An end of week recap

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting...”
– E.E. Cummings

Today’s book-tied birthdays include Estonian writer and politician, August Mälk (1900), English-American romance (on the saucy side) novelist, Jackie Collins (1937), American author of Gothic fiction, erotic literature and Bible fiction, Anne Rice (1941) and American comic book, science fiction/fantasy poetry and prose writer, Saladin Ahmed (1975). Tomorrow we can permit ourselves a small cheer for French philosopher, art critic and writer, Denis Diderot (1713), Irish novelist, playwright and satirist, Flann O’Brien (1911), English author, poet, playwright and librettist, Michael Morpurgo (1943), English horror and fantasy author, filmmaker and visual artist, Clive Barker (1952) and Indian poet, illustrator, photographer and author, Rupi Kaur (1992).

October is Reading Group Month in many countries, when we are encouraged to gather, discuss and deepen our literary experiences through book clubs and shared reading events. It is also Canadian Library Month and, in the USA, Mystery Series Week begins today.

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.

I suggest you prepare for a raised level of book reading activity over the next couple of months. As is usual at this time of year, there will be literary goings-on sprouting from our proverbial lugholes, so rather than overwhelm you, I will make a start with only this one:

* Cure Your Non-Fiction Addiction This November *

Yes, it’s true, Nonfiction November is back this autumn, and the team are ready and raring to make it real. Kicking off on 27^th October, the “challenge this year runs for a walloping five weeks”, until 30^th November, and according to Frances Spurrier of Volatile Rune, you can expect topic prompts aplenty. “One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction”, she says, is the “way it can open your eyes to the world around you–no plane ticket required.” What’s more, you can look forward to a forthcoming “linkup where you [will be able to add] your posts, connect with other bloggers, and dive deeper by reading and sharing nonfiction book reviews.” Please see Announcing Nonfiction November 2025 #nonficnov25 to find out exactly who will be hosting what and discover all you need to know about taking part. You may also spot a few likely titles in this week’s wind up.

* Blogs from the Basement *

Now for an assortment of previously overlooked posts, freshly uncovered for your delectation: (1) Last January, in her piece “Something in Penelope”: Norah Lofts, Lady Living Alone, Rohan Maitzen of Novel Readings brought the new British Library Women Writers edition of this once-popular English author’s “slyly surprising” Lady Living Alone to our attention. Originally published in 1945 “under a pseudonym, Peter Curtis”, the story pulls off some clever “genre trickery” by transforming from “comic, domestic fiction” to “domestic suspense”. (2) Back in February, Kay Robart of What? Me Read? shared her impressions of Island, a collection of short stories by Alastair MacLeod, “set on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, where he was raised.” You can see what she had to say in Review 2544: Island. (3) Finally, last December, Robert Pisani (aka The Bobsphere), a Canadian blogger now living in Malta, took us back to “post-apartheid South Africa” in Jo Beall – Meadowlands Dawn (2024), his review of Meadowlands Dawn – “an addictive read” based on the female author’s personal experience of incarceration as a political prisoner. “Shocking” in places, we are told, but “not for shocks sake”.

* Lit Crit Blogflash * 

Here is where I share my favourite pieces of writing from around the blogosphere. There are a great many talented people producing high-quality book features and reviews, which makes it mighty difficult to pick only one – in this case, posted in recent days:

Publication day: Relearning to Read – It will surprise none of you, I am sure, to learn that another member of our talented blogging community has published a book – though, in this instance, it is far from being her first. Ann Morgan of A Year of Reading the World is a woman of many talents – author, speaker, editor, literary explorer… Based in Folkestone, she reads far and wide geographically speaking and her latest self-penned title, Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing (with an introduction by Lucy Caldwell), draws on “the interactions [she’s] had through [her] blog and through the reading workshops [she’s] been running for the last four years”. It explores, she says, “how embracing not-knowing can enrich our reading of ourselves and our world”, with each chapter taking on “an extract from a different book likely to be outside most anglophone readers’ comfort zones”, thus offering a “launchpad for exploring themes such as how […] we read books written from political viewpoints or based on religious views we don’t share”. For example, Ann poses the questions: “What do we do if we don’t know if a story is funny? And why might taste sometimes lead us astray?” She hopes her latest work will be sufficiently “playful, mischievous, […] subversive and thought-provoking” to keep us engrossed. Personally, I can’t wait to read it. Relearning to Read is “available worldwide in English and can be ordered through all the usual channels and bookshops”. Please do read the full post for lots more on this thoroughly tempting book-on-books.

* 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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Caught by the River: The Caught by the River Book of the Month – “Nicola Chester’s Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women’s Journeys through Time, Land and Community […] is a bridge between eras, between classes and perhaps, between people, writes Melissa Harrison.”

The Saturday Paper: Helen Trinca Looking for Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Harrower – Award-winning Deaf poet and essayist, Fiona Murphy, wants to know “why did [Australian novelist and short story writer] Elizabeth Harrower stop writing at the height of her powers?” This question, she says, “is at the centre of Helen Trinca’s latest biography, Looking for Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Harrower.”

Faber: Tony Harrison Remembered – The left-wing poet, Tony Harrison, died on 26^th September. Dinah Wood shares her memories of a “poet of the highest order, an inspired and courageous playwright and filmmaker and a very dear friend.” 

The Literary Ladies’ Tearoom: Reflections on The Hobbit – Mariella Hunt ponders The Hobbit and “returning to Middle-Earth in [her] thirties”.

FT: Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave — a connoisseur of cemeteries – In Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys, Argentine journalist, novelist and short story writer, Mariana Enriquez, “documents her years of visiting graveyards across the world with infectious enthusiasm, in her first work of non-fiction translated into English”, finds Lucy Scholes.

The Wall Street Journal: ‘The Invention of Charlotte Brontë’ Review: Eyre and Fury – “An early biography of Charlotte Brontë [by Elizabeth Gaskell] was meant to celebrate her genius. It raised a scandal instead.” Kathryn Hughes describes Graham Watson’s recently published The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life as “a useful book for anyone who wants to understand the twists and turns, revelations […] and endless revisions by which a literary legend endures.”

The Moscow Times: Catherine Merridale Digs Into Stalin-Era History With Detective Novel ‘Moscow Underground’ – The author and historian, Catherine Merridale, discusses the power of fiction to explore the Stalinist period, creating complex characters and navigating contested historical legacies in Moscow Underground, her detective novel set in Moscow in 1934.

The Arts Desk: Joanna Pocock: Greyhound review – on the road again – “A writer retraces her steps to furrow a deeper path through modern America”, says Claudia Bull of Joanna Pocock’s travel memoir, Greyhound.

World Economic Forum: Japan’s literature shows why human translation matters in the age of AI – Japanese literature has gained striking visibility on the global stage in recent years. Works by Japanese authors are being translated into multiple languages, inspiring new cultural values”, writes Naoko Tochibayashi.

Slate: Wild at Heart – “Daphne du Maurier was one of literature’s most misunderstood writers.” Laura Miller discusses “a new book of short stories [that] corrects the record”: After Midnight: Thirteen Tales for the Dark Hours.

Two in one for railway enthusiasts: 🚂
Reading on Trains: Reading on Trains 62: Four Books – Andrew Martin introduces four train-themed books, including The Untold Railway Stories – a compendium of new writing on railway travel and history.
Unseen Histories: Escaping Auschwitz – In an excerpt from the above-mentioned title, editor Monisha Rajesh “recounts the story of one young boy who narrowly survived […] persecution” in what she describes as “one of the most poignant untold railway stories”.

Memoir Land: The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #139: Halina St. James – “When I learned the truth of my mother’s life, it explained a lot about mine and set me on a path towards healing and forgiveness.” Sari Botton talks to Canadian former international TV News journalist, Halina St. James, about her writing life and her recently published mother-daughter memoir, The Golden Daughter: My Mother’s Secret Past as a Ukrainian Slave Worker in Nazi Germany.

The Arts Fuse: Book Review: “The Endless Week” Offers a Brave, Inside-Out Internet Novel Experience – Of the French poet and novelist Laura Vázquez’s “wildly original” debut, The Endless Week (translated by Alex Niemi), Kai Maristed writes, “[it] is a brave, uneven, at times brilliant swathe of prose. Experimental? For certain. Perhaps the only way to write an Internet novel is by looking from the inside out.”

BBC Culture: The 100-year-old books salvaged from Venice’s floods – “A full Moon, strong winds and a vicious cyclone combined to hit Venice with its second-worst flood in history in 2019. Today, books saved from the water tell a story of loss and resistance.”

Silver Press: The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K Le Guin – “The Word for World exhibition is on view from Friday 10 October 2025 to Saturday 6 December 2025 at the Architectural Association in the AA Gallery,” London. The forthcoming book, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin (edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin), “brings her maps together with poems, stories, interviews, recipes and essays by contributors from a variety of perspectives to enquire into the relationship between worlds and how they are represented and imagined.”

The Seaboard Review of Books: The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, Translated By Martin Aitken – In The Wax Child, Danish poet and novelist, Olga Ravn, has created  “a poetic, slightly experimental novella set in the 1600s, conjuring images and moments from factual witch trials of several Danish women held in the early to middle 1600s”, writes Emily Weedon.

Nation Cymru: Welsh publisher rescues thousands of Jackie Morris books from being destroyed – “Independent publisher Graffeg has stepped in to save thousands of beautiful books from being pulped, taking on stock originally published by the now defunct Unbound”. (You can read more about this whole sorry affair in WUTW #431.)

Do Some Damage: Chatting with the ON FIRE Crowd – Steve Weddle chats to four authors whose works are included in On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology – a collection that explores “the intersection of climate change and crime, through the lens of fifteen short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers.”

CNN: Rewriting economic success in Africa through book publishing – In a recent report, UNESCO estimated “Africa’s publishing industry could reach $18.5 billion within the coming years if the right policies are enacted and investments are made”, says Jackie Prager.

Defector: Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ – With the publication of David Lehman’s The Best American Poetry 2025, a “powerful emblem of professional literary culture [is] coming to an end”, says Nick Sturm. And he isn’t entirely displeased.

The Telegraph India: Sisters caught in a storm of change – “What begins as a simple tale of human relationships, unfolding in the midst of hills, mango forests, and winding tracks filled with future dreams, soon spirals into an ambience of perpetual fear, unrest, and uncertainty”, writes Ananya Sasaru of Monica Rana’s coming-of-age novel set in rural Nepal, The Paths We Choose.

4Columns: Animal Stories – “Through the works of Kafka, Berger, Sebald, and more, Kate Zambreno’s book reflects on our perceptions of nonhuman animals and our own animal nature”, says Brian Dillon of the American author’s new essay collection, Animal Stories.

Engelsberg Ideas: A voyage around Virgil’s world – “By making the Aeneid accessible to the epic’s readers in English, Christopher Tanfield’s companion to the text in translation is no less useful to students who are more deeply engaged in Latin language and literary culture.” Armand D’Angour, Professor of Classics at the University of Oxford and fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, on A Companion to the Aeneid in Translation.

The Culture Dump: Defining ‘Gothic’ – In her weekly essay on visual culture, Dr. Rebecca Marks offers “a brief introduction to Gothic art and literature”.

Words Without Borders: “A Thousand Untellable Stories”: Resilience and Adaptation in the Chaotic World of Emmelie Prophète’s Cécé – In Cécé (translated by Aidan Rooney), the Haitian author “‘is brutally honest, yet witty, about the reality of [the protagonist’s] life,’ writes critic Benoit Landon.”

The National Review: What Watership Down Can Still Teach Us About Politics – “Rational rabbits go to war against totalitarianism.” Watership Down, Richard Adams’ 1972 YA fantasy is, suggests Graham Hillard, “a work of political philosophy transposed to the animal kingdom.”

Galley Beggar – Pressing issues: What does it cost to produce a book? – “Why small presses in the UK are struggling – and what can be done about it.” Co-director of Galley Beggar Press, Sam Jordison, attempts to address these issues.

SaltWire: Canadian novelist Miriam Toews [gives] Symons lecture in Charlottetown – Yesterday, author Miriam Toews was awarded the 2025 Symons Medal by Confederation Centre of the Arts in recognition of her exceptional contribution to Canadian life.

The Cut: Book Gossip – Jasmine Vojdani asked a range of “book critics, authors, Substackers, New York staffers, and other well-read people” where and when they find time to read.

Literary Review: Darkness & Light – Matthew Bell, the author of Goethe: A Life in Ideas, a major new study that unpicks the tangle of Goethe’s intellectual life – combining literary analysis with scientific history – considers whether the German polymath “was a genius who harmonised contradictions, or a man defined by them.”

Financial Times: Postcard from Melbourne: up close with the world’s smallest penguins 🐧 – “On Phillip Island, the little penguins attract a big audience”, says Jamie Lafferty, author of An Inconvenience of Penguins: Epic Voyages in Pursuit of the World’s Most Beloved Bird – an account of his impressive quest to visit all eighteen species in their natural environments.

Wandsworth Times: Agatha Christie major exhibition at British Library revealed – “A major exhibition exploring the legacy of iconic crime writer Agatha Christie will run at the British Library next year”, reports Bridget Galton.

People: Why Is Horror Having a Moment? Authors Alma Katsu and Becky Spratford Break It Down (Exclusive) – “The authors of Fiend and Why I Love Horror sat down for a conversation about how the horror genre has evolved — and why readers get to reap the benefits”.

Africa is a Country: The poetics of protest – “From rooftop beginnings to open mics that echo on the streets, Kenya’s newest literary collective shows how art can archive struggle and energize dissent”, writes Keith Ang’ana.

Frontline: Just how little has changed – “Three anthologies of early Indian short fiction show patriarchy’s many faces—and ask whether we have moved beyond colonial-era prejudice.”

Literary Hub: What Our Relationship With Cats Reveals About Ourselves – In this excerpt from Cat, Rebecca van Laer’s mediative memoir from Bloomsbury Academic, she comments: “If dogs are our servants, cats are our shadows.”

The Detective’s Notebook: Manchester’s Sherlock Holmes – Crime historian and author Dr Angela Buckley reveals the “hidden history of Detective Jerome Caminada” and suggests you read her book about his “sleuthing adventures”, The Real Sherlock Holmes.

SFWA: How I Created an Exclusive London Writing Retreat for Next-to-Nothing – When traditional writing retreats felt out of reach, author Deborah Walker designed her own, exploring London’s libraries, museums and cafés for a week of creative focus and inspiration.

BBC Oxfordshire: Posthumous Oxford degree awarded to Māori woman – “A Māori scholar, who is believed to be the first woman from an indigenous community to study at the University of Oxford, has been awarded a posthumous degree, almost 100 years after she began her studies”, says Laura Ancell. The Old-Time Maori by Mākereti Papakura is available as an e-book from Bookshop.org.

Yale News: Pauli Murray College receives Harold Bloom book collection – Jeanne Bloom, says Gillian Peihe Feng, “wife of Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic who died in 2019, donated thousands of books from his personal collection to the Pauli Murray College library.”

Archyde: Rediscovered After Eight Decades: Iconic Author’s Lost Manuscript Finally Released – James Carter reveals The Life of Violet, a collection of three comic stories by Virginia Woolf, is to be published on 7^th October.

Japan Travel: Tove Jansson & Moomin Exhibition 2025 – Kim Bergström announces a “large-scale event dedicated to the Finnish author and artist”, running until 24^th November at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art.

Air Mail: The View from Here – “The monologue that momentarily cost Jimmy Kimmel his job tames in comparison to Howl, Allen Ginsberg’s poetic lament against the conformist society of 70 years ago”, says Gerard DeGroot.

UnHerd: John Boyne refuses to be cancelled: Britain’s literati betrayed him – As “only the sixth non-French writer to win” the Fnac Novel Prize “since it was inaugurated in 2002,” John Boyne and his ambitious novel, The Elements, have been lauded in France.

For Love of Words: In Defense of Enduring Emotions – Croatian writer and book coach, Lidija Hilje, author of Slanting Towards the Sea, considers “characters who feel deeply—and the critics who say it’s too much”.

Publishers Weekly: Canadian Publishing 2025: Border Bookstores Bear Brunt of Trump Attacks – “Booksellers bear consequences of Trump’s aggression toward Canada”, reports Claire Kirch.

The Monthly: Poetic conviction – Jonty Claypole remembers “Australia’s first poet laureate, a convict transported for a poetic blackmail who ingratiated himself with the colony’s governors.”

The Verge: Amazon announces new Kindle Scribes, including one with a color screen – Andrew Liszewski reports: “Three new versions of the Kindle Scribe are launching in the coming months with larger screens and improved note-taking.”

The Stiletto Gang: When Life is Stranger than Fiction, Stick it in a Cozy Mystery Novel – A short but amusing piece from Lois Winston about real people making ideal character-types for her cosy mysteries.

Jane Austen’s Niece: Caroline Jane Knight: From 30,000 Feet: Jane Austen Meets Absolutely Fabulous – Caroline Jane Knight makes “connections between Jennifer Saunders’ outrageous comedy and [her] great aunt Jane’s timeless social commentary.”

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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.

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Tags: #NonFicNov25, Alastair MacLeod, Ann Morgan, Book Reviews, British Library Women Writers, Canadian Library Month, E.E. Cummings, Jamie Lafferty, Literary Anniversaries, Monica Rana, Monisha Rajesh, Mystery Series Week, Nicola Chester, Nonfiction, Norah Lofts, Reading Group Month, Urmila Seshagiri, Virginia Woolf