An end of week recap
“Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.”
– Sara Raasch
Today feels like an ideal opportunity to get cosy with a book, as people around the world mark National Hot Chocolate Day by indulging in generous mugs of warm milk and rich cocoa. Tomorrow brings National Dark Chocolate Day – the perfect excuse for readers everywhere to snap off a square (or three) of that rich, sophisticated treat that somehow manages to be both naughty and good for you. Sunday is also Robinson Crusoe Day, when readers tip their literary hats to Daniel Defoe’s castaway hero and mark the anniversary of Alexander Selkirk’s rescue – the Scottish sailor whose real‑life survival tale became the blueprint for the novel. Add to this list Haiku Writing Month, National Library Lover’s Month and the National African‑American Read‑In, and February is shaping up to be a homage‑heavy few weeks – inviting us to sip, nibble, revel and read our way through winter (or summer) with gusto. 🍫
Among today’s birthday celebrants are British–Italian explorer and travel writer Freya Stark (1893), American novelist and critic Robert Cantwell (1908), American writer Norman Mailer (1923), German short‑story writer, novelist, essayist and poet Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1901), American writer John O’Hara (1905), Canadian poet and scholar Di Brandt (1952) and American detective‑fiction author Laura Lippman (1959). Sunday’s selection includes Austrian novelist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874), English romantic novelist Denise Robins (1897), American poet and novelist Langston Hughes (1901), Scottish novelist, short‑story writer, poet and essayist Muriel Spark (1918), Indonesian poet and writer Subagio Sastrowardoyo (1924), Czech diarist Petr Ginz (1928), American poet and writer Reynolds Price (1933) and Luxembourgish writer Georges Hausemer (1957).
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.
* Blogs from the Basement *
Last September, the Canadian “full‑time teacher, part‑time poet” and host of lowercase reviews shared his thoughts on Mathias Énard’s The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild (translated from the French by Frank Wynne) – which he describes as a “wild ride” of a novel set in the French countryside. He was “immediately immersed” in this humorous, “flailing academic” type tale of David Mazon, an anthropology student embarking “on writing a thesis about a small town in France”. We follow the young scholar’s ventures via his “informal” journal, in which he reveals, over a series of “compelling” storylines, and “as a matter of course”, that reincarnation is real. I recommend reading the complete review at The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild by Mathias Énard to discover why this “heteroglossaic” book, which “revels in excess”, is “somewhat like The Decameron or perhaps more appropriately 120 Days of Sodom”.
* 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 in the last couple of weeks:
Life in Spite of Everything-Tales from the Ukrainian East by Victoria Donovan. – Multilingual Mandy Wight, from the Peak District – an upland area in central‑northern England – recently shared her thoughts on Victoria Donovan’s Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East. Donovan, a Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews, offers a non‑fiction, “collaborative book written in consultation with […] Ukrainians who [know] the Donbas and its history like the back of their hands”. Prompted to action by “anger and distress” at “the full-scale invasion” by Russia in 2022, she has a “keen visual eye”, not merely for “the natural landscape that she portrays so vividly, but also the man-made spaces and their significance through time and political change.” After reading this “hugely” enjoyable book, Mandy feels she has a much “deeper understanding” of the region and hopes, like so many of us, for peace in the country. Please head over to peakreads to read her full and detailed review.
* 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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China Books Review: New China Books: Resolute Reading – “Resolving to read more in 2026?” The editors of New China Books say they “have you covered with five recommendations, from an essay [and poetry] collection of Tibet [Ocean, as Much as Rain: Stories, Lyrical Prose, and Poems from Tibet – pictured here] to a colloquial history of China’s hot-button issues.”
The Paris Review: Love Letters from Lord Byron’s Boyfriend – Arden Hegele, author of Romantic Autopsy: Literary Form and Medical Reading, writes: “Lord Byron’s bisexuality is well known—but Byron’s archive still has the power to surprise us with new evidence about this part of his private life. Here are the first full English translations of eight letters written to Byron by his boyfriend Nicolas Giraud, with whom Byron had a not-so-secret relationship in Athens in 1810”.
The Seaboard Review of Books:🫎 On Hammet Shore by Shelagh Meagher – Well-known Nova Scotian book blogger Naomi MacKinnon of Consumed by Ink (not to mention, “the happy duck behind The Happy Duck Bookshop & Readery” in Truro), reviews On Hammet Shore, Shelagh Meagher’s “thought-provoking, haunting, and compelling novel about the end of life, […] living, loving , and the big what-ifs.”
History Today: Olga Tokarczuk and the Edge of Poland – “Confronted by a confusing and complex national history, Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk decided to embrace myth rather than debunk it.” Alexander Lee with the latest in the series of Portrait of the Author as a Historian.
The Broken Compass: Review: On Pedantry by Arnoud S.Q. Visser – Mathew Lyons ponders On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All – a “delightful history of intellectual caricature and disparagement”.
Literary Hub: The Ancient Myths and Medieval Legends of the Vast Russian Forest – In this excerpt from The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires, Sophie Pinkham, professor of comparative literature at Cornell University, “explores the history of folklore, empire and trade in Siberia”.
Liberties: Monster of the Enlightenment – Elena Kagan argues that del Toro’s recent adaptation of Frankenstein does not rise to Mary Shelley’s “gnarled, philosophical exploration of human nature.”
CrimeReads: Adriane Leigh on Why We Are Living in the Age of the Unreliable Narrator – Best-selling writer Adriane Leigh explores “how social media rewrote the story of the self in fiction and nonfiction alike”.
The Conversation: Come Down to a Lower Place – a Lovecraftian Korean tale about the oppression of female workers and their bodies – “Born from the misogynistic and racist imaginings of HP Lovecraft, a new Korean monster fuelled by feminine rage counters this legacy” says Debra Benita Shaw in her piece on Seoyoung Yi’s novella, Come Down To A Lower Place (translated by Janet Hong) – “part of the Lovecraft Reanimated project by UK-based publisher Honford Star, in which leading Korean speculative fiction writers reimagine the works of Lovecraft.”
Church Times: Book review: The Path of Light: Walking to Auschwitz by Anthony Seldon – British contemporary historian and political biographer Sir Anthony Seldon set out to walk a new 1,300 km route “from Kilometre Zero, where the Great War’s trenches ended at the Swiss border, across Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland, to Auschwitz.” Philip Welsh reviews Path of Life, his account of this “walk to reflect on the Holocaust”.
MediaPolicy.ca: 🫎 Of books, sovereignty and morons. A review of Stursberg’s ‘Lament for a Literature’ – Howard Law examines Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of Canadian Book Publishing, “Richard Stursberg’s history and policy statement on Canadian book publishing”.
Australian Arts Revue: 🦘 Tyree Barnette: Stolen Man on Stolen Land – “Tyree Barnette’s Stolen Man on Stolen Land is an incisive and unique examination of race in Australia, through the eyes of an African American migrant.”
Publishers Weekly: 6 Stories of Women on the Edge That Inspired Rachel Taff’s New Thriller – Rachel Taff, the American author of Paper Cut, “a propulsive thriller about bestselling writer Lucy Golden, who became famous as a teenager for escaping a murderous California cult and killing its leader”, finds herself “drawn to books about women traversing systems designed to consume them”. Here she shares some of her favourites.
The Nation (via Archive Today): The Strange Story of the Famed Anti-Fascist Lament “First They Came…” – “In his celebrated mea culpa, the German pastor Martin Niemöller blamed his failure to speak out against the Nazis on indifference. Was that the whole reason?” asks Barry Yourgrau.
Books of Titans: Hard to Classify – “One reason [Erik Rostad loves] visiting bookstores is to see how they organize their wares”, but as we all know, some books are simply too difficult to classify. The answer to this problem, he feels, may be the “catch-all bookshelf”.
Words Without Borders: “Redoubled Fire”: Fear and Love in Brenda Lozano’s Mothers – “In [Mexican writer] Brenda Lozano’s latest novel, mothers have the unrelenting force of the ocean,” writes critic Esther King.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (via Archive Today): Is ‘Literary Fiction’ Just Another Genre Now? – In Lee Konstantinou opinion, “there is no real middlebrow anymore.” The problem, he believes, “is that many authors and critics remain attached to a zombified conception of ‘the literary’ as a normative category in a more or less completely commercialized literary landscape.”
The Gay & Lesbian Review: Boy Loses Boy – “Nothing conveys the brutality and loss of war more than a child’s perspective”, writes Monica Carter. “Sam Wachman’s The Sunflower Boys captures the enduring nature of love and forgiveness in the face of abysmal grief, along with the confusion and fear of war. The book is a present-day novel of coming-of-age for two Ukrainian boys in love who survive trauma and never give up searching for each other.”
The Fairy Tale Magazine: Review by Kelly Jarvis: Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk by Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman – Writer Kelly Jarvis describes Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk as “a beautifully illustrated encyclopaedia of fairy lore that belongs on every library shelf.” Her review highlights the book’s rich exploration of the myths and history behind these mythical or legendary beings.
Jewish Review of Books: Missing Anne Frank – “What we remember when we remember Anne Frank” – Josh Tolle reviews The Many Lives of Anne Frank by Ruth Franklin and When You Listen to This Song: On Memory, Loss, and Writing by Lola Lafon (translated by Lauren Elkin). He finds that he “[misses] the Jewishness of Anne Frank.”
The Pennsylvania Gazette: Historian of the “Taken-for-Granted” – “Whether probing the concept of common sense, mulling the role of expertise in a democracy, or examining how choice intersects with freedom, Sophia Rosenfeld is carving out new realms of cultural and intellectual history.” Julia M. Klein talks to Walter H. Annenberg, Professor of History at Pennsylvania about her upbringing, influences, career and The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.
The Sunday Times (via Archive Today): Could new book Two Women Living Together change how we see midlife? – “A hit memoir by Hwang Sunwoo and Kim Hana, two South Korean single friends who decided to buy an apartment together, is to be published here.” Hattie Crisell talks to them about Two Women Living Together (translated by Gene Png).
Reactor: Your To-Be-Read Pile Might Be Lying to You – “If your TBR stack seems overwhelming, you may want to look again…” suggests Molly Templeton.
The Common: The Art of Unsettling: The Complexities of Freedom and Fidelity in Edy Poppy’s Anatomy. Monotony. – Britta Stromeyer reviews Edy Poppy’s “award-winning and spicy debut novel” Anatomy. Monotony. (translated from the Norwegian by May-Brit Akerholt), which invites the reader to explore “the author’s experiences in an open marriage, the evolving sense of place as a search for identity, and the adventure and challenges inherent in the act of writing itself”.
Africa is a Country: Empire’s middlemen – “From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath”, writes A.K. Kaiza as an introduction to this adaption from Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State.
ABC News: 🦘 Why Alice Springs has become one of Australia’s most prolific literary towns – With many local authors, Alice Springs is no longer just a setting for stories by writers from elsewhere. According to Matthew Qvortrup, it is becoming one of Australia’s most distinctive literary centres with homegrown talent inspired by the Red Centre’s landscape.
Reactor: The Omnipotent Eye Versus the Neighborhood: James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State – As part of the Seeds of a Story series in which Ruthanna Emrys “explores the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction.” Here she discusses a foundational text for 21st-century social science fiction: James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State.
The Art Newspaper: New book tells the tale of David’s ‘Death of Marat’ through the eyes of a lifelong admirer – “What can a deep reading of a specific work of art reveal? In the right hands, one specific book, painting or film can unfold and display multitudes, giving readers an expert sense of what went into making this work of art while also drawing unexpected connections between seemingly disparate threads of history and philosophy.” Tobias Carroll on Thomas Crow’s “dissection of famous work”, Murder in the Rue Marat: A Case of Art in Revolution.
The Guardian: Val McDermid was assigned ‘sensitivity reader’ to cut offensive language from old books – The Scottish crime fiction author speaks to Nadeem Badshah about “changes [she was forced to make to her] Lindsay Gordon novels from 80s and 90s to prepare for their rerelease”.
Gathering Light: Never No More by Maura Laverty (1942) – Never No More, a “coming-of-age novel set in 1920s rural Ireland” by Maura Laverty (1907–1966) – who was also known for her work on the 1960s Irish television drama serial Tolka Row – is, says Dominika, a “perfect book” she wishes “everyone would read” for, among much else, its wisdom on “human nature” and its down‑to‑earth‑ness. Its sequel, No More than Human, is “equally as good”, and you cannot “read one without the other.”
NiCHE: 🫎 Review of Adcock, A Cold Colonialism – “What did it mean to be an expert on the North in the twentieth century? For settler Canadians defining northern territories, this depended on membership in a ‘community of interest’ of like-minded southern explorers. Using a vast array of archival and newspaper sources, Tina Adcock uncovers modern exploration in the North and its complicity in establishing settler colonial power in Indigenous homelands.” Lianne C. Leddy reviews A Cold Colonialism: Modern Exploration and the Canadian North.
Experimental History: Text is king – Contrary to the “hot new theory online […] that reading is kaput,” Adam Mastroianni is sceptical and argues that “stories about the end of reading tend to leave out some inconvenient data points.”
Traveling in Books: Book Review: She Made Herself a Monster – “Set in the Bulgarian village of Koprivici in the nineteenth century, She Made Herself a Monster is the story of three young people” – one of whom is “a fraudulent vampire hunter”. This Gothic tale written by Anna Kovatcheva, “inspired by “Slavic folklore”, is, says Kim, “a brilliant debut novel” and its creator “does more [in 288 pages] than some authors can manage in 500 or more pages.”
Monocle: New York’s 10 best lesser-known bookshops – “From West Village stalwarts to hidden living-room selections, this Monocle guide celebrates New York’s independent booksellers, specialist collections and the city’s enduring literary culture beyond the more obvious big names”, says Stella Roos.
Women’s Prize: Why I Write Imaginative Memoir by Davina Quinlivan – “Ahead of the publication of her memoir, Possessions – [an account of one woman’s journey out of the collapsing system of academia] – writer Davina Quinlivan explores what imaginative memoir means to her and why it appeals.”
Full Stop: Marginalia – Naomi Washer – “Marginalia is a short book-length essay comprised of marginalia that the author wrote in a medley of texts by authors such as William Hazlitt, Anne Carson, and Robert Walser”, says author Jeff Alessandrelli. “And through the thoughts and notes jotted down in other writers’ books, Washer has created […] a space for herself.”
Vogue: In a Russian Expat’s First English-Language Novel, Making Art Under Putin Is a Horror Show – “The opening lines of Svetlana Satchkova’s debut English-language novel, The Undead, see the protagonist, Maya—an unassuming woman in her 30s, making her directorial debut with a horror movie—eating a delicious fig.” Rebecca Bihn-Wallace on a “part künstlerroman and part thriller” from Russia, which is “dedicated to the political prisoner Alexei Navalny and other victims of Putin’s regime”.
New Voices Down Under: 🦘 Hello 2026! A whole year of fabulous fiction to look forward to – In her latest newsletter showcasing the latest reviews, news, and interviews focused on debut Australian fiction, Meredith Jaffe opens the year with “a swag of great reads, freebies and a fantastic Meet the Author interview with George Kemp.” This edition spotlights Rebecca Armitage’s The Heir Apparent, a novel in which an English woman escapes her life in London “to forge a new one in Tasmania as a doctor.” The story, she says, contains “echoes of Princess Diana and the whole Prince Harry and Meagan Markles’ saga of recent times”.
The MIT Press Reader: Our Obsession with Hypocrisy Is Making Things Worse – In this article, adapted from The Hypocrisy Trap: How Changing What We Criticize Can Improve Our Lives, Michael Hallsworth, a leading figure in applying behavioural science to real‑world challenges, argues that “in an era of callouts and gotchas, endlessly hunting out contradictions distorts the problems we’re trying to solve.”
Two in one for Tolkien: 🧙♂️🍻
The Library of Lewis and Tolkien: C.S. Lewis and the Greatest Arthurian Epic – “Reading (and appreciating) Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur” – although Roger Ascham and C.S. Lewis interpreted this 15th-century Arthurian epic rather differently. (Tolkien makes an appearance in this piece.)
The Epoch Times: ‘The Lord of the Rings’: Of Stories and Journeys – “Storytellers are bridges connecting the past to the present, as seen in Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins.”
Heavy Feather Review: Nonfiction Review: Daniel Barbiero Reads Mark Polizzotti’s Utopic Essay Collection Jump Cuts – Daniel Barbiero finds Mark Polizzotti’s “fine book”, Jump Cuts: Essays on Surrealism, Film, Music, Culture, and Other Utopian Topics, [is] an elegant and thought-provoking new collection” of thirteen pieces ranging across a broad swath of subjects.
Agerpres: CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS / Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu: Few authors today are willing to take the risk of being less likeable – Contemporary Romanian prose writer, poet, essayist, translator and editor, Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu, “discusses his passion for mythology and the ancient world, his journey as a writer until discovering that prose suits him most as a genre, his walks through Bucharest, at different stages in his life, his work as a publisher and his perspective on the book industry in general.”
Pens & Poison: “Sex-Positivity” Broke Contemporary Literature – In her essay on publishers’ “obsession” with “sex-positivity”, Liza Libes argues that “contemporary literature can no longer speak honestly about sex”.
The Verge: Spotify is testing a feature that syncs audiobooks with paper editions – “Page Match lets you scan a page to jump right to that part of an audiobook”, reports Jess Weatherbed.
Washington Independent Review of Books: Biden’s Bookmobiles – Following a recent New York Times piece titled Biden Has Raised Little of What He Needs to Build a Presidential Library, Ellen Prentiss Campbell’s (aka Girl Writing) latest post sets out her case for why she believes “a presidential-library-on-wheels would be perfect”.
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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
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