. Murray says inspiration for the story came from a chance encounter in Oxford with a scholar who specialises in the study of dragons.

The Verge: Chicago Sun-Times publishes made-up books and fake experts in AI debacle – “The outlet said online that the articles were not approved or created by the newsroom”, reports Mia Sato.

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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: Adam Nicolson, Alan Murrin, Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhasthi, Doorstoppers in December, Frances Hardinge, Judith Schalansky, Kathleen Lonsdale, Kerry Donoghue, Madeleine Thien, Malinda Lo, Nautical Literature, Paris in July 2025, Sea Library, Summer Reading, Walt Whitman