A mini, mid-festive, end of week recap

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
– Edith Lovejoy Pierce

As we edge toward the new year, I should like to send you on your merry way with a small selection of literary snippets to keep you amused, immersed and entertained during those rare moments of serenity.

Today we can sing a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ to Irish poet and mother of Oscar Wilde, Jane Wilde (1821), German screenwriter, novelist, film director and actress, Thea Von Harbou (1888), American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature, L. Sprague de Camp (1907) and American writer, James Agee (1909). Sunday’s celebrants include English poet, painter and printmaker, William Blake (1757), American novelist, Catharine Sedgwick (1789), English author, critic, biographer and father of Virginia Woolf, Leslie Stephen (1832), South African poet and writer, C Louis Leipoldt (1880), English novelist, biographer and journalist, Nancy Mitford (1904), American author, Charles Portis (1933), American feminist writer, Rita Mae Brown (1944), English author, Sarah Perry (1979) and English crime writer and TV presenter, Richard Osman (1970).

Also, Kwanzaa, a week-long, secular celebration of pan-African culture and heritage is taking place from 26^th December to 1^st January 2026.

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.

Whether you’re partying into the early hours or quietly reading a book, I should like to wish you a safe and pleasurable New Year’s Eve. See you in ’26! 🎉

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.

* 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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LARB: Has English Killed Global Literature? – “Speaking in Tongues is a reminder […] of the paradox of language—its drive and damage, the life it brings and the death it causes. [It questions if it is possible] to love the language fate has consigned you, while also acknowledging its destructive tendencies”. Chloe Garcia Roberts ponders J. M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos’s new book on translation.

A Good Hard Stare: Runaround Sue – “She wanted to be a major novelist. If that didn’t work out, she wanted to be Eliot or Matthew Arnold”. Henry Begler on the “life and afterlife of Susan Sontag”.

iNews: The nine most overrated books of 2025 (including the Booker winner) – “From Zadie Smith’s inconsistent collection of essays to Ocean Vuong’s clunky novel, the literary world hasn’t been without its duds this year”. Max Liu has some fun with his list of “nine books from this year that under-delivered”. Do you agree with his choices?

Liberties: Kafka Inc. – Franz Kafka is buried in Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery, close to where Jared Marcel Pollen lives – he often takes walks there in the evening. There are reminders of the writer all over the city in the form of monuments, plaques, street names and such but he would almost certainly have hated the industry that has sprung up around his name.

BBC Culture: The Salt Path and 2025’s most scandalous books – “In 2025, personal stories proved popular and powerful”, says Clare Thorp, “but several controversies raised questions about the future of the memoir genre.”

Contemporary Japanese Literature: At the Edge of the Woods – Masatsugu Ono’s psychological horror tale, At the Edge of the Woods, is a novella “about dread and anxiety”, says Kathryn Hemmann. “There’s no plot, nor is there any sort of story”, rather “episodes in the life of a father left alone with his young son while his wife is away” and in which characters “drift in and out of the narrative”. Personally, she loved the book but cautions readers it is “difficult” and may “not [be] for everyone.”

The Broken Compass: The writer’s bookshelf: Sarah Gristwood 🩷 – This week, Mathew Lyons’ eight questions about writers, books and reading go to Sarah Gristwood, a “best-selling historian and biographer” whose most recent book is Celebrating Women: Women Writing on Women: Family, Friends, Feminism and Fun (the proceeds of which “go to the charity Prevent Breast Cancer”).

Chicago Review of Books: The Power of Storytelling Preserves Memories in Nadia Davids’s “Cape Fever” – Ashley Thompson reviews Cape Fever, South African author Nadia Davids’s new historical novel cum “chilling psychological thriller” set in the 1920s and “exploring colonial legacies through the lives of two women, breathlessly bound to each other, and the power of storytelling to preserve memories beyond death.” Critics are making comparisons with Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier. 

Instead of Doomscrolling: Book to Film Adaptations You Should Watch Instead of Doomscrolling – “Some [rather good] recommendations from [Mapu’s] recent reading and watching”.

Qantara.de: The last bastion of beauty – “Yemen’s cultural scene has been hard hit by years of war but not completely silenced. While many writers and intellectuals have left the country, the small literary club Alamaqah remains active, a testament to the resilience of Yemeni culture”, finds Rehab Eldin Elhawary.

Do Some Damage: Japan’s God of Mystery – Scott Adlerberg tells us about Japanese mystery writer Soji Shimada, “one of the foremost proponents and writers of ‘Shin Honkaku’”, a “playful, highly entertaining” subgenre of the honkaku style of Japanese mystery fiction.

Hazlitt: ‘I Think Most People Feel Haunted’: An Interview with Sara Peters – “The author of Mother of God discusses the limitations of realism, Frank Bidart, and the anguished duality of shame”, writes Larissa Diakiw.

Good River Review: Coaxing Narrative from History – Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction “is largely a compilation of previously published essays in which [Andrea] Barrett describes her process of research and writing and dissects the work of other writers of historical fiction”, says Amanda A. Gibson. She “demonstrates how history can be curated, manipulated, and augmented to create a robust narrative—all in the service of story.”

The Duck-Billed Reader: What to Read After You Finish All Six Jane Austen Novels – Claire Laporte suggests “some satisfying marriage-plot novels for those who have run out of Austen novels to read and are feeling the post-250^th hangover”.

Assonanze:  A Prophetic Book – Written in 1943, Vengeance is Mine by Austrian author Friedrich Torberg “is considered the first story about the Holocaust.” Alessandro Garavaglia examines “notable elements of the book” (translated by Stephanie Ortega), which will be published in English next year.

The Library of Lewis and Tolkien: The Hidden Link between Middle-earth and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” – “Would it surprise you to learn that The Lord of the Rings and the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” are cousins? And not only [TLOTR but] the whole of Tolkien’s Middle-earth fiction […].”

Chytomo: The best Ukrainian prose: Chytomo Picks 2025 – Earlier this week in Kyiv (and for the first time), “literary critics announced the best Ukrainian prose books of 2025, both fiction and autofiction”, selecting a list of “12 outstanding works of contemporary fiction and auto-documentary prose” published during 2025.

The Federal: Vinod Kumar Shukla obit: A writer who illuminated ordinariness of the ordinary – Mayank Jain Parichha writes: “Little read for decades, Hindi writer-poet Vinod Kumar Shukla (1937-2025) wrote spare, gentle prose about ordinary lives. In his last years, readers finally discovered a writer whose work feels like a slow retreat.”

BBC News: 12 books you need to read in 2026 – “With 2026 nearly upon us, [Emma Saunders invites you to] join [her] for an eclectic taste of a few literary delights worth feasting upon over the next 12 months.” The book featured is Land, the forthcoming historical novel by Northern Irish novelist and memoirist Maggie O’Farrell.

Jonathan Crain: Ashes and Archives: Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book” – Jonathan shares his thoughts on Susan Orlean’s 2018 book-about-books, The Library Book – a sort of “investigation into the 1986 fire that ravaged the Los Angeles Central Library.” He describes it as “not a true crime book in the conventional sense, nor is it a straightforward institutional history [but] a hybrid work that trusts readers to follow it across disciplines and decades.”

Daily Maverick: A Beach Bag Full of Books — Reading for rest, reflection and a little quiet joy at year’s end – Joy Watson “shares her book recommendations for the end-of-year season” with readers of the South African publication, Daily Maverick.

The Decade Project: Solaris—Stanislaw Lem – Professor emeritus of philosophy, Robert Boyd Skipper shares his reflections on Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s 1961 science fiction classic, Solaris, which he “reluctantly” places in the “Western canon, albeit as a rather shabby guest.”

Historical Novel Society: Researching the Regency period? – “Regency novels are popular enough that if you search for “regency” in the HNS website, you’ll retrieve 800-plus hits”, says B.J. Sedlock. “There are likely fans of the period who […] could use help with their research, so [she has] made a list of places to start.”

The Observer: Elizabeth Kolbert’s alarm call – “The wry and lucid essays of Life on a Little-Known Planet document the parlous state of the environment – and the visionaries seeking to save it”, says Kathleen Jamie of the latest book by one of our most important and influential environmental writers.

Contingent Magazine: 2025 Contingent Book List – “As few historians make any significant money on their writing, just knowing that people have read their books can mean a lot to an author. Here are some books released in 2025 by historians working off the tenure track that you might consider as you do your end-of-the-year shopping.” The featured book is Liz Fischer’s (slim but somewhat expensive) exploration of what the future holds for book history: Network Analysis for Book Historians: Digital Labour and Data Visualization Techniques.

Andrew Doyle: Tim Curry: A life of contradictions – Irish playwright, journalist and political satirist, Andrew Doyle on the iconic British actor Tim Curry’s new memoir, Vagabond, in which, he says, “one of the most distinctive actors of his generation reflects on a protean life and career.”

The Common: Review: Stories From the Edge of the Sea – In his latest short fiction collection Stories from the Edge of the Sea, Andrew Lam explores love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California. “The settings are complex”, says Olga Zilberbourg, and the “emotional effects of these fourteen stories are layered; [leaving us] with no easy truths, but push us away from stable shores into the stormy seas of human experience.”

EADaily: In Russia, a science fiction novel first published back in the 90s is being withdrawn from sale – “The novel The Left Hand of Darkness by the American writer, classic of science fiction and fantasy Ursula Le Guin began to be withdrawn from sale in Russian bookstores.” 

Whatever Works: Doing enough with your brain: intelligent magazine articles as a research pathway – Or, writes English author Naomi Alderman in her amusing piece on reading more than one article a week: “how to be actually well-educated, a continued roast of some AI writing [and] advice about how to wander forever in the world of human thinking”.

The Critic: Spare me your “Books of the Year” – “Or, how to come across as a person of taste and refinement in the annual back-slapping fest”. The Secret Author has suggestions for “galvanising books pages at a time when they are mostly packed out with celebrity filler.”

EveryWriter: When Edgar Allan Poe Fails the AI Detector – “If we’re going to reject anyone who scores above 20% as definitively using AI, we better be prepared to reject some of the greatest writers in the English language”, says Richard Everywriter (his pen name in case you were wondering). He conducts a test to show “why these tools are destroying writers’ credibility.”

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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: Andrea Barrett, Edith Lovejoy Pierce, J. M. Coetzee, Kwanzaa, Liz Fischer, Maggie O’Farrell, Mariana Dimópulos, Sarah Gristwood