An end of week recap

“The cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it.”
– Elizabeth Gaskell (born 29^th September 1810)

The September equinox occurred last Monday (the vernal equinox for our friends in the south) – a point when day and night briefly share equal time, marking the official start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. This is traditionally a time for harvest celebrations, when we pause to take stock and cosy down in preparation for those darker, more introspective days ahead. I find choosing the books I am likely to read in the coming months immensely comforting.

We have a bibulous birthday weekend ahead for anyone planning to raise a celebratory glass to each of these literary luminaries. Please clink your flutes for Nobel Prize winning Italian writer, Grazia Deledda (1871), British poet, literary critic and influential figure in the development of New Criticism, William Empson (1906), American lawyer, novelist, historian and essayist, Louis Auchincloss (1917), British romance novelist and chairperson of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Katie Fforde (1952) and Scottish novelist and short story writer, Irvine Welsh (1958). Refills are required on Sunday for American author and educator, Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856), Belgian-Australian writer, essayist and literary critic, Simon Leys (aka Pierre Ryckmans) (1935), Puerto Rican writer, poet and essayist, Rosario Ferré (1938), American author of mystery and thriller novels, Marcia Muller (1944) and American author, Piper Kerman (1969).

Hispanic Heritage Month is also taking place in the USA until 15th October, honouring the achievements of communities with roots in Spain, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. It is a celebration of Latino/Latina traditions by spotlighting art, music, food, politics, science, education and notably literature. To learn more, please peruse the Hispanic Month website.

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 *

Earlier this year (in May to be precise), Jill A. Broderick of the Rhapsody in Books Weblog shared her thoughts on Jandy Nelson’s 2024 magical realism novel, When the World Tips Over. Describing Nelson as “a talented and interesting writer”, we learn that its 12-year-old narrator, Dizzy Fall, a “7^th-grader” at a school in Northern California, is “utterly charming, [but] doesn’t see herself that way”. She has “recently lost her best friend Tristan” to “girls” – the second such abandonment after the mysterious disappearance of her father several years earlier. But this is apparently a “history of […] two families […] told from several different perspectives” and its “characters [must] come to terms with their pasts, their identities, [and a] ‘curse’”. A “captivating and moving book” with a mixture of “tragedy, love, and hope”, Jill gave this contemporary YA title an impressive four out of five rating. See Review of “When the World Tips Over” by Jandy Nelson  to read the full post.

* Lit Crit Blogflash * 

I am going to share with you a couple of my favourite pieces 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 posted in the last week or two:

Catching Up With Nova Scotia Authors and Books – In a post for Consumed by Ink, Canadian blogger and children’s librarian Naomi MacKinnon shares an eclectic selection of books she has read over recent months by Nova Scotian authors, including “contemporary and historical narratives, as well as […] futuristic” titles from authors ranging from Charlene Carr and Tammy Armstrong to Tom Ryan, Jessica Ilse and a double helping of Anne M. Smith-Nochasak. Among her choices we can expect to find “humour, romance, mystery, and adventure” – in fact, Naomi assures us, there is “something [here] for everyone!”

Making It New—Again – Drawing on “a decade of research, including interviews and newly opened archives”, David Vichnar, in his piece for the Manchester Review of Books, tells us that Dr Joseph Darlington’s collective biography, The Experimentalists: The Life and Times of the British Experimental Writers of the 1960s is “both a period story and a provocation to the present.” Returning “the British avant-garde to the thick present of literary history”, this window into a shared vision is “a lucid, propulsive, archivally grounded account of a cohort whose ambitions outran the patience of their time” and a sign of the “marked revival of interest in experimental fiction in Britain and Ireland”. Indeed, it is, he says, “a welcome companion to more formalist studies” for scholars, while for “general readers” it “a door flung open onto an unruly house.”

* 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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Open Letters Review: Six Weeks by the Sea by Paula Byrne – Paula Byrne, according to Christina Nellas Acosta, “is steeped in the oeuvre and research minutiae of Jane Austen.” The “imaginary love plot” of her historical novel, Six Weeks by the Sea, “feeds on the Romantic sensibility of Sehnsucht and thwarts the happy ending because, as readers know to expect, the finale is not conjugal bliss.” 

The Paris Review: Fall Books: On Tarjei Vesaas’s The Birds and The Ice Palace – “There are books that don’t leave you once you have finished reading them but remain with you, some for the rest of your life. To me Tarjei Vesaas’s two masterpieces, The Birds and The Ice Palace, are such books”, writes Karl Ove Knausgaard in his introduction to the former – though, both titles will be published by Pushkin Press Classics in October.

Historia: Syndrome K, the ‘disease’ that saved lives in occupied Rome – Here Sarah Freethy, author of historical novel The Seeker of Lost Paintings, “uncovers the extraordinary story of Syndrome K, the supposedly deadly disease that saved lives in German-occupied Rome in 1943.”

Raids on the Underworld: Writers who give up writing: Juan Rulfo – Richard Gwyn is fascinated by authors who simply stop writing – in particular, Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo, whose 1955 magical realism masterpiece Pedro Páramo “made a profound impression on the Hispanic literary world”.

The Arts Desk: Mark Hussey: Mrs Dalloway – Biography of a Novel review – echoes across crises – “On the centenary of the work’s publication an insightful book shows its prescience”. Helen Tyson (a specialist in Virginia Woolf’s scrapbooks) reviews Mark Hussey’s Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel.

The Reading Life: On reading taste – Petya K. Grady with a reflective piece on personal reading taste, which takes in her sense that she “must always read what is important, or difficult, or improving”, the question of whether depth or breadth of reading [is or is not] a better goal to aspire to”, her experience of reading John Williams’s Stoner and so much more.

The Japan Times: ‘Swallows’ untangles the murky ethics of selling motherhood – Natsuo Kirino’s Swallows (translated into English by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda) “examines the intersections of class and reproductive issues with a focus on its protagonist who is talked into becoming a surrogate for a wealthy couple.”

Reactor: A Knight to Remember: Six Retellings of the Story of Tam Lin – The tale of Tam Lin started as a Scottish ballad featuring a strong-willed heroine, a powerful faerie queen and a knight in need of rescue. It is an iconic story that centres an unusual lead. Rachel Ayers suggests six retellings of this slippery, shapeshifting story.

BBC Travel: Beyond the beach read: The new wave of bookish travel – “Forget the solo beach paperback: travellers are now joining structured reading retreats that mix books, place and community”, says Lizzie Enfield.

The Tearoom: Frankenstein and the Violence of Human Rejection – As Mariella Hunt reads Charlotte Gordon’s mother-daughter biography, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, she discusses Frankenstein and explains why she feels compelled to revisit this Gothic masterpiece every autumn.

Southbank Centre: Artist on artist: Michelle de Kretser on the ‘pure joy’ of Shirley Hazzard – In an interview with Glen Wilson, the “multi-award-winning writer shares her fandom of a fellow Aussie author with ‘remarkable powers of observation’”.

School of the Unconformed: The Idea Machine: Putting Socrates’ Prophecy to the Test – Peco shares his thoughts on Joel J Miller’s soon to be published The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future, which left him “convinced that we won’t be able to dispense with print books.”

Canadian Writers Abroad: A Canadian in Tinsel Town – “Playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Richard Willett [whose latest work is the LGB title A Friend of Dorothy’s], was born in Vancouver. In 1978 he moved to New York City, which he left in 2005 for Hollywood.”

Realnoe Vremya: The National Library of Tatarstan Began Celebrating Its 160th Anniversary – At the end of August, the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan, the main state book depository in Tatarstan for national, republican, Russian and foreign publications (located in Kazan), “launched a series of events dedicated to the 160^th anniversary of the institution”.

LARB: The Other One Is Me – “Sarah McEachern traces the merging images of Annie Ernaux’s The Other Girl, newly translated by Alison L. Strayer.”

Taipei Times: Book review: Three Revolutions by Simon Hall — how Russia, China and Cuba changed forever – “A historian explores eyewitness accounts of the most dramatic political upheavals of the 20th century”. Pratinav Anil on Simon Hall’s Three Revolutions: Russia, China, Cuba and the Epic Journeys that Changed the World.

The Butler Did It: Wicked Uncle by Patricia Wentworth – Or, says Brooke Holgerson, “are snakes necessary?” A look back at Patricia Wentworth’s 1947 Golden Age mystery (number 12 in the ‘Miss Silver’ series), Wicked Uncle.

Three Quarks Daily: C.P. Snow Blind – Best known for his essay The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution and, to a lesser extent his cycle of novels, Strangers and Brothers, British writer and physical chemist C.P. Snow was at one time referred to as “the most eminent living English author”, but according to Steve Szilagyi, he also resembled “a pink, pointy-headed Patrick Star from SpongeBob SquarePants”.

The Wire: ‘The Dead Fish’: Why Rajkamal Chaudhary’s Unsettled Modernism Endures – “Rajkamal Chaudhary has always been a difficult presence in Hindi literature. A restless figure who lived only 37 years,” writes Ashutosh Kumar Thakur. To read Machhli Mari Hui now (a novel first published in 1966 and translated into English by Mahua Sen as The Dead Fish), which openly deals with “same-sex desire, particularly lesbian relationships,” is, he says “to be reminded how radical it was in its time, and how uneasy it still makes us.”

Hungarian Literature Online: Péter Nádas: Cultural crises always sell – “‘A country doesn’t have bookshelves, at most it has libraries. A country doesn’t have a conscience. Bookshelves and consciences are the province of individuals.’ – An interview with Péter Nádas for Litera’s Double or Nothing campaign.”

The New York Times: Great Fantasy Novels With Unlikely Heroes – “Morally ambiguous killers, social outcasts, bumbling misfits and misunderstood monsters take center stage in these thrilling, and deeply human, books” presented by fantasy and science fiction novelist P. Djèlí Clark.

3:AM Magazine: The Threshold and the Ledger – English writer Tom McCarthy’s The Threshold and the Ledger is a non-fiction essay about exploring the possibility of producing a great literary work. Here he scrutinises a single poem by Austrian poet and author Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973).

Wolf Hall Weekend: Honouring Hilary Mantel: A New Prize for Unpublished Writers – “The just launched ‘Hilary Mantel Prize’ offers budding authors the chance to honour a literary legend by nurturing their own voices and taking the next step toward publication.”

Neos Kosmos: Greek Australian debut takes top prize for Emerging Writer – Writer Emily Tsokos Purtill says: “I have heard from readers all over Australia about how Matia has resonated with them on many different levels in terms of their family’s own experiences of coming from Greece to Australia”.

The Women’s Prize Trust: The Mermaid Collection: Creating the Dream Book Collection by Elizabeth Smith – Elizabeth Smith introduces the first four books in Penguin’s Mermaid Collection – an assemblage of classics by pioneering 20^th century female authors (in this instance: Fay Weldon, Margaret Kennedy, Helen McCloy and Lettice Cooper), chosen for their page-turning storytelling and attractively reissued with forewords penned by contemporary writers.

Bookmarked: Read these books if you want to understand more (or anything at all) about the Russia-Ukraine conflict – Jana suggests the best books to gain a greater “understanding [of] the Russia-Ukraine conflict”.

The Dispatch: What J.K. Rowling Gets Right About Humanity – “Both of her book series share an honest, hopeful thread”, says Madeleine Lawson. 

Scroll.in: September global fiction: Six new novels from around the world to add to your bookshelves – “A Portuguese novel in translation, a novel about interconnected lives, a tale of [the shared horror of] three sisters […] and more.”

Katy Hessel: Hot Milk: a conversation with Deborah Levy – “Reflections on the film [adaption of Hot Milk] and [Katy’s] conversation with author Deborah Levy”.

Indiana University: IU Columbus professor reframes literary history in new, award-winning book – “Based on extensive archival work at the British Library and Emory University, as well as unpublished materials in private hands,” Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick’s Lives Revised: Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath “offers a groundbreaking reexamination of three complex figures in literary and cultural history.”

McNally Editions: “It’s detective work.” – “Editors Jeremy M. Davies and Lucy Scholes [speak to Kate Dwyer about] the process of reissuing lost masterpieces.”

The Believer: An Interview with Sheila Heti – Cara Blue Adams speaks to Canadian writer Sheila Heti about Toronto, plotting her stories, keeping a diary, Motherhood and more.

Books of Titans: London Bookstore Bonanza – Erik Rostad thinks he knows “what bookstores will probably look like in heaven”.

The Point: A Different Annihilation – Daniel Silver on “absorption and theatricality” in the controversial French author Michel Houellebecq.

The Metropolitan Review: The Bloody Love of Poe – “A flutter of raven feathers accompanies each recitation of [his] name” and “[…] glossy, jet-black feathers adorn the cover of a new biography, Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, by Richard Kopley”, says Kazuo Robinson.

JSTOR: Christine de Pizan: Europe’s First Professional Female Writer – “Christine used her pen to make a living at the French court, but even more pointedly, she used it to argue the value of educated women”, says Canadian writer Emily Zarevich.

Book and Film Globe: That Is Not Dead Which Still Sells – Weldon Owen’s new deluxe edition [of The H. P. Lovecraft Experience] may be the most ambitious H.P. Lovecraft publication to date,” declares Michael Washburn.

DW: Kamel Daoud: Algerian author breaks his silence – “The writer’s Algerian civil war novel, Houris, challenges taboos and gives women a voice. The book has made him famous — but also led Algeria to seek his arrest”, says Aya Bach.

BBC Asia: Taliban ban books written by women from Afghan universities – Ali Hussaini reports: “The Taliban government has removed books written by women from the university teaching system in Afghanistan as part of a new ban which has also outlawed the teaching of human rights and sexual harassment.”

Read More Books: Leigh Bardugo’s Best Advice for Reading More – Jeremy Anderberg chats with American fantasy author (whose anniversary edition of the Six of Crows duology has recently been published) about favourite authors, “diving into a new story” and “her best advice for reading more”.

The Christian Science Monitor: In this roundup of fall mysteries, everyone has skeletons in the family closet – “Crime-fighting families have been with us since the Hardy Boys and Trixie Belden. This fall, generations are teaming up to put away the bad guys in mysteries ranging from the cozy to the decidedly not”, says Yvonne Zipp.

Romancing the Phone: Establishing a BookTok Canon – Alyssa Morris explains “which books work and how”.

Pop Matters: Adrian Mole’s Very English Portrait of Male Anguish – “In Sue Townsend’s hands, comedy doesn’t soften despair; it sharpens it. Her creation, Adrian Mole, is a most perfectly flawed portrait of loneliness and failure.” Mike Cormack argues that the “greatest Adrian Mole book” and “the one that showcases [the author’s] genius most clearly,” isn’t her “best-selling 1980s volumes” but Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years published in 1993.

The Korea Herald: Why Koreans keep buying books they admit are shallow – “Paying for [a] ‘healing essay’ in Korea is less about reading than buying [a] feeling you’re caring for yourself properly”.

Artnet: Was Picasso’s Poetry Any Good? – Verity Babbs writes: “His poems were often erotic and formally fragmented, much like his paintings, if not quite as successful.”

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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: Charlene Carr, Charlotte Gordon, David Adams Cleveland, Dr Joseph Darlington, Elizabeth Gaskell, Frankenstein, H.P. Lovecraft, Jandy Nelson, Jane Austen, Literary Anniversaries, Mahua Sen, Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, National Hispanic Heritage Month, Paula Byrne, Rajkamal Chaudhary, Writer's Birthdays