An end of week recap

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
– Anais Nin

Today we celebrate the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (Winter Solstice south of the equator) – marking the start of summer (or winter).

Midsummer babies with a literary bent have included the French playwright, novelist and screenwriter, Françoise Sagan (1935), British novelist, Ian McEwan (1948), French existentialist and writer, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905) and the American novelist, critic and political activist, Mary McCarthy (1912). It was also on this day in 1956 that playwright Arthur Miller testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his pro-Communist leanings. He married Marilyn Monroe four days later.

Wherever you are in the world as you wind up the week, may the joy of the solstice be with you!

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.

* Lit Crit Blogflash *  

I am going to share with you a couple 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 two – both published in recent weeks:

The Palm-Wine Drinkard: Amos Tutuola – Suroor Alikhan tells us that Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s debut novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (first published in 1952), is “the story of a man who does nothing but drink palm wine” – much as he has always done since the age of ten. An alcoholic, his father realises he will come to nothing, so gives him “a palm-tree farm with 560,000 palm trees” in the hope he will “never run out of palm wine.” He also provides a “tapster whose sole function is to supply the drinkard with palm wine”, which works well until one day the worker “falls from the palm tree and dies”, leaving the man with nobody to supply wine to him and his “many friends”. The tale is a “quest”, says Suroor, as a replacement tapster is sought, and the man, arming “himself with various jujus” sets out on a journey that brings him into contact with “many strange creatures.” This “unusual” book, which is “based on Yoruba folklore and […] written in a sort of Pidgin English”, knows “no boundaries between the living and the dead”. Suroor enjoyed it immensely. You can find out why at Talking About Books.

The Best Debut Books of 2025 (So Far) – It is “halfway through the year” and Adam Vitcavage at Debutiful has a selection of first timers to share with you – 20 of which are fiction, five poetry and five non-fiction. These books are the ones that have had “the most significant impact” on him and those he considers to be the “best of the year so far.” Several are titles he recommends “the most, others are the ones that challenged [him].” He says he seeks “worlds [he] would never [otherwise] experience” – those with “tantalizing writing, and a dash of sad, weird, or horny.” Included on the list are Jared Lemus’s short story collection, Guatemalan Rhapsody, Maggie Su’s fantasy romance, Blob: A Love Story, Karissa Chen’s historical novel, Homeseeking and Colwill Brown’s ribald coming of age title, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh.

* 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: 

**************************** 

Vintage: Your Summer ‘To Be Red’ Starts Here – “Summer reading is finally here! Not sure what to pick up first? Use these reading lists to help build your TBR.”

The Marginalian: Against the Pleasurable Luxury of Despair and the Aridity of Self-pity: Doris Lessing on the Artist’s Task in Trying Times – “In 1957 […] Lessing examined the responsibility of the writer in a precarious and fragile world menaced by dark forces [in] what would become the title essay of her collection A Small Personal Voice”, says Maria Popova.

Literary Hub: Finding Briseis: On Resurrecting a Forgotten Woman from Homer’s Iliad – In this excerpt from Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It, “Emily Hauser looks at ancient Greek visions of gender and resurrects a forgotten woman from Homer’s Iliad.”

The Art Times: The Work of Art by Adam Moss, A Beautiful and Restless Meditation on Creativity – “In The Work of Art, legendary editor Adam Moss journeys into the minds of 43 artists to explore the raw, restless, and deeply human process of creation. A visually rich, emotionally honest book about how something comes from nothing and what it means to try” in a collection of illuminating conversations.

EcoLit Books: Book Review: There Are Reasons For This – “Nina Berndt’s thought-provoking debut [lesbian dystopian/cli-fi] novel”, There Are Reasons for This, is “set in Denver, slightly in the future, where eco-systems and culture are collapsing due to the climate crisis.” JoeAnn Hart asks: “How to cope with life in this depleted world?”

The Observer: A manifesto for British folk culture – Lally MacBeth’s The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk “urges us to take care of our most precious traditions before they disappear”, writes Jude Rogers.

The Broken Compass: Bad choices and dangerous friends: the fugitive promise of George Gascoigne – Mathew Lyons discovers “why one of Elizabethan England’s great literary innovators died a broken man.”

The Indian Express: Israel-Iran conflict explained: 7 books you need to read now – “With both Israel and Iran testing red lines and global powers scrambling to prevent all-out war, these books offer both background, and a roadmap to understanding the next potential flashpoints.”

Readings Monthly: Latest Edition: June 2025 – In the June issue of Readings Monthly – “a free independent monthly book guide, sharing Australian and international new releases and reviews” – you will find debuts from Angie Faye Martin, Miranda Nation, Lucy Nelson and Sinéad Stubbins, plus new novels from Shokoofeh Azar, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Holden Sheppard, Tony Tulathimutte, a new cookbook from Sami Tamimi and much more.

Two in one here for Janeites:
The Seaboard Review of Books: Emma by Jane Austen (200th Anniversary Annotated Edition) – “What is it about Jane Austen’s fiction that appeals to writers as diverse as Mordecai Richler and André Alexis?” asks Michael Greenstein in this review of Emma: 200th-Anniversary Annotated Edition from Penguin Classics, with an introduction by Juliette Wells.
The Paris Review: How Jane Austen Pulled It Off: On Emma – “Austen’s fourth published novel is the most physically constricted of her works, which makes it also the most virtuosic”, writes Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jennifer Egan in an excerpt from her “introduction to a new edition of Emma, to be published by Vintage Books in July.”

NPR: Thomas Mallon’s NYC diaries get to the ‘Very Heart’ of the AIDS crisis – The author Thomas Mallon has put out a collection of his diary entries, titled The Very Heart of It spanning 1983 – 1994, just as the AIDS crisis was ravaging the gay population.

The Conversation: How a postwar German literary classic helped eclipse painter Emil Nolde’s relationship to Nazism – In the popular 1968 novel The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz, a character based on artist Emil Nolde falls victim to Nazi policies on ‘degenerate art’. According to Ombline Damy, recent research on the painter’s life tells a more complex story.

The Artifice: Barbara Kingsolver’s Examinations of Family – “Barbara Kingsolver is one of the most prolific and celebrated authors of modern literature” and “has kept readers spellbound for decades,” says Stephanie M., “with a bibliography of six novels, three short story collections, and five nonfiction titles, plus appearances in two literary anthologies.”

RTÉ: What happened on the very first Bloomsday in 1954? – Bloomsday takes place on 16^th June each year, commemorating the life of Irish writer James Joyce and, in particular, his modernist masterpiece, Ulysses. In the run up to this year’s event, Barry Houlihan looked back at the first such celebration of the novel, which he describes as “rather inauspicious”.

The Times of India: Unveiling ‘The Lost Heer’: Harleen Singh’s Journey into Women’s Untold Histories of Colonial Punjab – In a book is dedicated to his grandmother, Harleen Singh argues that historical storytelling, particularly that of unsung women, can bridge divides between nations by emphasizing shared human experiences and resilience.

The Ottawa Review of Books: The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor – Wendy Hawkin says she was “sucked into the current of this unique and memorable historical novel [The Cure for Drowning] when [she] heard the author read the beginning aloud at a gathering of local writers in B.C.”

Gateway to Russia: How an American writer lived with Tolstoy & traveled with vagabonds in Russia – “In 1896, American Josiah Flint traveled to Russia to meet writer Leo Tolstoy. From his Yasnaya Polyana estate, he traveled further into the country. For several months he studied local mores, joining a group of vagabonds.”

Methinks: Victorian Literature – Reading Guide #2 – Julia Sampaio on “how to start reading Victorian Literature: novels, poetry, annotation systems, critical reading syllabus, research material” and so on.

Hazlitt: Frequency Illusion – “Love was not a drink, and my pursuit of it did not fit perfectly into the rubric of addiction, but it had taken me”, says American author Melissa Febos in this excerpt from her memoir, The Dry Season.

Orwell News: Should great art excuse monstrous artists? Orwell didn’t think so – Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea, revisits Orwell’s 1944 essay, Benefit of Clergy.

Girls on the Page: An interview with Joni Murphy – “The author of Barbara [a novelistic character study of a woman losing hold and recapturing her identity through the art and technology of moviemaking,] on the obstacles and intimacies of writing historical fiction: ‘We are constantly brushing up against the past.’”

BBC Wales: Original Roald Dahl sketches sell for £24,000 – Catriona Aitken reports: “Original sketches done by children’s author Roald Dahl for his memoir [Boy] have sold for nearly £24,000.”

The Kyiv Independent: Author Yuri Andrukhovych on Ukrainian dissident art in Soviet times – “In Soviet times, being a pro-Ukrainian artist was dangerous,” says Kate Tsurkan. Yuri Andrukhovych, “one of Ukraine’s most famous and celebrated authors”, was among a “new generations of artists [who] remained committed to their culture in the face of widespread Russification.”

The i Paper: The five best historical novels of all time, according to Kate Mosse – The British novelist, Kate Mosse, “shares the books that have shaped her life and writing” with Anna Bonet.

Australian Arts Review: The waywardness of the sisterhood – “Writing is a radical activity articulated by two recent books by women to help explain their lives to themselves, one muted, the other colourful”, finds Rhonda Dredge.

The Mainichi: Japanese literary scholar Keene’s reflections on haiku rhythm, travels of Matsuo Basho – On “Donald Keene’s journey tracing the footsteps of haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) in Basho’s masterpiece Oku no Hosomichi, which [he] later translated into English as The Narrow Road to Okuich.

Bookish Naomi: On Loneliness in Literature – Naomi Elizabeth with a comforting piece on loneliness in literature, plus a collection of some of her favourite quotes.

Jacobin: A Forgotten Sci-Fi Novel Predicts Trump’s Greenland Fixation – Novelist Joseph Conrad [and Ford Madox Ford’s] singular foray into sci-fi [The Inheritors,] uncannily anticipates an unsettled world order in which Greenland, placed under the control of a clownish minor aristocrat, represents the new imperialist frontier.

Gutter: Muckle Flugga – Frances Cannon reviews Scottish author Michael Pedersen’s debut novel, Muckle Flugga, about a remote island turned upside down by a stranger’s arrival.

Asymptote: When There’s No Fog: Translating Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Rosa Mistika – “I have to look back across a foggy channel of my own to explain how I came to translate this classic Swahili novel. . .” Jay Boss Rubin on Tanzanian writer Euphrase Kezilahabi’s controversial 1971 novel, Rosa Mistika – now translated into English.

The New York Times: Can You Ever Really Know a Person? Biographers Keep Trying. – “Each age has its own way of drawing the arc of a human life”, says Parul Sehgal. “Ours is concerned with its unpredictability.”

The New Yorker: How Margaret Fuller Set Minds on Fire – “High-minded and scandal-prone, a foe of marriage who dreamed of domesticity, Fuller radiated a charisma that helped ignite the fight for women’s rights”, says James Marcus in his review of Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings.

RNZ: Respected Kiwi writer Maurice Gee has died, aged 93 – One of New Zealand’s most distinguished and prolific writers, Maurice Gee, has died at the age of 93.

Orient XXI: The Yemeni Crisis Forces a Literary Migration from Poetry – “Beyond the humanitarian tragedy, the war in Yemen, which began with the Houthis’ takeover of Sana’a in September 2014, followed by a military offensive led by Saudi Arabia in 2015, has caused major upheavals in Yemeni cultural life, particularly in the literary sphere. Or how poetry gave way to fictional narrative.”

Outlook: Interview | Bestselling Author Isabel Allende on Feminist Heroines, Exile, and Magical Realism – “After working as a journalist in Chile and later going into exile following the Pinochet coup, Isabel Allende turned memory and myth into fiction. She speaks to Vineetha Mokkil about the letter that became her first novel and the power of storytelling.”

Slate: Notes From Ms. Morrison – “What was it like to be edited by one of the great literary geniuses of her generation?” Dana A. Williams on Toni Morrison’s time as an editor at Random House.

The Metropolitan Review: The Social Pornography Complex – On Rufi Thorpe’s ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ – Does the internet novel exist? Denise S. Robbins on Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

BookPage: The Starving Saints – “A surreal spin on grimdark, [Caitlin Starling’s] The Starving Saints is that rare book that gives fantasy and horror readers what they want in equal measure,” says Matthew Jackson.

The Yale Review: When Fact-Checking Meant Something – The author of Flashlight, Susan Choi, discovers The Fact Checker, a humorous new novel by Austin Kelley has captured “a bygone era in New York journalism.”

The Atlantic: Five Books That Will Redirect Your Attention – “When malaise strikes, a book can break the spell—if you choose the right one”, says Rhian Sasseen. 

BBC Scotland: If books could kill: The poison legacy lurking in libraries – “The Victorians loved the colour green. In particular, they loved a vibrant shade of emerald created by combining copper and arsenic, which was used in everything from wallpaper to children’s toys”, reports Pauline McLean.

Books & Culture: Rainy days in literature – “Rain has long served as more than meteorology in stories; it is emotional weather. Readers know that when it rains, something inside the characters shifts.”

The Stanford Daily: Rage on the Page: Survival as scripture in ‘The Unworthy’ – In her latest ‘Rage on the Page’ column, in which she reviews books about anger in women’s literature, Melisa Ezgi Guleryuz examines Agustina Bazterrica’s work of literary horror, The Unworthy.

Atalayar: Arab literature falls victim to overproduction – “The quality of novels has declined due to the crisis in the Arab cultural business model.”

Alta: The Aesthetic of Noir – Jim Ruland finds Barry Gifford’s collection of film criticism, No Daylight in That Face: Adventures in Film Noir “takes a broad view of the form.”

The Irish Times: Alison Healy on how a 19-year-old woman tricked the world with a literary hoax – The Sunday Times “lauded it as a great find, similar to the Pepys diaries.”

****************************

FINALLY >>

If there is something you would particularly like to see in 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: African Literature, Amos Tutuola, Anais Nin, Caitlin Starling, Debut Titles, Jane Austen, Jared Lemus, Jennifer Egan, Juliette Wells, Melissa Febos, Michael Pedersen, Monique Roffey, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice