An end of week recap

“Mankind is a science that defies definitions.”
– Robert Burns (born 25^th January 1759)

It is, of course, Burns Night on 25th January, a celebration of the life and poetry of Robert Burns, when the Scottish nation comes together to honour its National Bard. Here in Wales, it is St Dwynwen’s Day tomorrow, a celebration similar to Valentine’s Day, when people express their love for one another by exchanging gifts and cards to mark the occasion. As if this isn’t enough excitement for one Sunday, it is A Room of One’s Own Day, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1928 essay A Room of One’s Own.

However, before we get carried away, we can first reflect on the lives of American novelist Mary Noailles Murfree (1850), American writer Edith Wharton (1862), Austrian writer Vicki Baum (1888) and Canadian novelist and journalist Lynn Coady (1970). Tomorrow is an especially good day on which to hold a birthday bash for the likes of Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759), English writer W. Somerset Maugham (1874), English writer and leading modernist Virginia Woolf (1882), Anglo-Irish novelist J. G. Farrell (1935), Turkish writer and poet Onat Kutlar (1936) and American novelist Gloria Naylor (1950).

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.

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.

* A Helluvalot of Happenings *

A few more reading events taking place in and around our book blogging community at present include the following: (1) The 2026 Great Canadian Reading Challenge at The Happy Reader, (2) the 2026 Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge at Carol’s Notebook, (3) and the 2026 Books in Translation Reading Challenge at Introverted Reader.

* Blogs from the Basement * 

Retrieved from our subterranean archive this week were two noteworthy posts: (1) This time last year, Annie Smith – the “academic librarian, velocireader, cat parent [and] increasingly pagan” host of A Bookish Type – turned her critical eye on The Watermark by Sam Mills, a “wild ride through historical fiction, science fiction, and literary fiction”, which she describes as “a battle of wills between characters and author for control of the narrative.” When central characters “Jaime and Rachel disappear into a book,” they cannot return to reality and there’s a distinct possibility “they might not survive the experience.” Some of the scrapes these two find themselves in are “more interesting to [Annie] than others”, while other parts of the novel are “absolutely gripping”. A little more “philosophical” than expected, she nevertheless refuses to find fault with the book for this reason. The pacing is a slightly different matter. Find out why at The Watermark, by Sam Mills. (2) As part of a series featuring interviews with authors of newly released or forthcoming books, Leslie Pietrzy of Work-in-Progress spoke last June with American writer Denise S. Robbins about her science fiction novel The Unmapping. Set in New York, Robbins explained that her dystopian tale centres on a “mysterious phenomenon” that “causes city streets and neighborhoods to entirely rearrange each day, leading to broken down power grids and other such chaos.” In the conversation, she offered Pietrzy insights into the novel’s development, reflected on the characters she most and least enjoyed creating, and discussed the many “highs and lows [on the] road to publication.” She also shared writing advice for the benefit of others, including what most surprised her during the process of penning the book. You can read the complete interview at TBR: The Unmapping by Denise S. Robbins. 

* 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 difficult to pick only one – in this instance, posted earlier in the month:

Photography-Embedded Fiction & Poetry 2025 – “For decades [Terry Pitts of Vertigo has] been intrigued by novels and books of poetry in which the authors include photographs as an essential element of their ‘text.’” He “found a number of newly published examples of such books by writers” from different parts of the world and shares on his blog an “extensive, ever-expanding bibliography of hundreds of titles which can be found” by following the Photo-Embedded Literature link at the top of each page. You can also check out the selection of titles Terry has included in this post, which vary from the hybrid collection Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis and the linguistic tour‑de‑force The Fake Muse by Max Besora to Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff’s fusion of books‑within‑books, Your Name Here. There are plenty of others, too.

* 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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Asterism: Novels & Novellas: A Captivating List – “Now winter is in full swing [here in the north], nothing is better than a page-turning novel for those cold, dark nights” – and Asterism Books “have a surplus of gripping novels and novellas to keep you up at night!” The book featured here is Austrian writer and feminist intellectual Else Jerusalem’s 1909 novel Red House Alley (complete, uncensored and translated into English by Stephanie Ortega) that, “for the first time, portrayed girls and women in the sex trade as human beings rather than predators or mindless victims.” It was banned by the Nazis.

The Telegraph (via Yahoo! Entertainment): Julian Barnes interview: ‘This is my last book’ – “In his new book, Departure(s), Julian Barnes writes that when he was younger, one of his rules was ‘write each book as if it will be your last’. The clue is in the title: he has now written it.” He talks to Mick Brown about cancer, career and continuing to write.

The Collector: The Life and Legacy of Natsume Sōseki, Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist – “A celebrated literary figure, Natsume Sōseki was widely credited for pioneering modern Japanese literature in the late 19^th and early 20^th century”, says Ching Yee Lim.

Asymptote: Niels Fredrik Dahl and “Reality Literature”: Writing to Become Visible to Yourself – Known sometimes as reality or witness literature, “in recent decades, books that are largely autobiographical but also explicitly include fictional elements have become a very popular genre in Scandinavia.” Linnea Gradin explains why.

University of Cambridge: The hermit’s best-seller – “The only surviving original version of one of late medieval England’s most popular works of literature reveals its secrets”, writes Tom Almeroth-Williams.

Variety: ‘Noise’ Director Natalia Beristain to Direct Adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Use of Photography’ for Woo Films – Rafa Sales Ross reveals: “The leading Latin American production house has acquired exclusive rights to Nobel Prize laureate Annie Ernaux’s career-defining”, The Use of Photography.

Literary Ladies Guide: Colette, the Fascinating & Passionate French Author – As “famous for her writing as for her tempestuous (sometimes scandalous) love life in the course of her prolific career”, the French author Colette is a “wonderful writer to discover (or rediscover)”, says Nava Atlas.

The Observer: Richard Flanagan: ‘Who do we love? How do we live? These questions haunt us’ – “The novelist on how a false medical alarm inspired the search for answers in his prize-winning book Question 7”. See what he had to say about this unique memoir when he spoke to Tim Adams at the recent Jaipur Literature Festival.

WBUR: Two intriguing novels to add to your winter reading list – Carol Iaciofano Aucoin recommends “Karen Winn’s multilayered The Society [that] goes behind the ornate doors of a fictional secret society in Boston” and “Jenna Blum’s darkly witty Murder Your Darlings,” which “delves into another kind of exclusive club: that of bestselling authors.”

discussionguide: 100+ Iranian Book Recommendations – “How can you read in a time of unrest?” asks Olivia. Her answer: “Once you go Persian, there’s no other version.” The novel featured here is Then the Fish Swallowed Him, a powerful and harrowing psychological portrait of modern Iran by the critically-acclaimed Iranian author, Amir Ahmadi Arian.

N+1: You Are Who Eats You – “A Katherine Dunn oeuvre does, in fact, exist”, claims Justin Taylor of the American writer, radio personality and poet, author of the 1989 horror fantasy novel, Geek Love.

What to Read Now: What to Read New – To the Edge of the World: A Perilous Storm, a Mutinous Crew and the Woman Who Defied Them All by American-Canadian writer and historian Tilar J. Mazzeo had Caroline Sanderson “hooked from the opening page.” She could “all but feel the force of the sea spray and hear the howling gales as [she] read” this true-life epic about “19-year-old Mary Ann Patten” and “a race around Cape Horn to deliver supplies to the California Gold Rush.”

The History Press: Love eternal: a Scottish folklore love story – “Stories are important,” says Tom Muir, author of Scottish Folk Tales of Love (illustrated by Hester Aspland). Moreover, “folk tales echo the hopes and dreams of generations long lost in the mists of time” and they “will echo on, into the future, for as long as people will fall in love.” He invites you to read a short “love story extracted from” his latest collection of folkloric tales.

McNally Editions: A Master Raconteur – “Biographer and historian Peter Parker discusses his thirty-year friendship with Francis King, the author of [newly reissued] A Domestic Animal.” We are told that “Lucy Scholes sat down with [Parker] at his home in London to ask about [this] witty, heartbreaking tale of unrequited love between a middle-aged writer and his attractive but manipulative younger lodger.” It was “originally published in 1970, only three years after the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK [and is] King’s most intimate and daringly autobiographical work.”

Brittle Paper: A Feminist Dictionary of Mothering | Review of Grace by Chika Unigwe – Nigerian-born Igbo novelist, “Chika Unigwe’s novel titled Grace is about a midwife named Grace. And yes, her name hovers uncomfortably close to the word disgrace because the novel is about how easily grace slips into disgrace when women are judged by impossible standards”, writes Ainehi Edoro.

Cultured (via Archive Today): 6 Small Press Editors Explain Why the Hottest New Thing in Lit Is Out-of-Print Books – “As mainstream publishing spirals into sameness, a new wave of reissue presses is resurrecting the strange, the feral, and the intoxicating.” People, says Emmeline Clein “have been bemoaning the state of publishing for decades.” However, “readers’ appetite for the out-of-print tomes small presses” suggest that our brains might not be in quite as dire straits as the op-ed pages insist.”

Faber: New Books Preview: January to March 2026 – “There’s something for everyone who has made reading a New Year’s resolution, with more than fifty titles across fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and children’s books.”

The Hedgehog: The Tighter Weave – Brian Patrick Eha on “editing and not editing”.

Canadian Writers Abroad: The Sea, the Sea – Vancouverite Anne Hawk’s debut novel, The Pages of the Sea, set in the 1960s Caribbean, “is rich in detail” and an important “addition to the stories of the Windrush Generation”.

Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society: Locked out of the library – Their “books and scholarly papers were welcomed by the University Library even though they were not”, writes Ann Kennedy Smith in her excellent piece about an “1891 petition, and the 24 extraordinary women who signed it”.

The Dial: Iran’s Ultimate Banned Book – “The Blind Owl remains essential reading for understanding the country,” says Amir Ahmadi Arian of Sadegh Hedayat’s classic 1937 horror novel.

Women Writing the World: Bulgaria: The Magic Mother – In her latest piece about books by women from all parts of the world, Canadian author Lilian Nattel looks at Bulgarian folk tales and Everything Happens as It Does (translated by Olga Nikolova), Albena Stambolova’s “weird novel”, which she describes as “like an old fairy tale with mysterious wanderings.”

Chicago Review of Books: An Infectious Fungus Invades the Mind in Simón López Trujillo’s “Pedro the Vast” – Ashley Thompson tells us the Chilean writer, Simón López Trujillo’s novel, Pedro the Vast (translated by Robin Myers), takes readers “on an expansive journey as a deadly fungus forever changes the lives of Pedro and his family in an imaginative and mesmerizing sci-fi novel that ventures into environmental horror territory.”

Girls on the Page: An interview with Makenna Goodman – An interview with the American author Makenna Goodman about her latest novel, Helen of Nowhere, in which “the possibility of a new beginning quickly transforms into an unexpected encounter when a disgraced professor finds himself communing with the former owner of the country house he’s interested in buying.”

BBC Scotland South: Could visiting book lovers boost our towns’ high streets? – The Scottish region of “Dumfries and Galloway frequently celebrates its literary heritage, but can it translate into economic benefit for its rural communities?” wonders Molly Armstrong. “Incoming chief executive of Wigtown Book Festival, Isla Rosser‑Owen,” says the “region has a vast amount of literary heritage” and she “has lots of ideas for the future.”

Books of Titans: Tools of Titans to Books of Titans – “How a self-help rabbit hole led to a multi-decade odyssey”. Erik Rostad charts the beginnings of his Books of Titans reading project, which “started with a single book and a wild plan.”

Ancillary Review of Books: The SFF Librarian Reviews: January 2026 – “As a voracious reader, and as someone for whom science fiction and fantasy are part of [his] daily job as a science fiction librarian, [Jeremy Brett comes] across a lot of wonderful work in these genres. [He loves] bringing to the attention of interested readers books and authors that bring [him] joy, some of which may have slipped below people’s radar, and [he does] so as often as [he] can in The SFF Librarian Reviews series for ARB.”

LARB: The Kingdom in His Head – “Aran Ward Sell reconsiders the legacy and complex overlapping ‘failures’ of Mervyn Peake’s final novel, Titus Alone.”

The Irish Times (via Archive Today): The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin and the end of Russia’s democratic dream – Conor O’Clery writes: “Mikhail Fishman’s biography [The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin and the Decline of Modern Russia, translated by Michele A. Berdy,] tells the story of Boris Nemtsov, whose life and death illuminate Putin’s rise”.

Pens and Poison: The Rise of the Soulless Novel – In her latest feature essay, Liza Libes argues that “MFA programs have colluded with the publishing industry to strip literature of character, personality, and soul”.

AP News: Min Jin Lee’s ‘Pachinko’ follow-up, ‘American Hagwon,’ will explore Korean education obsession – American Hagwon, “Min Jin Lee’s first novel since her million-selling Pachinko is a long book that grew out of a basic question: What do Koreans care most about?” reports Hillel Italie.

Dispatches from the Rare Book Trade: Why Book Photos Look So Weird (with one easy fix) – “Taking decent book photos is harder than it seems”, says Scott Brown. “Fortunately, [he knows] an easy fix that will make [them look] much better”.

WIRED (via Archive Today): You’ve Never Heard of China’s Greatest Sci-Fi Novel – “Millions of words. Thousands of authors. The Morning Star of Lingao is barely known outside China—but it contains the secret to the country’s modernization and malaise.”

The University of Queensland: World-leading literature database celebrates 25 years – “A dynamic literary database managed by The University of Queensland is celebrating 25 years of preserving Australian literature” throughout 2026.

Aeon: Computers can’t surprise – English author Richard Beard argues that “as AI’s endless clichés continue to encroach on human art, the true uniqueness of our creativity is becoming ever clearer”.

Air Mail (via Archive Today): “The Holy Grail of Shipwrecks” – “A new book charts one man’s decades-long search for the lost Spanish galleon featured in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in a Time of Cholera”. Read an excerpt from Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire by Julian Sancton.

FanFiAddict: Review: Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker – George Dunn reviews Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic, a “high-concept and reality-warping” horror novel intertwined with Japanese mythology in which two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.

Four Woolfs in one:
Bleeding Cool: Virginia Woolf: The Graphic Novel by Liuba Gabriele, Now In Print – “Mad Cave Studios is to publish the first-ever print edition of Virginia Woolf, the acclaimed Comixology original graphic novel by Liuba Gabriele,” says Rich Johnston. “Adapted from the Italian […], this book explores Woolf’s creative brilliance and her passionate, complicated relationship with Vita Sackville-West.”
Raids on the Underworld: “The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.” – In this evocative piece, Richard Gwyn, a writer and translator from Wales, “[walks] the hills with Virginia Woolf”.
BBC News: Flats to block sea view made famous by Woolf novel – “Lovers of Virginia Woolf’s novels have expressed anger about a development which will block a sea view from her former holiday home”, reports Lisa Young.
LitStack: “Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway” by Robin Black is Personal – Nan Cuba reviews “Robin Black’s highly personal nonfiction title Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway,” a book that has been of immense importance in her life.

The Dispatch: Plain ‘Literacy’ Isn’t Enough – “The ability to read road signs and labels does nothing to connect us with others”, warns Peter Biles.

Counter Craft: Don’t Draft Shakespeare into Your Genre Wars – “Plus”, says Lincoln Michel, “asshole autofiction and a history book recommendation to understand the chaos of the news”.

The Hollywood Reporter: Heavy Is the Crown: George R.R. Martin on His Triumphs and Torments – “At the height of his reign, the ‘Game of Thrones’ author gets candid [with James Hibberd]  about his efforts to rule his expanding media empire, his buzzy new show ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,’ and the long-delayed saga he’s still determined to finish — if he can.”

USA Today: Porn at the library? Writer turned wild, real sightings into a book – Canadian author Emily R. Austin’s new novel centres on a librarian returning to work after a mental health crisis, only to find herself confronting a wave of book‑banning zealots. What unfolds is a fierce yet tender exploration of grief, love and the quiet, radical power of libraries. Is This a Cry for Help? is as much about embracing life as a gay woman as it is about resisting censorship. Here, the author – and former librarian – tells Clare Mulroy why she sees the library as “a metaphor for the human condition”.

Smithsonian Magazine: A Cat Left Paw Prints on the Pages of This Medieval Manuscript When the Ink Was Drying 500 Years Ago – “An exhibition called ‘Paws on Parchment’ tracks how cats were depicted in the Middle Ages through texts and artworks from around the world—including one example of a 15th-century ‘keyboard cat’”, reports Christian Thorsberg.

JetPens: The 47 Best Pens for 2026: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens – “It’s almost impossible to pick a single best pen for everyone, because not everyone wants the same thing”, says Connie. With this in mind, she has organised them by category and “linked to more detailed guides so you can learn about competing pens.”

Life with Books: “A safe place where people were nice to each other”: books written as a refuge from the world – “The comfort of literary utopias, from Rivendell to Moominvalley”. Lucy Fuggle seeks and finds sanctuary in 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.

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

Categories: Winding Up the Week

Tags: A Room of One’s Own Day, Amir Ahmadi Arian, Anne Hawk, Burns Night, Denise S. Robbins, Else Jerusalem, Helen DeWitt, Ilya Gridneff, Iranian Literature, Kylie Lee Baker, Mervyn Peake, Modernist Literature, Persian Literature, Photo Embedded Literature, Robert Burns, Sam Mills, St Dwynwen’s Day, Virginia Woolf