An end of week recap

“Genius is childhood recovered at will.”
– Charles Baudelaire (died 30^th August 1867)

My Tovian August concludes with this wind up, so no more Moomins gazing back at you each week… for now. I hope you’re not all Moomined-out!

Literary folk born on this day in history include English novelist, Mary Shelley (1797), French poet, dramatist, novelist and critic, Théophile Gautier (1811), Hindi author, Bhagwati Charan Verma (1903), Australian author, Charmian Clift (1923), American writer and journalist, Nancy H. Kleinbaum (1948) and Swedish crime writer, Camilla Läckberg (1974). Tomorrow, we can raise a teacup to American author, DuBose Heyward (1885), Armenian-American novelist, playwright and short story writer, William Saroyan (1908) and Canadian children’s writer, Kenneth Oppel (1967).

Today is Frankenstein Day, a celebration with roots in the United States but it is slowly catching on around the world, inspired by the enduring legacy of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The occasion is significant because, of course, it falls on her birthday and it also highlights her pioneering role in science fiction and gothic literature.

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.

* All at Sea *

As part of my ongoing Tove Jansson project, the latest addition to the Moomin shelf in the Tove Trove library is the eighth book in the original series, Moominpappa at Sea, a reflective and atmospheric tale first published in 1965. >> Read about: Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson >>

* Almost Overlooked * 

Back in June, a group of “professionals with an interest in literature” collated a book list for The World’s Best, which may be of interest to those taking part in Short Story September, Lisa Hill’s reading challenge kicking off on the first of next month. Describing the form as “compact, powerful, and frequently more illuminating than full-length novels,” we are encouraged to see short fiction as a snapshot “of the human condition” and we learn that “neuroscientific research indicates that people are predisposed to react to stories that provoke empathy and introspection,” regardless of their brevity. From The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis to Ken Liu’s Paper Menagerie, via Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, we discover “what distinguishes a superb short story”. Please see The World’s Best Short Story Collections for a complete rundown of titles. 

* 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 the last couple of weeks:

New Books (August 2025) – The Civilian Reader (aka Stefan Fergus), a some-time journalist, researcher, book blogger and citizen of the world, having lived in several different countries during his life, featured an eclectic assortment of titles released in August, highlighting new works by the likes of Anthony Bourdain, Elaine Castillo, Jade Chang, Sam Guthrie, Jochen Hellbeck, Van Jensen, Elizabeth McCracken, Olivier Norek, Lauren Rothery, Andrew Rowe, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Lavie Tidhar. He describes The Anthony Bourdain Reader as a “definitive, career-spanning collection of writing” from the late chef, author and travel documentarian; and World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews as a “major new history that transforms our understanding of World War II”. All told, it is a fascinating selection of factual and fictional reads for the coming autumn.

* 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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ABC Books: Irish author John Boyne on writing The Elements, a four-part series examining child abuse – The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author’s latest work, The Elements, is a series of four linked stories examining child abuse from different perspectives. Gay author, John Boyne, is “proud” of what he’s done in these books.

Full Stop: Places in the Dark – Lidmila Kábrtová – “Why bother being good when paradise was never promised?” Anna Patricia Valerio reviews Places in the Dark: Short Stories by Czech author Lidmila Kábrtová (translated by Alzbeta Belánová).

The Seaboard Review of Books: Hemo Sapiens by Emily Weedon – “These women are out for blood”, says John Oughton of the characters in Canadian author and screenwriter Emily A. Weedon’s vampire myth novel, Hemo Sapiens – “a spicy cocktail of horror, eroticism, and feminism with a real bite”.

History Today: When Summer Meant Sea Serpents – “For the Victorians and Edwardians, the late British summer was a time of sun, sand – and sea serpents”, reveals Karl Bell, author of a forthcoming exploration of the rich folklore and supernatural tales associated with the Atlantic Ocean, The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic.

Metropolis: Japanese Creation Myths Born from Water – “Japan’s oldest stories are told in water”, says Arden Kreuzer. She recommends reading Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters (translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain) if you would like to fully delve into this subject.

The Metropolitan Review: A Cat Chasing a Laser Beam – “Over the course of 33 days, [writer, researcher and fact-checker from Caracas] Ena Alvarado read Edwin Frank’s Stranger Than Fiction”, setting herself “the arbitrary goal of reading exactly one chapter every morning”. The “overall experience felt like a prolonged conversation with a warm and unassuming friend.”

Harper’s Bazaar: James Baldwin’s Life and Loves in the South of France – “A new biography, Baldwin: A Love Story, shows the writer’s life influenced by all forms of love. Here, the book’s author Nicholas Boggs and food writer and Baldwin friend Jessica B. Harris discuss the icon’s fabulous and fiercely joyful inner circle.”

The Bookseller: Publishers say ‘mindset around short stories shifting’ as readers embrace slim fiction – “Publishers are noting a shift in industry mindset around short stories as readers embrace shorter works, with a number feeling like ‘something is slowly shifting’ and that ‘there’s a real excitement around stories again’”, reports Lauren Brown.

Lydia Blundell: The Ferrante factor: My Brilliant Friend – Lydia spent August reading “what The New York Times calls the best novel of the 21st century”: My Brilliant Friend. She now says she wants “to revisit the [protagonists] each summer and grow old with them”.

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

The Guardian: ‘Animal Farm was my parents’ teamwork’: Orwell’s son on 80 years of the satirical classic – “Richard Blair on the role his mother played in developing the 1945 political fable [Animal Farm] – and how it nearly didn’t get published.”

Prospect: Reading aloud isn’t just for children – “For my kids, stories are visceral, a way to inhabit other worlds and other selves. And for me, reading to them has become a necessity—cathartic, joyful, and cheaper than wine”, says philosopher, Sasha Mudd.

World Literature Today: Criticism Is Literature. Why Is It Vanishing? – “What do the best book reviews do? What is the current state of the critical ecosystem?” Chicago Review of Books founder Adam Morgan thinks a “great book review can be just as rich, entertaining, and insightful as a great short story.”

Harvard Magazine: Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival – “Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard”, argues Nina Pasquini.

Book of Titans: Frameworks for Reading – “Do you find yourself struggling to remember what you read?” asks Erik Rostad. If so, he has some simple “tips to help you remember”.

Literary Hub: Sheila Heti on the Profound Influence of Jane Bowles on Her Writing—and Life – When Sheila Heti “first read Two Serious Ladies in [her] early twenties, it instantly and forever changed the way [she] wrote.” In an excerpt from her introduction to the latest imprint of the author’s 1943 classic tale of women breaking free of the shackles of convention, the Canadian writer explains why its influence was so immense.

Quillette: The Sensitivity Era – “Amid literary subcultures, competition has always been fierce and unrelenting and has become even more so in our age of elite overproduction. On social media, these embittered rivalries play out in public amid a chorus of backbiting worthy of Chekhov”, writes Robert Huddleston. Here he reviews Adam Szetela’s That Book Is Dangerous! and William Deresiewicz’s The Death of the Artist.

Vintage: Extract: The Bells of Nagasaki by Takashi Nagai – “Published now in the UK to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, read an extract from [The Bells of Nagasaki,] Takashi Nagai’s first-hand account of the bombing of Nagasaki – and the acts of human kindness left in its wake. 

Options: ‘Objects of Desire: 10 Malaysian Short Stories in Translation’ extends the boundaries of local literary experiences – “The ‘Mahua’, defined as Malaysian Chinese writing, capture heavy themes of history and politics, but also allude to fantasy and the melancholy,” explains Eddin Khoo in his review of Objects of Desire: 10 Malaysian Short Stories in Translation. 

Independent: How a trip to ‘Moomin island’ made me rethink summers in the Med 🎩👜 – “Spending the summer attending music festivals, foraging and island hopping among the happiest people in the world is far preferable to sweltering on a beach in southern Europe, says Matt Charlton”.

Literary Ladies Guide: Jane on the Brain – Nava Atlas on Wendy Jones’ Jane on the Brain: Exploring the Science of Social Intelligence with Jane Austen and the “role of empathy in Jane Austen’s novels”.

BBC Europe: Denmark scraps book tax to fight ‘reading crisis’ – Gabriela Pomeroy reports: “The Danish government has announced it will abolish a 25% sales tax on books, in an effort to combat a ‘reading crisis’.”

Service95: Helen Garner Is The Fearless Voice The World Is Finally Listening To – Here’s Why We Should Have Been Paying Attention All Along – For over “four decades, Helen [Garner] has written with a level of personal and moral candour that few writers attempt – and even fewer survive”, says Scott Henderson. Now, “her current international rise” feels like “a long-overdue reckoning.”

Miller’s Book Review: Open Sesame! Translators Unlock Words and Worlds – “But do they sometimes steer us wrong? Can we know?” and “how much does it matter?” asks Joel J Miller.

The American Scholar: The Patient Penelope Fitzgerald – “Here’s to the English writer who waited until her ninth decade to finally experience fame in America”, says Jessica Francis Kane, author of the novel Fonseca, “about a real-life journey Penelope Fitzgerald took to Mexico in search of a much-needed inheritance.”

The Hedgehog Review: On His Existential Way – James Como on “the striking parallels between C. S. Lewis and Søren Kierkegaard”.

Words Without Borders: 9 Women Writers from the Maghreb and the Diaspora to Read Now – “Luisa Suad Bocconcelli recommends 9 standout books by women writers from the Maghreb and its diaspora, all published in the past five years.”

A Narrative Of Their Own: Anne Brontë – Kate Jones examines the life and works of Anne Brontë, “the misunderstood sister” – author of classic novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

The New Yorker (via Archynewsy): The Joys of Moomscrolling 🎩👜 – “As Tove Jansson’s lovable creatures turn eighty, new generations are discovering a world where “trolling” means weathering life’s many anxieties”, says John Allsop.

The Bookseller: ‘Seminal’ Terry Pratchett lecture to be published in clothbound edition by Transworld – Lauryn Wilson reveals that “Transworld is set to publish a new clothbound hardback edition of Terry Pratchett’s “seminal” lecture, Shaking Hands with Death, 15 years after it was first broadcast.

Toronto Star: New books by Margaret Atwood, Mona Awad, Louise Penny and M. Night Shyamalan highlight our fall preview – At a time of year when “big releases start dropping faster than the leaves on the trees”, Sarah Laing winnows down a list of new book titles that includes “two dozen novels, memoirs and short story collections”.

The Oxonian Review: Monsters: A Human History – “The cover of the book is a visual representation of the value of its contents: monsters hold up a mirror to humanity and implicate all of us in their creation.” Verónica Mondragón Paredes reviews Humans: A Monstrous History Surekha Davies’ new history of humanity through the eyes of monsters.

OkayAfrica: 13 Must-Read Books by Black South African Women Writers – “These 13 powerful books by Black South African women writers offer a compelling lens on Black women’s complex realities and triumphs in today’s world.”

The New York Times: How I Built My Ruthless Summer Reading List – “Whichever books you choose, and however you choose them, may your summer reading be satisfying, and your curating ruthless”, says Carlos Lozada.

The Republic of Letters: Contemporary Russian Literature – Vanya Bagaev, author of the dystopian work, Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel, presents the ‘Vast Guide to Probably the World’s Greatest Literary Culture’. (Warning! This is quite long.)

Scroll.in: Science fiction and fantasy: Kalki works for the British while planning to destroy the empire – An excerpt from Vaishnavi Patel’s Ten Incarnations of Rebellion – a novel that imagines an alternate history of India that was never liberated from the British.

Ballarat Writers: Book review – Arborescence, by Rhett Davis – Arborescence, Australian writer Rhett Davis’s latest novel ‘about trees, people, people who think they are trees, trees that might be people, and robots that decide they are people,’ had Jason Nahrung “hooked from the prologue”.

AnOther: The Artist’s Guide To Keeping a Diary – “Coco Capitán, Ed Templeton, Vinca Petersen, Lina Scheynius and Clem MacLeod talk about the practice of journalling – plus their best advice for anyone wanting to start.”

The New Yorker: The Otherworldly Ambitions of R. F. Kuang – “The author of Babel and Yellowface is drawn to stories of striving. Her new fantasy novel, Katabasis, asks if graduate school is a kind of hell.”

Open Letters Review: The Worlds of Dorothy Sayers by Stephen Wade – Steve Donoghue gives a not entirely flattering review of a new biography of the great mystery novelist: The Worlds of Dorothy Sayers: The Life and Works of a Crime Writer and Poet by Stephen Wade.

Artnet: The Will That Triggered a Legal Battle Over Shakespeare’s Home Resurfaces – “The document had languished in an unmarked box in the U.K.’s National Archives for more than a century”, reports Min Chen.

Mirror: Thursday Murder Club review: Cosy crime drama will leave you in tears – Lauren Morris reports: “Richard Osman’s [The] Thursday Murder Club has finally made it to our screens, with a star-studded cast bringing this Cooper’s Chase mystery to life as it lands in cinemas”.

Global Times: Lu Xun-style sweater vests go viral after appearance at book fair – “At the recently concluded 2025 Shanghai Book Fair, a single item stole the spotlight – not a best-selling novel or a rare manuscript, but a sweater vest.”

The Ringer: Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes—Please – “Human writers have always used the em dash. In fact, it’s the most human punctuation mark there is”, says Brian Phillips. We return yet again to the contentious em dash / AI controversy.

J.K. Rowling: The twilight of Nicola Sturgeon: J.K. Rowling reviews Frankly – J.K. Rowling’s tongue-in-cheek review of Frankly, the ex-First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon’s, recently published autobiography.

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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: #ToveTrove, Anne Brontë, Anthony Bourdain, Australian Literature, Book Lists, Charles Baudelaire, English Novelist, Gina Butson, John Boyne, Ken Liu, Lee Hao Jie, Mahua, Malaysian Literature, Moomins, Rhett Davis, Southeast Asian Literature, Tove Jansson, Tove Trove