An end of week recap

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
– Robert Bloch

It is the done thing at Book Jotter to creepify the wind up on the Saturday before All Hallows’ Eve, so I caution you to steel yourselves for sinister links and frightful features appearing when least expected. 👻

Today’s bookish birthdays include American poet and scholar, John Berryman (1914), American novelist, short story writer and literary critic, Anne Tyler (1941), American children’s author, Pseudonymous Bosch (1967), Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker and political scientist, Elif Shafak (1971) and English novelist, essayist and short-story writer, Zadie Smith (1975). Celebrating tomorrow (some from beyond the grave) are Kenyan aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer and author, Beryl Markham (1902), American author, John L’Heureux (1934), English poet, novelist and biographer Andrew Motion (1952), American essayist and biographer, Stacy Schiff (1961), Indian author, Preeti Singh (1971) and Chinese-born French author and painter, Shan Sa (1972).

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.

* The Moomins in Full Flood *

As part of my ongoing Tove Jansson project, the latest addition to the Moomin shelf in the Tove Trove library is the first book in the original series, The Moomins and the Great Flood, published in 1945 during the final months of World War II. This year its 80th anniversary is being celebrated around the world. >> Read about: The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson >>

* Grab Your Books and Thumb a Lift to ScifiMonth ‘25 *

Imyril and crew are preparing to journey back to Earth on 1^st November to collect all of those who wish to embark on their annual ScifiMonth mystery tour. This year, the event will be “low key”, but you can still expect plenty of science fiction-related “reading, watching, listening to, playing through and talking about stories of might be and could have been.” Please make your way over to Get ready for ScifiMonth 2025 and await collection at the designated landing site, signposted There’s Always Room For One More. In the meantime, the team will be “getting started on prompts for the SciFiMonth Challenge to give you a month full of inspiration for posts and chatter, along with weekly Friday Five topics.” Bon voyage space cadets and don’t forget to use the #SciFiMonth2025 hashtag when discussing your adventures on social media.

* Blogs from the Basement *

Overlooked – but only briefly: (1) We must go back almost twelve months to discover Helen’s thoughts on Deadly Dolls, “a short story collection from the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series”, which features a sinister cast of dolls, mannequins and dummies. It is, she says, “a wonderful anthology,” but contains “some great stories and some much weaker ones” – however, to find out which ones raised the hairs on the back of her neck, you must first enter Deadly Dolls: Midnight Tales of Uncanny Playthings edited by Elizabeth Dearnley at She Reads Novels – if you dare. (2) Naomi MacKinnon of Consumed by Ink was taken unawares by reading not one but three supernatural sea stories in quick succession. Last October, she revealed their titles in her post, The Supernatural: Rose Sutherland, Nancy Taber, and Michelle Hébert. They are: A Sweet Sting of Salt, A Sea of Spectres and Every Little Thing She Does is Magic. “A most satisfying and happy coincidence”, she tells us. Or was it?

* Lit Crit Blogflash * 

This 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 the last week or so:

How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women x Zoe Venditozzi & Claire Mitchell – In her review of How to Kill a Witch for Harare Review of Books, Jacqueline warns us this historic account of the notorious 16^th century Scottish witch hunts “makes for very grim but […] compelling reading.” When crops failed during the turmoil of the Reformation, violence against women increased exponentially along with superstitious beliefs, which “led to women being called witches when they were just living their lives”. Jacqueline was fascinated to learn that colonisers also took “their Witchcraft Acts to Africa—as a tool of control” and that some of these “laws are still on the books in many countries”. She says this chronicle “is part of a campaign by Venditozzi and Mitchell to make visible the victims of these terrible acts in Scotland and to seek an official apology” and describes it as “a dire warning [of where] public panics can lead”.

* 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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Orion: Dear Sea Creature: Life advice from your favorite ocean dwellers – Let me lull you into a false sense of security with an excerpt (accompanied by delightful illustrations) from Cara Giaimo’s Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake: Life Lessons from Sixty Sea Creatures. The perfect antidote to dark days.

History Today: ‘Killing the Dead’ by John Blair review – “In Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World, John Blair proves that you can’t keep a good corpse down”, says Roger Luckhurst.

A Narrative Of Their Own: Writing Rituals of the Brontë Sisters – The latest essay in Kate Jones’ series exploring the writing rituals of inspirational literary women is focussed on “those most famous of Yorkshire siblings: The Brontë sisters, Emily, Anne and Charlotte.”

Fine Books & Collections: Which Book on Your Shelves is Special to You Because of Provenance? – Alex Johnson asked subscribers: “Is there a book in your library that is especially dear to you because of its provenance, either historical or personal?” Here he shares a selection of responses.

The Reading List: 5 non-fiction reads to learn more about the witch trials – Chloe with a witchy reading selection from “Salem, Scotland and beyond”.

Engelsberg Ideas: Willa Cather’s prescriptions for modern life – “A hundred years on from the publication of her masterpiece, The Professor’s House, Cather’s criticisms of modernity carry a new urgency”, writes Charlotte Stroud.

Fiction Matters: Reading in Public No. 87: The promise and perils of tracking our reading lives – “And what would happen if we just let it all go?” Sara Hildreth shares her personal history of both tracking and not tracking her reading habits.

Princeton University Press: Spooky season reading – “Curious about all things melancholy and mysterious? As the nights grow longer and chillier, there’s no better time to curl up with a hauntingly good book. From Gothic style and graveyards to Zombies and Calculus, [the people at PUP are] summoning the perfect reads for autumn’s darkest hours.”

It’s All About the Words: Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist – Claire Holden decided it was “time to talk all things Austen with [the] author [of Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist,] Janet Lewis Saidi (aka Substack’s Plain Jane of The Austen Connection)”. 

The Observer: Bora Chung’s ghosts of the present – “The South Korean author, Bora Chung’s work of literary horror, The Midnight Timetable, is described by John Self as “a supernatural story collection fit for the modern age”. 

The Spinoff: ‘You’ll laugh, you’ll cry…’: Wendy Parkins on the book everyone should read – The Spinoff Books Confessional enables us to “get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: [Australian author] Wendy Parkins, winner of best first book at the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Awards, for her novel The Defiance of Frances Dickinson [titled An Idle Woman in the UK]. 

Global Voices: ‘The horror of real life’: An Interview with Nick, a Greek horror comic book artist – “Nick uses his art to tackle political issues like government corruption, femicide, and financial exploitation”, says Elvis Takahashi Mantello.

Bookish: Emma Nanami Strenner – “On her debut [historical] novel My Other Heart, her Jane Austen and Elizabeth Strout obsession, and the book everyone would read if Emma had her way”. Natasha Poliszczuk talks to British-Japanese writer, Emma Nanami Strenner.

PEN America: Banned Books List 2025 – A horror story unto itself, this year Anthony Burgess’s classic dystopian satire, A Clockwork Orange, tops the list of most banned books in public schools across the USA. Anthony Burgess News responded to this information by posting A Book is Perilous.

Small Stories: The door made out of words – Laura Pashby, author of the memoir Chasing Fog: Finding Enchantment in a Cloud, writes about her experience of participating in “a writing residency in the arctic circle”.

Publishers Weekly: Booksellers Ride the Horror Wave – “Entrepreneurs [in America] are opening niche bookstores for fear-friendly readers”, dedicated to the gothic horror genre, finds Claire Kirch.

Virago: Where to Start with Margaret Atwood – With Margaret Atwood Reading Month starting soon and to celebrate the recent release of the 25th anniversary edition of The Blind Assassin, you may like to take a deep dive with Virago into Atwood’s impressive backlist.

Weird Horror Magazine: On Horror: The Four Quadrants – “There are four types of horror story: the supernatural, the non-supernatural, the literary, and the entertaining. And there are no others”, says Simon Strantzas in this piece from Weird Horror #11. 

Bookmarked: Just the right books for Halloween – We go with Jana from “infamous murders” to a particular murder and on to one of the most infamous murder cases “in London and beyond.”

1000 Libraries Magazine: Meet the Japanese Craftsman Who Brings Broken Books Back to Life – Millie Ramm invites you to meet Nobuo Okano, “the Japanese artisan whose delicate book restorations revive fragile, battered volumes and preserve the memories they carry.” 

Reactor: Seven Haunted or Sinister Libraries You Should Check Out – “From bewildering labyrinths to eldritch horrors, beware of getting lost in the stacks…”

From My Bookshelf: Is László Krasznahorkai Worth Your Time? – Peter C. Meilaender has been “trying out the new Nobel Prize winner” by reading A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East. Is he likely to “read another of Krasznahorkai’s novels?” This, it seems, is a “tough question.”

Electric Literature: 10 Books Featuring Devils, Doppelgängers, Ghosts, and Creepy Dolls – “Eerie entities and speculative ideas help these novels and stories articulate deeply human truths”, finds Laura Venita Green.

Public Things Newsletter: On literacy, the value of reading, and the free circulation of written materials – “A couple of months ago [Matthew Lamb gave] a brief talk at the State Library New South Wales because [his] unaward winning book, Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths, was shortlisted for the 2025 National Biography Award. [The speakers] were supposed to read an excerpt from [their] books, but instead [Matthew] said the following…”

Washington Independent Review of Books: No Road Leading Back – Peggy Kurkowski writes: “No Road Leading Back is an unparalleled work of journalistic research with profound importance for the field of Holocaust studies, but even more so, it is a moving story of human endurance, perseverance, and hope — even when all hope seems lost.”

The London Magazine: Why Magazines Fail – “There’s big trouble in the world of little magazines”, warns Tristram Fane Saunders. “In the last two years, an alarming number have vanished into that second-hand bookshop in the sky […, and each loss] leaves the world a little quieter, a little poorer”.

The New York Times: Dark Academia: A Starter Pack – “The genre — characterized by Gothic intrigue and a liberal arts aesthetic — grew out of Donna Tartt’s cult favorite campus novel, The Secret History.” Jenny Hamilton knows where to start. 

The Standard: Wolf Moon review: An unsettling companion for a sleepless night – “In medieval Europe, a wolf moon [was] the first full moon of the year […] when lupine predators were at their hungriest”, writes India Block. “For [Arifa] Akbar, an insomniac theatre critic who is afraid of the dark, the night is an uneasy place. Wolf Moon is her deeply personal voyage into the nocturnal world”.

Feasts and Festivals: The DNA of your reading life. – “What do your books mean to you?” asks Liz Gwedhan. Those in her personal library “are [her] friends, [her] solace and [her] escape,” she tells us in this delightful post, “but even more than that, they are [her] secret biography.” 

The Irish Times: ‘Isn’t that the horror guy?’ – Kildare author tackles another Hollywood boogeyman – Wayne Byrne, the Irish author, film historian and educator on You Can’t Kill the Boogeyman: The Ongoing Halloween Saga – 13 Films and Counting.

Creative Fuel: Create Dangerously – Anna Brones shares “words of wisdom from Albert Camus on the responsibility of artists in difficult times”, in Create Dangerously, his 1957 essay collection (reprinted as part of the Penguin Modern Classics series).

Varsity: Cambridge University Press says reform needed ‘to secure future of academic publishing’ – “A new report details the threat that AI and rising publishing volumes pose to the sector”, reports Neve Wilson.

Full Stop: Stainless – Todd Grimson – “The vampire and the ex-rocker make a mournful pair: he with his ruined hands, she with her sad nocturnal life. He needs heroin; she needs blood. He has nothing left to live for; she hasn’t truly lived in centuries”, says Max Callimanopulos in his review of Stainless, which has “recently [been] exhumed and reissued by the good people at McNally Editions”.

The Daily Star: Why academic writing deserves to be beautiful – Bangladeshi architect, thinker and lecturer, Maruf Ahmed argues that “the refusal to write beautifully is often justified in the name of neutrality, of detachment, of discipline”.

Independent: Harper Lee’s previously unseen short stories show ‘a brilliant writer in the making’ – “Eight short stories were discovered in the author’s flat after her death”, says Katie Rosseinsky. The Land of Sweet Forever (with an introduction by Lee’s appointed biographer, Casey Cep), combines these never-before-seen finds in a volume with a selection of her published non-fiction.

Chicago Review of Books: Witch Trials and Wax Narrators in “The Wax Child” – Madeline Schultz reviews Danish poet and novelist, Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child (translated by Martin Aitken), an historical fiction horror novel, “featuring […] a town in 1600s Denmark […] that has been infiltrated by so-called witches.”

Penguin Books Newsletter: A guide to Gothic literature – Stephen Carlick invites you to discover the fascinating history and evolution of the genre – as well the best Gothic reads to get you started.

Town & Country: A Royal Copy of Pride and Prejudice Is Going on Display at Windsor Castle for the First Time – “The book is believed to be the same copy from which Prince Albert read aloud to Queen Victoria”, says Rachel King.

The Seaboard Review of Books: Foucault and Picasso in Newfoundland: Lisa Moore’s This Is How We Love – Michael Greenstein reviews This Is How We Love, Lisa Moore’s novel spanning families and generations, described here as her “inverted telescope in Newfoundland’s lighthouse of fiction.”

The Guardian: Certified organic and AI-free: New stamp for human-written books launches – “As machine-made books flood online marketplaces, a new UK initiative is introducing an Organic Literature stamp to help readers identify books created by real authors”, reports Emma Loffhagen. First up is Chilean writer Gonzalo C. Garcia’s Telenovela, forthcoming from Galley Beggar Press.

BBC Asia: Baek Se-hee, author of I Want To Die But I Want To Eat Tteokbokki, dies at 35 – Koh Ewe reports: “Baek Se-hee, the South Korean author of the bestselling memoir I Want to Die but I Want To Eat Tteokbokki has died at the age of 35.”

Georgia Today: When Maps Tell a Story: Inside Mappa Cartographica’s Rare European Collection – “When Sulkhan Saladze came across a rare panoramic view of Tbilisi on a German auction site a decade ago, he had no idea it would change the course of his life. What began as a single purchase soon grew into a lifelong passion for old maps, books and engravings […]”.

The Comics Journal: Vika Lomasko, at home in exile: the last Soviet artist speaks to a post-American world – Zach Rabiroff speaks to Russian graphic artist Victoria Lomasko about growing up in Serpukhov, her favourite illustrators, life in the Soviet Union, her latest novel, The Last Soviet Artist and a great deal more.

The Times: Get Britain Reading: The books that made us readers – “Do you remember the first thrill of discovering you were a reader? The moment you were held totally captive by a story?” asks Johanna Thomas-Corr. “From Nick Cave to Jacqueline Wilson, famous names reveal the book that turned them into a bibliophile”. David Nicholls says, for him, “it was Tove Jansson’s Moomin books.”

Mental Floss: 11 Books Bound in Human Skin – “From medical texts to BDSM poems, to the biography of a highwayman bound in his own skin—at his request”.

People: Dog Only Knows Celebrates Man’s Best Friend in Collection of Viral Pet Portraits – Let’s finish with something amusing, loveable and not in the least spine-chilling, unless of course you are cynophobic – in which case, my profuse apologies. Otherwise, please take a “sneak peek at Alison Friend’s debut book, featuring 125 witty and heartwarming paintings of dogs with big personalities,” Dog Only Knows: The Dog Portraits of Alison Friend.

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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.

>> See my monthly digest at the Book Jotter Journal on Substack. >>

Categories: Winding Up the Week

Tags: #SciFiMonth2025, #ToveTrove, Alison Friend, All Hallows' Eve, Arifa Akbar, Ben Machell, Bora Chung, Cara Giaimo, Claire Mitchell, Edgar Allan Poe, Elizabeth Dearnley, Ghost Stories, Halloween Reading, Horror Fiction, Michelle Hébert, Moomins, Nancy Taber, Robert Bloch, Rose Sutherland, SciFiMonth, Supernatural Fiction, Zoe Venditozzi