An end of week recap

“Things speed up as you circle the drain.”
– Armistead Maupin

Literary-types born on this day include English poet, novelist and short story writer, Ernest Dowson (1867), Finnish Estonian author, Aino Kallas (1878), Welsh romantic novelist, Berta Ruck (1878), American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin (1924), Chilean American writer, Isabel Allende (1942), English novelist and short story writer, Rose Tremain (1943), English fantasy novelist, Robert Holdstock (1948) and Chinese American poet, Bei Dao (1949).

I too will celebrate my birthday on Wednesday (rather a big one, I hasten to add!), with lots of frivolous doings either side of it, so cannot guarantee next Saturday’s wind up will be quite up to par – but I will do my utmost because, yet another important birthdate lands on the 9^th. Whose do you suppose that might be? 🤔

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 * 

Last November, A Useful Fiction featured Metaphysical Animals by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, a group biography of sorts that tells the story of “how Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Philippa Foot set out to refute logical positivism in wartime Oxford”. Philosophy tending to be male territory, these pioneering women offered a compelling alternative to the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein – though, in this book, “they never really seem to escape the shadow, the voice, the ideas” of the great 20^th century philosopher. Nevertheless, this “narrative [of] brilliant women finding their voices, opposing received wisdom, and developing an alternative picture of human beings and their place in the world” is “a story worth telling.” To get to the nitty-gritty of this portrait of four college friends sharing a vision and to discover where the book may fall short, please read this well-considered review in its entirety: Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman (2022). 

* 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 – added in recent weeks:

Friends and Lovers by Nolwenn Le Blevennec translated by Madeleine Rogers. – Linguist, teacher, translator and keen walker from the magnificent Peak District, Mandy Wight describes Nolwenn Le Blevennec’s recently published “novel about female friendship”, Friends and Lovers, as “the story of Armelle, Rim and Anna, who work together at a magazine called Arts in Paris.” Translated by Madeleine Rogers, we discover these three exhausted, but “restless” mothers take a Christmas break in Tunisia together and following ‘The Great Awakening’, they each individually “enjoy a fling”. Three years on, they are “absorbed in work” and having become “reconciled to their husbands,” have far “less time for one another”. At this point, they head to “an island off the coast of Brittany” in an “attempt to re-ignite the friendship”, and here the story deepens. To discover why a “women’s book group” would be “the perfect place to share this novel” and why it gave Mandy “food for thought on female friendships”, please be sure to read her review at peakreads.

* Irresistible Items *

Umpteen fascinating articles appeared on my bookdar this 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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ABC Arts: Dominic Amerena writes about a literary fraudster in his debut novel, I Want Everything – “Dominic Amerena takes on the literary-industrial complex in his satirical debut offering set in Melbourne’s western suburbs, I Want Everything”, finds Nicola Heath. 

Books and Culture: It All Happened in the Summer of 1816 – We look back at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and “the literary legacy of a stormy summer”.

BBC Northamptonshire: ‘Books are for everyone’: Inside Penguin’s hidden archive – “Deep within the [UK’s] warehouse capital […] lies a literature lover’s treasure trove.”

Reactor: Finite Monkeys, Finite Keyboards: The Wild Alien Possibilities of Sara Imari Walker’s Life as No One Knows It – Ruthanna Emrys explores Sara Imari Walker’s Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence, which “radically [rethinks] the origins of life on Earth and throughout the universe.” Furthermore, she believes it has the potential to inspire speculative fiction.

The Observer: A Booker prize longlist built to last – “Global, political, complex and subtle: this list of 13 nominated novels is the most exciting for decades”, says an energised Erica Wagner.

Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books: The Stars are a Million Glittering Worlds by Gina Butson – Di Starrenburg describes The Stars Are A Million Glittering Worlds as “an accomplished debut novel that is mystery, travelogue and a ‘meditation on letting go of the past’.”

Volumes.: Judging a Cover By Its Book – “What makes a great book cover, and what are covers supposed to do?”

Columbia University Press: Zeina Sleiman on Where the Jasmine Blooms – Where the Jasmine Blooms is a novel set in 2006 Lebanon. In this Q&A, the Palestinian Canadian writer Zeina Sleiman reflects on her relationship to places and the inspiration behind the novel.

Air Mail: “A Ridiculous Optimist” – “In a rare interview, Quentin Blake, the inimitable children’s-book illustrator behind Roald Dahl’s Matilda [my review], explains why he’s still drawing at 92”.

Books & Culture: The Four Levels of Reading – A “guide to deepening your literary understanding” and a look back at the classic How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren.

Church Times: Art review: Jane Austen: Down to the Sea at Dorset Museum and Art Gallery, Dorchester – “Nicholas Cranfield on Jane Austen’s holidays”.

NPR: New book ‘Together in Manzanar’ reveals life inside WWII Japanese detention camp – Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with Tracy Slater, author of Together in Manzanar, which tells the true story of a family of mixed heritage sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II.

The Bookseller: Miriam Robinson’s debut novel cuts to the heart of modern womanhood – “Suffused and informed by grief and betrayal, And Notre Dame Is Burning is [an epistolary] novel that forensically examines a failed marriage”, says Katie Fraser.

The Markaz Review: Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah—a Review – “Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s new novel [Theft] is a grand exploration of life in Tanzania, his writing unmistakably of our moment, on immigration and the fate of the formerly colonized long after decolonization”, writes Philip Grant.

Books on GIF: Recommendations for Women in Translation Month – “August is Women in Translation month, which celebrates literature by women written in languages other than English.” Mike has picked out a few of his favourites to share with you.

Library of America: “An Uncompromising Revolution”: The Tragic Death and Long Afterlife of Margaret Fuller – An essay “commemorating the 175th anniversary of Margaret Fuller’s death in 1850.”

Lady Metroland: Why I should read more Flaubert – “And why many literary roads lead to him”.

Plough: The Revenge of the Fox Spirit – Set at the turn of the twentieth century in Manchuria, Mongolia and Japan, “Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife is a delightful blend of genres: detective story, romance, and fairy tale”, says James Smoker.

Collider: New J.R.R. Tolkien Film Is Headed to The Big Screen, Featuring Narnia Creator C.S. Lewis [Exclusive] – Britta DeVore reports: “John Hendrix’s graphic novel, The Mythmakers, is slated to receive a feature-length animated movie.”

The Drift: “A question of intensity” – “A Q&A with Stephanie Wambugu on female friendship, orthodoxy, and her debut novel”, Lonely Crowds.

1000 Libraries Magazine: How the Greek Philosophy of Meraki Can Transform Your Travel Journaling – Vincent Phan suggests you “explore the Greek philosophy of ‘meraki’ and how it transforms travel writing into an act of devotion, capturing fleeting moments before they fade.”

The Seaboard Review of Books: Finding Flora by Elinor Florence – Finding Flora, Elinor Florence’s historical novel set in turn-of-the-century Alberta is “a pioneer story like no other”, says Laura Patterson, as the protagonist arrives from Scotland and “attempts to prosper in a new land.”

Worldcrunch: “I Thought I Had Died, Too”: A Colombian Author Reckons With Survivor’s Guilt – “After a brush with death in Ukraine in 2023, Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince discusses with Edu Galán his experience, survivor’s guilt, his new book, Ahora y en la hora (‘Now and in the Hour’), and the war in Ukraine”.

Moonbow: 5 Books To Help You Think Carefully About Children’s Books – In her bimonthly arts and culture publication about children’s literature for adults, Taylor Sterling quotes Elizabeth Hardwick on literary criticism: “Without it, works of art would appear in a vacuum.”

Vintage: A day in the life of a translator – “Yuki Tejima shares a brief glimpse into the life and work of a translator, capturing the moment she met Emily Yagi for the first time ahead of translating [Japanese fantasy novel] When the Museum is Closed.”

Realnoe Vremya: ‘I was stunned, hungry, I was looking ahead’ – “At Smena Summer Book Festival, they spoke about why foreigners travelled across Russia”.

Fine Books & Collections: Collector Nicholas Royle Retraces the Journeys of His Books – Alex Johnson finds that book collector Nicholas Royle, “whose trilogy on the subject will be complete” when Finders, Keepers: The Secret Life of Second-Hand Books is published next year, “is not simply interested in the volumes he gathers. He’s also fascinated by the things he discovers inside them.”

Tupelo Quarterly: Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico, Gabriela Jauregui and Heather Cleary, Eds., review by Britta Stromeyer – Britta Stromeyer reviews the anthology Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico, which merging feminist thought from established and emerging Mexican women writers.

Writer’s Digest: Famous Writers and Their Typewriters – American writer Meg Waite Clayton, author most recently of the historical novel Typewriter Beach, “shares not only the famous writers (and songwriters) who’ve used typewriters but also the models they used.”

Arab News: Young Saudi authors reshape Kingdom’s literary landscape – “Writers point to a ‘golden age’ in publishing but call for legal protections [and] clearer regulations to support emerging talent”, reports Hajjar Al-Qusayer.

CEU Review of Books: The fashionable women of interwar Bucharest – In The Women of ‘Little Paris’, Sonia-Doris Andraș examines middle-class women in interwar Bucharest and their consumption of fashion, providing valuable insights into the country’s nation-building during the interwar period, says Mariana Neţ.

The Daily Star: ‘She and Her Cat’ and the quiet power of presence – “The cats don’t always understand the human specifics, but they recognise sadness. They notice routines. And most of all, they stay”, says Naziba Basher in her review of Makoto Shinkai’s story collection set in Tokyo, She and Her Cat.

Jewish Book Council: Painting and Politics: Bringing Women’s Stories to the Forefront – B.A. Shapiro “spent countless hours researching the goings-on in Paris from the late-nineteenth century through World War II” for her latest novel about Nazi-stolen art­works, The Lost Masterpiece.

The Irish Times: Miami Showband massacre 50 years on: ‘The trauma lasts for ever’ – Stephen Travers – In this extract from Martin Doyle’s Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place, he writes: “British collusion was systemic in Troubles, survivor says, and went far higher than UDR foot soldiers.”

Reviews in History: The Medieval Scriptorium – Making Books in the Middle Ages – Ana de Oliveira Dias scrutinises Sara J. Charles’ history of medieval manuscript production, The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages.

New Voices Down Under: Q: What do a famous psychic, a famous mathematician and a TV doctor have in common? – “A: Novels that explore questions about legacy, the lengths we go to for love and to find the truth feature in [the latest] edition” of NVDU, says Australian author Meredith Jaffe.

Enchanted Living: Night Magic: Interview with Author Leigh Ann Henion – American nature writer Leigh Ann Henion, author of Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, talks to EL about the wonders of the dark.

JSTOR Daily: The Chinatown Novel That Wasn’t – “Examining Lin Yutang’s 1948 novel Chinatown Family, Richard Jean So reveals the ways in which literature is shaped by editorial interventions”, writes H.M.A. Leow.

Diary of a Deer: The Madwoman Edits the Manuscript – A fascinating piece from Deer Girl on “rewriting the Gothic and reclaiming the story.”

Internet Archive Canada: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fandom in the Norman V. Lamb Gothic Fantasy Collection – A sizeable selection of newly scanned and available Canadian sci-fi fanzines.

The American Scholar: What’s Not to Like? – Max Byrd, author of the recent Martha Gellhorn-inspired historical novel, Pont Neuf, riffs on “similes, good and bad”.

Mirror: Lisa Jewell shares ‘clever and gripping’ crime novel she can’t wait to read on holiday – “She’s one of the UK’s most-loved authors,” says Nicola Roy, “and it turns out she’s also a big fan of a good thriller. Here’s the one book Lisa Jewell planning on reading this summer – and it’s a must-read for crime fans”: Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke.

Reason: A Beatnik Tourist in Ayahuasca Country – According to Jesse Walker, The Yage Letters, “William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg’s trip reports, form one of the most entertaining books in the Beat canon.”

Smithsonian Magazine: Jane Austen Never Loved Bath—but Bath Loves Jane Austen. Now, the City Is Exploring Why the Novelist Was So Unhappy There – “To celebrate the author’s 250th birthday, a new exhibition spotlights her complicated relationship with the English city where she set parts of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey”, says Ellen Wexler.

Business Day: How white man became famous as a queer Nigerian poet – “When 29-year-old Aaron Barry sat at his desk in Vancouver and submitted a poem under the name ‘Adele Nwankwo,’ a gender-fluid Nigerian poet navigating identity and diaspora, he had no idea it would ignite a firestorm across the global literary community,” says Obidike Okafor.

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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: Armistead Maupin, Charles Van Doren, Clare Mac Cumhaill, Dominic Amerena, Gabriela Jauregui, Heather Cleary, John Hendrix, Leigh Ann Henion, Literary Birthdays, Mexican Literature, Mortimer J. Adler, Rachael Wiseman