An end of week recap
“The crisp path through the field in this December snow, in the deep dark, where we trod the buried grass like ghosts on dry toast.”
– Dylan Thomas
Bookish birthdays occurring today include German novelist, Sophie von La Roche (1730), English-born Canadian author, Susanna Moodie (1803), American writer and poet, Joyce Kilmer (1886), Polish poet of the postwar generation, Rafał Wojaczek (1945), Indigenous Canadian playwright, writer and musician, Tomson Highway (1951) and Norwegian author, Karl Ove Knausgård (1968). Then on Sunday we can remember French novelist and early proponent of Symbolism, Paul Adam (1862), American writer, Willa Cather (1873), Japanese author, poet, feminist, pacifist and social reformer, Yosano Akiko (1878), Anglo-Irish novelist, Joyce Cary (1888), American science fiction author and screenwriter, Leigh Brackett (1915) and Bulgarian poet and Communist Party activist, Nikola Vaptsarov (1909)
As ever, this is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on the 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 opinions and happenings.
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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.
* Have Some Non-Fiction Fun in 2026 *
* Book Hungary? Fill Up in February! *
* Blogs from the Basement *
* 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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A triple helping for Janeites: (The Big Day is almost upon us!)
The New York Times: Everyone Is Invited to Jane Austen’s Birthday Party – “For Janeites around the globe, the 250th anniversary of the English author’s birth is cause for elaborate celebrations. Sarah Lyall has the occasion covered.
Commonweal: Universally Mistaken – Burke Nixon will be “binge-reading Jane Austen again this winter,” in honour of her 250th birthday. “Few novelists of any era offer as much perception, delight, and insight on every page.” Burke waxes lyrical on “the humbling pleasures of rereading Jane Austen’s Emma”.
The Common Reader: Jane Austen’s first biographer – “Before 1938, Jane Austen had no proper biography”, says Henry Oliver. However, “this was rectified by the novelist Elizabeth Jenkins (1905-2010)” with Jane Austen: The Biography – reissued this year by August Books.
PEN Transmissions: Dissolving Sugar in Water: A Long Conversation with Solvej Balle – Danish writer, Solvej Balle, author of science fiction novels On the Calculation of Volumes I, II and III, talks “time, morality, and searching” with Will Forrester.
Sydney Review of Books: Critical/Mineral – “Much has been written about the pastoral as a theme in Australian literature. But what about the mines? Reviewing Verity Borthwick’s Hollow Air, Roslyn Jolly descends into the overlooked under-realm of Australian mining fiction.”
Outsideleft Magazine: Exploring the Sea Library 🦀– Michelle Williams interviews our very own Anna Iltnere of the Sea Library about her life, work and one very special place in Latvia.
Publishers Weekly: Amor Towles on Seicho Matsumoto – “The author of A Gentleman in Moscow discusses [with Elaine Aradillas] the author credited with popularizing detective fiction in Japan.”
Literary Ladies Guide: Classic Women Writers and Money – “What were the challenges pertaining to writing and money, especially in the case of [classic] women authors?” asks Nava Atlas. Here she examines “five […] women authors and their thoughts about money at various points in their careers,” including Louisa May Alcott, Edna Ferber, L.M. Montgomery, George Sand and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
1000 Libraries Magazine: How an Abandoned London Underground Station Became a Beloved Bookshop – Millie Ramm steps “into history at Osterley Bookshop: where Victorian commuters once stood and vintage books now whisper stories of London’s past.”
Asterisk Magazine: The Message in the Medium – “Middlemarch demanded extra effort from me as a reader”, says Alan Levinovitz. This is his “love story told in books.”
School of the Uncomformed: For the Love of Language: Unlocking Classic Literature with 217 Words 🎄– “Doubleplusgood vs. Dickens, A Christmas Carol reading guide, and free words”, from Ruth Gaskovski and Peco. (Not a new article but worth inclusion now Christmas is close, I feel).
The Guardian: ‘If I was American, I’d be worried about my country’: Margaret Atwood answers questions from Ai Weiwei, Rebecca Solnit and more – “Democracy, birds and hangover cures – famous fans put their questions to the visionary author”.
The Ink-Stained Desk: Why is Ann Radcliffe the Mother of Gothic Fiction? – “In the 1790s, when the Gothic novel was defining itself with dark castles and moonlit mysteries, one author reigned supreme: Ann Radcliffe.” She was, says C M Reid, “quite simply, a literary superstar.”
The Association of English Cathedrals: Lewis Carroll Correspondence Discovered in Lincoln Cathedral’s Archives. – “Archivists at Lincoln Cathedral have unearthed a letter and documents in their collections from author, Lewis Carroll that has direct links with his most famous creation, Alice in Wonderland.”
Asian Review of Books: “Women, Seated” by Zhang Yueran – In his review of Chinese writer Zhang Yueran’s Women, Seated, the latest translation of her work by “trusted collaborator” Jeremy Tiang, Angus Stewart tells us this work is “the story of nanny and housekeeper to the ultra-rich, Yu Ling, and Kuan Kuan, the boy in her care.”
Boston Review: The Claims of Close Reading – “Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.” Johanna Winant makes an argument for close reading.
A Mum with a Book: Book notes: Intimacies by Katie Kitamura – “Multiculturalism, objective vs subjective truth & types of violence. A beautiful multilayered novel.” This is Rebecca’s abbreviated description of Katie Kitamura’s 2022 novel, Intimacies – a story “so immersive and enjoyable that some of the ideas don’t actually sink in until you’re driving or clearing up, brain turned off.”
France 24: ‘People know so much more about Russian literature’: An author’s invitation to discover Ukraine – “A cultural event called Season of Ukraine – Journey to Ukraine: culture strikes back – running from December 2025 to March 2026 seeks to amplify the voices of Ukrainian artists by hosting 50 cultural events in multiple cities across France. FRANCE 24 spoke to Ukrainian author Andrei Kurkov on how Russia is battering Ukrainian culture and the need to create bridges with France through literature.”
Times Now: Crossword Book Awards 2025 Celebrate Shanta Gokhale Alongside Winners Sudha Murty, Prajakta Koli, Sadhguru and Manu S. Pillai – Girish Shukla reports: “The Crossword Book Awards 2025 shine a spotlight on Shanta Gokhale while recognising standout voices such as Sudha Murty, Prajakta Koli, Sadhguru and Manu S. Pillai. The ceremony highlights the range and impact of Indian writing today, celebrating storytellers who continue to shape conversations, culture and readers across the country.”
Deedi Reads: Guest Post: On a Dreary Night of November… – “Megan Tripp, who owns 35+ copies of Frankenstein, drops her thoughts on Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 film adaptation”.
Caught by the River: The Hidden Voices of Rural Working Women – “Alison Brackenbury’s Village and a re-issue of Mary Chamberlain’s classic Fenwomen give voice to an otherwise largely silent corner of England, writes Nicola Chester, telling the evocative, hard-lived stories of rural working-class women.”
Fictional Therapy: The best book publisher you never heard of 🎄 – It all started for Emma Hemingford on her 28th birthday with Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s 1947 thriller, The Blank Wall. Consequently, she wishes to inform everyone that “all 153 [Persephone] titles are perfect Christmas gifts (to yourself)”.
Washington Independent Review of Books: Secret Maps: Maps You Were Never Meant to See, from the Middle Ages to Today – In Secret Maps: Maps You Were Never Meant to See, from the Middle Ages to Today, Tom Harper, Nick Dykes and Magdalena Peszko describe “situations where maps are used to safeguard secrets”, says Tom Peebles.
Rain Taxi Review: Barley Patch – “Australian author Gerald Murnane isn’t known for sticking to convention,” says Sam Tiratto, “yet his recently republished 2009 novel [Barley Patch] addresses a quite conventional question: Why do writers write?”
Reactor: What Keeps You Reading? – “Lately, it feels like every time [Molly Templeton logs] on, there’s a new article or post bemoaning the state of reading.” However, “while some people aren’t reading” others are “reading a lot”, she says. “Not everything is darkness.”
The Phoenix: Hamid Ismailov and Shelley Fairweather-Vega on the Histories and Futures of Artificial Intelligence in Literature – Zephyr Weinreich reports on a discussion he had last month at Swarthmore College with novelist Hamid Ismailov and translator Shelley Fairweather-Vega on their recent collaborative work, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel.
University of Nottingham: University academic translates Norse saga to uncover Viking history of northern Scotland – “A Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham has led an ambitious new project and produced a fresh, annotated English translation of one of the most important medieval texts of northern Europe – The Saga of the Earls of Orkney (Orkneyinga Saga)”, edited by Judith Jesch, reveals Liz Goodwin.
LARB: A Power Built on Lies – Cory Oldweiler reviews Hungarian author Krisztina Tóth’s novel Eye of the Monkey (translated by Ottilie Mulzet), which “focuses on three people reckoning with traces of their past under a system determined to keep its citizens credulously and contentedly ensconced within its lies.” Could be one for Hungarian Lit Month 2026.
Fortnight: A reappraisal of William Wright’s The Brontës in Ireland or facts stranger than fiction, 1893 – “Approximately 2500 books worldwide have been published on the Brontës. But only one, The Brontës in Ireland or Facts Stranger than Fiction [first published in 1893] deals exclusively with the Irish part of the story”, says Uel Wright.
Miller’s Book Review: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Against the World – Joel J Miller reviews The War for Middle Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945 in which Joseph Loconte reveals how the catastrophe of World War II transformed the lives and literary imaginations of these two giants of fantasy fiction.
Artnet: How the World’s Oldest Library Survived an Empire’s Fall – “Pretty much everything we know about the Assyrian Empire comes from the colossal Library of Ashurbanipal”, says Tim Brinkhof.
Shelly’s Scribblings: Winter Holiday – Shelly Dennison rounds-off her series on revisiting favourite childhood books by “finding the North Pole with [author of the Swallows and Amazons series] Arthur Ransome”.
Foreword: Letters from an Imaginary Country – Michelle Anne Schingler writes: “Worlds are constructed from tender possibilities in [Hungarian-American author] Theodora Goss’s alluring, unforgettable [fantasy] short story collection Letters from an Imaginary Country.”
The Conversation: What Yiddish literature reveals about Canada’s diverse canon and multilingual identity – “Canadian literature cannot be defined solely by the language in which it is written”, says Regan Lipes. “Instead, it must be understood as a multilingual body of work shaped the diverse people who live here.”
China Daily: Under the spell of unbroken sentences – “Nobel laureate and Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s unique narrative fascinates Chinese scholars,” reports Yang Yang.
Independent Book Review: Book Review: The Thirty-Fifth Page – “Real history is imbued with a peculiar magic in this captivating novel set in the early days of the Bosnian war”, writes Shelby Zwintscher of Lya Badgley’s The Thirty-Fifth Page, which is a blend of historical fiction, literary thriller and magical realism.
Nick Hornby: Old notebooks – English writer, Nick Hornby, on the US literary critic, novelist and short story writer, Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights, “the birth of something or other” and a lifetime’s-worth of half-filled notebooks.
The Nation (via MSN): Luigi Pirandello’s Broken Men – “The Nobel Prize-winning writer was once seen as Italy’s great man of letters. Why was he forgotten?” asks Gus O’Connor.
Bmore Art: Book Review: Time’s Breath by Deborah Brown English – Jack Livingston describes Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in Words and Pictures – the story of a book discovered in a lighthouse off the Norwegian coast – as “rich with a joyful sense of weirdness”, not forgetting a “utopian rise and an inevitable fall from grace, [alongside] storykeepers, storytellers, mysterious lost languages [and] mythic creatures.”
EcoLit Books: Bloom Again, A Novel by Marybeth Holleman – JoeAnn Hart reviews Marybeth Holleman’s Bloom Again, “a beautifully written debut novel […], in which two women, an artist and a scientist, grapple with their lives in a warming world.”
Le Monde (via archive.today): Angoulême seeks an alternative to its ailing comics festival – “The central French town has launched an alternative project of cultural offerings, aiming to calm the discontent of local shopkeepers and service providers, who are seeing substantial economic returns evaporate”, says Frédéric Potet on the ‘cancellation’ of the International Comics Festival.
Loving Sylvia Path: A Very Plath-y Christmas 🎄– Emily Van Duyne describes her latest newsletter as “a gift guide for weirdos like [her]”, in which (among many other suggestions) she introduces fellow “Plathies” to “a handcrafted botanical perfume inspired by Sylvia Plath’s natal chart”, a “Plath hat” and “(any, all) books from Womb House Books.”
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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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