An end of week recap
“Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,
And bask in the garden of paradise.
Here is the essence of north and it’s autumn
I’ve chosen as this year’s friend.”
– Anna Akhmatova
Should you feel inclined to celebrate, there are a number of literary birthdays occurring over the weekend. Among today’s are the French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet and journalist, François Mauriac (1885), Welsh language children’s author, T. Llew Jones (1915), American novelist, short story author and screenwriter, Elmore Leonard (1925), Canadian poet, fiction writer and travel writer, David McFadden (1940) and Irish fiction writer, critic and essayist, Anne Enright (1962). Then tomorrow, there are (among others), Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, Eugenio Montale (1896), American pulp-fiction writer, Lester Dent (1904), American novelist, Ann Petry (1908), British novelist of Ukrainian origin, Marina Lewycka (1946), Zimbabwean author, NoViolet Bulawayo (1981) and American author, Julie Kagawa (1982).
Today we are marking Bookshop Day in the UK and Ireland, a heartwarming tribute to the charm, community and cultural significance of our favourite bookstores. Furthermore, in Australia, it is officially Love Your Bookshop Day. Incidentally, I hope you all remembered to bring your pointy hats out of mothballs on the 9th October for the globally celebrated Harry Potter Book Day. If so, just pop ’em on a peg – they are sure to be needed later in the month. 🧙♀️📚
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 am still attempting to drip-feed details of forthcoming reading challenges so as not to overwhelm you as October gets busy and Nonstop November looms. This week we look ahead to:
* Mann Up for German Literature Month *
Another highly anticipated reading event returns in November thanks to long-standing host Caroline from Beauty is a Sleeping Cat, along with fellow emcee Tony Malone of Tony’s Reading List, who is kindly standing-in for Lizzy Siddal while she “is on a hiatus for health reasons.” I speak, of course, of German Literature Month, which is now in its fifteenth season and, “if you’d like to participate,” says Caroline, “there’s only one rule to follow – read books that were originally written in German.” Please head over to Announcing German Literature Month XV November 2025 to see the full schedule, which includes a “special feature” for 2025 in the form of a “Thomas Mann week to celebrate his 150th birthday”. Should you post content about the event on any of the social media platforms, please remember to include the #GermanLitMonth tag.
* Blogs from the Basement *
Once again, I blow the dust from a batch of book posts I missed earlier: (1) First up, an entertaining review in which Cathy Brown compares reading Eve Babitz’s “ten loosely connected vignettes” in Slow Days, Fast Company to taking “a shimmering, sun-soaked plunge into the hedonistic heart of Los Angeles”. A blend of “memoir and fiction”, first published in 1977, it is “a love letter to a city and a life lived at full tilt.” You can read this piece from last April at 746 Books: No 254 Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz. (2) Prima Facie, based on Suzie Miller’s “one-woman play of the same name,” came under scrutiny at Jo’s Book Blog in July. A “difficult read in parts” due to its subject matter (sexual assault), it nevertheless handles everything “brilliantly while highlighting the limitations of the law when a victim is brave enough to speak up about their ordeal”. See Prima Facie by Suzie Miller. (3) Joachim Boaz’s re-evaluation of Benefits, Zoë Fairbairns’ tale of a “British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future” makes fascinating reading. Set during the 1976 heatwave, “a seemingly innocuous policy [plunges] the country into [a] nightmare.” Head over to Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations to discover this “unjustly forgotten work” at Book Review: Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979).
* 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 weeks:
Five Books for Autumn – If you, like me, are a lover of other people’s recommended reading lists, I greatly encourage you to peruse Kirsty’s roll of books ideally suited to the current season (at least, for those of us north of the equator). From Barbara Pym’s “deliciously, blackly funny” tale of four middle-aged characters who all “work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness” (Quartet in Autumn), to Emilia Hart’s magical realism novel about “three extraordinary women across five centuries” (Weyward) and Irène Némirovsky’s “coruscating, tragic novel of war and its aftermath” set in France between the wars (The Fires of Autumn), there is something here to please a wide variety of literary tastes. You can see these and other suggested titles at The Literary Sisters.
* 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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New Book Recommendations: Summary of ‘House of Day, House of Night’ by Olga Tokarczuk – The Polish writer, activist and public intellectual’s vivid 1998 novel, House of Day, House of Night, set in an unnamed but unusual village inhabited by a group of tragicomically damned villagers, gets its first full English translation (courtesy of Antonia Lloyd-Jones).
The Marginalian: The Measure of a True Visionary: Jane Goodall on the Indivisibility of Art and Science – “There are few visionaries in the history of our species who have changed our understanding of nature and our place in it more profoundly than Jane Goodall (April 3, 1934–October 1, 2025)”, says Maria Popova. “The essence of [her] integrated, holistic view of life comes ablaze in […] Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters (public library) — that magnificent record of how she turned her childhood dream into reality.”
Miller’s Book Review: All the Horrifying Things We Do to Our Books – “How much damage can you do to a book and still live with yourself?” asks Joel J Miller.
El Mundo: When Putin ‘stole’ Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s library: “In Russia we will see a savage struggle for power” – “The Russian writer, a recurring candidate for the Nobel Prize and exiled in Berlin for her opposition to the regime, publishes A Tent Under the Sky, a fresco of half a century of Soviet oppression and a plea for love for art and literature.”
Blog of the American Philosophical Association: Stamps, Sex and Second Sex – “Simone de Beauvoir is often remembered as a formidable philosopher, feminist theorist, and novelist […]. Yet her legacy also resides in the complexity of her private writings.” Thomas Payré on A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren (for The Women in Philosophy series), a collection of de Beauvoir’s letters to her National Book Award-winning American lover.
The Ink-Stained Desk: Dark Academia: Intellect & Obsession. – “Dark Academia, at its heart, explores the tension between intellect and depravity, between classical order and emotional chaos”, writes C M Reid. In the latest in this excellent Genre Genealogy Series, we examine closely “what happens when intellectual obsession becomes deadly?”
Chicago Review of Books: The Translator’s Voice — Ann Goldstein on Translating Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Quartet” – Ann Goldstein discusses “her origin story as a translator, reading and rereading, and Elana Ferrante’s universal appeal”.
Newcity Lit: A Golden Ratio: Taking the Measure of Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket” – “The long-awaited novel is a Depression-era noir set in Milwaukee, Chicago and the Hungarian hinterlands.” Annette LePique reviews Thomas Pynchon’s historical mystery novel, Shadow Ticket.
Reactor: There Comes a Time in Every Reader’s Life When You Have to Move the Books – “A lot of books have come in and out of [Molly Templeton’s] front door. But now they all have to go out, because [she’s] moving.”
Defector: The Pleasures Of Reading Jane Ellen Harrison – Jack Hanson writes on the pleasure he takes in “reading the British linguist, classicist, pacifist, early feminist, and self-styled heretic, Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1927).”
Astra: Galápagos – An excerpt from Galápagos, the eccentric debut novel of Colombian writer Fátima Vélez (translated from Spanish by Hannah Kauders), which evokes the AIDS epidemic as it follows a group of bohemian artists and political radicals on a phantasmagoric voyage.
Francis Gilbert: Four things the novels of Patrick White can teach us – The Australian novelist and playwright, Patrick White, “is often hailed as Australia’s greatest novelist”, says Francis Gilbert, “yet his cultural status can be paradoxical”, and he is sometimes seen as “distant or ‘difficult,’ even in his home country.”
Something Eve Read: Translating & Rowing – Eve Matheson writes of her literary “love affair” with American author Annie Dillard and shares her experience of reading the essay collection, The Writing Life, which offers insight into the writer’s profession.
Scroll.in: ‘Translation is central to everything we do’: Vivek Shanbhag on his new publishing venture, Hyphen – Based in Bengaluru, Hyphen: Connecting Literatures is a new “literary journal in English, […] scheduled for launch in 2026.” Here, Shanbhag talks to Sayari Debnath about this “initiative from the Bahuvachana Trust that puts translation at its centre.”
The New York Times: The Thriller Writer Who Took on a Tech Giant – “Andrea Bartz was disturbed to learn that her books had been used to train A.I. chatbots. So she sued, and helped win the largest copyright settlement in history”, reports Alexandra Alter.
The Arts Fuse: Book Review: “Fifty Poems — An Offering on the Altar of Rainer Maria Rilke – “If,” says Jim Kates, “as a commemorative volume, Fifty Poems introduces readers to sample the German poet more extensively, either in the original or in the range of translations currently available, it will have accomplished a valuable task.”
The National: Soor Al-Azbakeya, Cairo’s famous used-books market, unfolds new look – “The used books market in Al-Azbakeya, one of Cairo’s most prominent cultural districts, has reopened after undergoing renovation”, reports Razmig Bedirian – and there are over one-hundred bookshops offering a “vast selection of English and Arabic titles”.
The Globe and Mail: 61 books to lose yourself in this fall – “From new memoirs from Margaret Atwood and Arundhati Roy to buzzy fiction by Mona Awad (and much more), here are the most notable books of the season”, suggested by Canadian literary critic, Emily Donaldson.
The Irish Times: In pictures: Portraits of Irish writers as you have never seen them before – “Former New Yorker photographer Steve Pyke has compiled a striking book of portraits beginning with Neil Jordan in 1985 and including Marian Keyes, Edna O’Brien and Sebastian Barry”, says Rosita Boland.
Speculative Insight: Towards a Taxonomy of Historical Science Fiction – “A historical fantasy is a novel that is grounded in magic, or centering around dragons or such, that is set in a historical period”, writes Brenda W. Clough, “the first female Asian-American SF writer.”
The Atlantic: The Publishing Industry’s Most Swoon-Worthy Genre – “Tight-knit but open-armed fans have made romance an especially hot commodity”, finds Rebecca Ackermann.
AP News: Czech author and anti-communist dissident Ivan Klíma dies at 94 – “Ivan Klíma, a Czech author and anti-communist dissident whose work and life were shaped by Europe’s 20th-century totalitarian regimes, has died”, reports Karel Janicek.
Orion: Animal Memoirs Gone Wild – Rebecca van Laer on “what we can learn from more domestic forms of intimacy with nature”.
Variety: ‘Steven Universe’ Creator Rebecca Sugar Set for Animated Feature From Annapurna, Moomin Characters (EXCLUSIVE) – Carole Horst reports: “Beloved around the world in books, cartoon strips, TV series and movies, the Moomins are coming to the big screen. Moomin Characters and Annapurna announced today that they are bringing the creatures to life in […] the first Moomin film produced in the U.S.”
InDaily South Australia: Sister act: Weird and wonderful tales from the other side – “Springing from the heyday of magazines like Weird Tales comes [Weird Sisters: Tales from the Queens of the Pulp Era,] a new anthology of 15 uncanny stories – classics and rarities penned by the women writers whose weird imaginings defined the pulp era.”
Open Book: Danila Botha Invites Readers Into the Tender, Chaotic World of A PLACE FOR PEOPLE LIKE US – Described here as “one of Canada’s most perceptive and emotionally intelligent storytellers”, Danila Botha talks to OB about friendship, Judaism, research and her latest novel, A Place for People Like Us.
BBC News: Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Literature Prize – László Krasznahorkai, the Hungarian author of five novels, including Satantango (“a postmodern work about the end of the world”, translated into English by George Szirtes), has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.
Harper’s Bazaar: “A Closer Read” Is Harper’s Bazaar’s New Books Newsletter – “Novelist and features director Kaitlyn Greenidge brings readers into her literary world”.
The Global Women’s Library: 10 short story collections to read this October – Anwen, a writer from Wales, shares a diverse selection of ten short story collections that are ideal company when “curling up in front of the fire.”
Publishers Weekly: Hay Festival Brings Literary Stars to Ukraine, U.S., and Beyond – The Wales-based Hay Festival is positioning itself at geopolitical flashpoints around the world, bringing top authors to Lviv’s BookForum and other literary events.
A Narrative of Their Own: Writing Rituals of Agatha Christie – For the latest feature in her series “exploring the writing lives of women”, Kate Jones homes in on the iconic English detective fiction author Agatha Christie.
Boston Review: The Inventor of the Future – In his review of My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria, Sandipto Dasgupta writes: “The autobiography of anticolonial luminary Andrée Blouin captures her era’s euphoric highs as well as its tragic denouement.”
Memoir Land: The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #142: Christina Rivera – “The literary world—without authentic accounts of motherhood—would be lonely, unfair, and dishonest”, the author of My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women tells Sari Botton.
Ancillary Review of Books: These Islands Were Mine: Review of Nick Mamatas’s Kalivas! – Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest, Nick Mamatas’ science fiction revision of The Tempest, “cleverly calls back to overlapping legacies of Shakespeare adaptation”, says Amy Borsuk. Indeed, it transports the reader “into an imagined near-future told from the perspective of the monster, the island native, the Caliban.”
Metropolis: Romantic Horror in Japanese Folklore and Literature – Tamaki Hoshi on “Japanese stories of love and ghosts that offer something both delicate and terrifying”.
New Books in German: “He found his vocation in Germany, he found his voice in Mexico” – an interview with Tim Heyman, the Managing Director of the B. Traven literary estate – “Over 40 million copies of German born, Mexican naturalised author B. Traven’s books have been sold around the world, with 1,500 editions in more than 40 languages.” Sarah Hemens “spoke to Tim Heyman, the Managing Director of B. Traven’s literary estate, about the author’s life and work.”
The Newtown Review of Books: JENNIFER TREVELYAN A Beautiful Family. Reviewed by Ann Skea – “Jennifer Trevelyan’s debut novel [A Beautiful Family,] is both a coming-of-age story and a mystery full of secrets set within a 1980s New Zealand beach holiday.”
The New Statesman: How Richard Holmes humanised Tennyson – The biographer of England’s great poets [most recently The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief,] reveals the secrets of inhabiting his subjects’ lives”.
Hampshire Chronicle: Jane Austen: Progress underway on statue as workers seen at Cathedral – Workers have been seen at the site of the Jane Austen statue unveiling behind Winchester Cathedral, which is set to take place on Thursday, 16th October.
The Wall Street Journal: ‘Vanilla’ Review: Delicious and Dangerous – “Vanilla occupies an uneasy status between culinary necessity and luxury—a temperamental crop plagued by unpredictable weather and criminal activity” says Anne Mendelson in her review of Eric T. Jennings’ Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean.
The Washington Post (via MSN): Punk’s next frontier: Revolutionizing the rock-and-roll memoir? – “Exciting new books from punk heroes Huggy Bear, Swiz and Billy Childish might be reinventing the form”, suggests pop critic Chris Richards.
Last Year’s Snow: Journey to El Apepal – Aaron recalls reading Paul Bowles’s autobiography, Without Stopping, at the Villa Muniria, “a little pension [in Tangier] where, according to the Lonely Planet guide, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and other Beats had stayed, and which still had plenty of bohemian charm.”
BBC Culture: Riders to Tackle!: Why Britain loved Jilly Cooper’s raunchy books – “Jilly Cooper, who died [on 5th October], was beloved in the UK. Her irresistible sagas of sex and shenanigans among England’s rural upper-middle class society – featuring dashing cads, ambitious women, and a supporting cast of horses, hounds and huge country houses – have been bestsellers since the 1980s. What made her books so enduringly appealing?” asks Clare Thorp.
Vox: Why self-help might be making you feel worse – “One author’s quest to get to the bottom of our self-improvement obsession.”
The Times (via Archive Today): Universities teaching literature students how to cope with long novels – “Universities are teaching English literature students how to concentrate long enough to read lengthy novels”, reports Nicola Woolcock. “Critics blame GCSE English for deterring teenagers from the subject, describing the literature syllabus as boring and repetitive.”
Vanity Fair: Gore Vidal’s Final Feud – “The author and commentator, who would have turned 100 this month, made an art of his public rivalries. In his last years, his ultimate sparring partner was Christopher Hitchens, a friend turned adversary—and fellow VF contributor”, says Matt Tyrnauer.
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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.
>> Read my monthly digest at the Book Jotter Journal on Substack. >>
Categories: Winding Up the Week
Thank you so much for mentioning GLM. It’s hard to believe we’re in our 15th year! I hope we’re making Lizzy proud.
It’s a pleasure, Caroline. 😊👍 Yes, Lizzy is going to be missed this year (I hope she soon feels well enough to return), but I’m certain Tony will make an excellent co-host for the event. Prost! 🍻
It’s also Love Your Book Shop day in Australia today. I showed my love with three new additions to the TBR stack 😉
Thanks Kate. I did mention it and provide a link. Hope you have a fun day! 📚😊👍
Such a lovely autumnal post Paula! My first stop is the Reactor article as I’m hoping to move next year and I know the books need sorting first!
Thank you, Madame B. That sounds exciting (not so much the book packing but the moving)! Are you planning to leave London? I know you love your plants, so you may look for somewhere with a nice garden. If you ever fancy checking out North Wales or North West England we would love to show you around (always a bed here, too, if you need a base). 😊👍
Yes I am leaving London and you’re quite right, I am looking for a garden!🪴 🥰
At the moment the plan is for the south west, so at least I’m moving to the right side (or should that be left side?) of the island with you Paula 😉
But always happy to visit beautiful Wales and the north west so I will definitely give you a shout when I’m venturing forth!
The South West is a great choice. I love Cornwall and Dorset (the Cotswolds, too). Yes, please do let us know if you visit our region. It would be lovely to meet you in person after all these years of book blogging.
Fab set of links, Paula – and November is going to be a busy month with all those challenges (once we have got the #1925Club over and done with, of course!!) 🤣
Thanks Kaggsy. Very true! Are you going to post something about the 1925 Club? I was holding back on announcing it just in case. 😊
So pleased to see Australia’s Love Your Book Shop day mentioned this week in your post. I visited my local bookshop, bought two books and enjoyed the activities. Seeing your post made me feel as if I was ’in the know’ for once!
I’m always pleased to announce events in Australia when I know about them. I’m so glad you had a good Love Your Bookshop Day, Rose. Hope you enjoy your new acquisitions! 😊👍
Re: The Reactor article- The thought of having to move my 2000+ collection of books is terrifying!
Wishing you a wonderful reading week
It’s no fun, that’s for sure. I went through it four years ago and I’m still sorting books out! 😱 I hope you too have a marvellous reading week, Shelleyrae. 😊👍
Hurrah, Jane Austen’s statue is underway! Wish I could be there for the unveiling. Good old Patrick White, I read him in my teens and have respected his work ever since. Give a medal to Andrea Bartz for taking on the tech giants! G 📚
Thank you, G! Really glad you found plenty of interest here. 😊👍
Thanks for another great wrap up of the week post. I didn’t get out to the Love your Book Store this year, my TBR lists are all still too big 😀 Good luck with your move! I have to work in London from time to time and while it is okay to visit I personally would want to live in one of those cute little villages and not in the city! I hope you get a beautiful English garden!
Thanks Rach! It is Madame Bibi who is thinking of escaping the city but I tend to agree with you, while London is great fun, I prefer to call the seaside home. Yes, it would be lovely if she could find somewhere with a nice garden. 🌹🪻🌻🌷🌼
Oh, a new Richard Holmes! I loved The Age of Wonder, and this one looks terrific too.
It does look good, Lory. Definitely one for the TBR! 😊👍
Thank you so much for the mention, and for compiling the rest of this post, which I’m going to comb through now… I’m particularly intrigued by the Fátima Vélez novel!
It’s a pleasure, Anwen. I enjoyed your list. Incidentally, I’m a North Walian! 👋😊