An end of week recap
“We can only learn to love by loving.”
– Iris Murdoch
I don’t think any of you require me to tell you which saint’s feast it is today – so I shan’t! 💝
I will soon be going away for a few days to celebrate a friend’s birthday, so unfortunately, I won’t be around next Saturday and Sunday to wind up the week. I will, however, be back and busily link‑truffling the following week, which means my next post should be with you on 28th February.
Would you believe today is National Cream‑Filled Chocolates Day in the USA? Does a week go by when some corner of the globe or other isn’t strong-arming us into binging on bars or breaking into yet more boxes of choccies? It’s quite disgraceful, but I’m afraid it must be done! 🫣
If you would prefer to feel a touch more virtuous, you might turn instead to Read to Your Child Day or International Book Giving Day – a global celebration devoted to sharing stories and passing books on to others. And for those in Australia, there’s the perfect antidote to confectionery guilt: National Library Lover’s Day, a chance to shower libraries with affection – perhaps pop into your local branch and offer around some delectable heart-shaped pralines or truffles.
Among today’s literary birthdays are American writer, abolitionist, social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass (1818), Romanian author Elly Gross (1929), American writer Harry Matthews (1930) and American science fiction novelist Robert Shea (1933). Then on Sunday: American writer Joseph Hergesheimer (1880), Japanese author Masuji Ibuse (1898), Soviet Tatar poet Musa Calil (1906), Estonian children’s writer, Eno Raud (1928), American mystery writer Gregory Mcdonald (1937), English novelist and journalist Linda Grant (1951), American writer Maile Meloy (1972), American author, film director and actress Miranda July (1974) and Australian high fantasy writer James Islington (1981).
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 *
We go back in time to (1) December 2015 when, over at Reading Matters, Beatlebone by Irish writer Kevin Barry was Kim Forrester’s “book of the year”. An experimental novel about John Lennon journeying around the coast of Ireland in 1978 to seek the island of Dorinish – a piece of land he did in fact purchase in the 1960s but went on to mislay – is described here as “a riotous romp full of the most unexpected surprises” with a “rich and lush and oh-so evocative” prose. What follows, according to Kim “is an extraordinary road trip” which is “quite mesmerising” as it follows a character who is “sometimes joyful, heartbroken, melancholy, angry, belligerent, arrogant or quietly lacking in confidence” on his quest. Barry has certainly “captured something of the essence of the man” – find out how he did this in Kim’s review, ‘Beatlebone’ by Kevin Barry. (2) Moving forward almost a decade to November 2025, Liz Dexter of Adventures in reading, running and working from home shared her thoughts on Brigitte Reimann’s 1956 novella Woman in the Pillory, which was last year republished by Penguin Classics and translated into English for the first time by Lucy Jones. The story follows the “miserable life” of “small and frail” Kathrin, whose “husband [is] away fighting the Russians in the 1940s” while she is left to run his farm with “her beefy sister-in-law”. He “arranges for them to have a Russian prisoner of war […] to help with the heavy work […] and Kathrin starts a voyage of redemption.” Discover why this “allegory of Communism and Germany” is “a tour de force” at Book review – Brigitte Reimann (trans. Lucy Jones) – “Woman in the Pillory”.
* 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 recent days:
Six Thoughtful Non-Fiction Picks – Kirsty from The Literary Sisters is back with one of her excellent recommended reading lists – this time spotlighting several non-fiction titles she “read in the last couple of months of [2025],” in part to “highlight just how good they are” but also because she has continued “thinking about [them] long after closing the final page.” The selection, which is wonderfully diverse, includes the “ambitious and magnificent new travelogue by [Norwegian anthropologist and writer] Erika Fatland,” High: A Journey Across the Himalaya, Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China (its colourful cover can be seen on the right); Casey Cep’s Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, a true crime story from America’s Deep South about “a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money”, who “escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim”; and Marit Kapla’s “extraordinary and engrossing” Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village, about the people who live in a “secluded village” in “the dense forest landscape of northern Värmland,” which, says Kirsty, is a “chronicle of great social metamorphosis, told from the inside”. There are others, too. Please take a gander, especially if you are participating in one or more of this year’s non-fiction challenges.
* 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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The Gem: Notes from Jennifer Dawson’s The Ha-Ha – G.M. has “always found it tragic when classics go out of print”, so was pleased to discover that Faber has recently reissued The Ha-Ha, a “semi-autobiographical novel” first published in 1961 by the English writer Jennifer Dawson (1929–2000). In it, Dawson explores her “protagonist’s mental state” with a sensitivity that, “under a modern lens […] could be understood and diagnosed.”
The British Columbia Review: 🍁 A ‘strange and heady mix’ – Variations on a Dream, the debut novel of Canadian writer Angélique Lalonde is, says Harvey De Roo, “an extraordinary work—inventive, eclectic, heartfelt, playful, angry, often brilliantly written, mingling myth and actuality, with characters waking from various ‘dreams’ into various realities.”
Miller’s Book Review: It’s Books All the Way Down! – Joel J Miller riffs on his favourite books-about-books and shares “a reading list for true bibliophiles”.
Better Reading: 🦘 A Page-Turning Thriller: Read Our Review of Two Islands by Ian Kemish – “Australian war crimes investigator Anita Costello races against sinister forces to locate [a] key witness” in Two Islands, the “former Australian diplomat”, Ian Kemish’s thriller set on an “isolated Scottish isle”.
The Republic of Letters: Literature of the Non-Self – “More and more books today feature empty, vacant characters living empty vacant lives. These null signifiers are often propped up as some kind of postmodern message about how people live today. But there is something grim and anti-life about it, especially when the world is full of interesting, lively people. Is the idea of ‘character’ dying off or is it being killed?” This week The Literarian Gazette steps in with a review-essay of the novels of Catherine Lacey.
4Columns: they – Brian Dillon tells us that they, the latest novel by the highly acclaimed Danish author Helle Helle, “captures with casual intensity and uncanny grace the relationship between a terminally ill mother and her teenage daughter.”
The Epoch Times: 💝 The Hawthornes in Love: A Fairy Tale Come to Life – “Though beset by illness, family disapproval, and financial difficulties, Nathaniel and Sophia believed they had found Eden at last”, says Jeff Minick.
Dr. Andrew Higgins Elvish Musings: Exploring Invented Languages – “Continuing his exploration of the art and ‘secret vice’ of language invention”, Dr. Andrew Higgins looks at Irish scholar Virgilius Maro, whom he describes as “the grammatical prankster of the seventh century”.
The New York Times (via Archive Today): Haruki Murakami Isn’t Afraid of the Dark – “The author, who brought Japanese literature into the global mainstream, grapples with aging and his place in the world of letters”, writes Alexandra Alter following a conversation with him in “a cavernous underground cocktail lounge in a Midtown Manhattan hotel.”
The Tearoom: 💝 Almost Love: Lessons from Literary Hearts – Mariella Hunt explores “the unfinished love stories behind some of literature’s most beloved women”, including Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen.
BookReporter: About the Book: Honey in the Wound – “A lyrical and suspenseful [historical/magical realism] debut novel about a mysteriously gifted Korean family confronting the brutality of the Japanese empire, [Jiyoung Han’s] Honey in the Wound is an epic tale of survival and the reclamation of power.
A reading diary: 💝 your own Simone. – Rebecca “couldn’t let this Valentine’s Day pass without sharing some quotes from Simone de Beauvoir’s letters to Nelson Algren.” Here she dips into A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren.
The Orwell Society: George Orwell: Life and Legacy: A Review – L.J. Hurst takes a brief look at Robert Colls’ new biography, George Orwell: Life and Legacy – “a short book” focusing on his reputation and legend, which asks the questions: “Was he a prophet?’ and ‘Was he prescient?’”
The Broken Compass: The writer’s bookshelf: Jacqueline Riding – This week, Mathew Lyons asks historian Jacqueline Riding (whose latest book, Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London has just been published to “universal critical acclaim”) his usual “eight questions about writers, books, and reading”.
Irish Independent (via Archive Today): Yes, I am gay but don’t call me ‘queer’ – it’s derogatory and traumatising – The award-winning Irish novelist writes: “If you’re gay or lesbian and choose to embrace the term, then good luck to you – but don’t force it on the rest of us.” A link to this 2023 article was recently retweeted by the author, reigniting the debate.
Air Mail: The Making of Charlotte Brontë – Graham Watson explains “how a controversial biography of the Jane Eyre author overcame accusations of slander from the novelist’s hellish former headmaster, her critics, and even her father to establish her enduring myth” in The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life.
The Common Reader: Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard. “It’s Wanting to Know That Makes Us Matter” – Henry Oliver discusses “Shaw, Turgenev, Eliot, Beckett, rehearsals, politics, Carey, Woolf [and] Brian Moore” with renowned biographer Hermione Lee.
The Critic: The genre that came in from the cold – “When the spy novel took off in the twentieth century, with British writers such as John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and John le Carré leading the way, the heroes could not quite shake off the suspicion that they are damned for practicing their infernal art…” Andy Owen on “why we love spy fiction”.
Guardian Australia: 🦘 ‘A cultural icon’: axed Australian literary journal Meanjin finds new life in Queensland – Kelly Burke reports: “The 85-year-old magazine will return to the city for which it was named after a successful bid by Queensland University of Technology.”
BBC India: The retired Indian factory worker who built a library of two million books – Anke Gowda, a 79-year-old man from India’s southern Karnataka state has accumulated two million books over the last five decades, all of which are “housed across a sprawling building, free for anyone to borrow and read”, reports Imran Qureshi.
49th Shelf: 🍁 Most Anticipated: Our Spring 2026 Fiction Preview – Canadian fiction coming up “in the first half of 2026” from the official website of the Association of Canadian Publishers. The book featured here is Honeysuckle, Bar Fridman-Tell’s horror-fantasy retelling of the Blodeuwedd myth from Welsh mythology.
The Irish Times (via Archive Today): Elly Griffiths: ‘A magic trick is like a crime novel: lots of misdirection before the final reveal’ – “The [British] author on new [time-travel/mystery] book The Killing Time, [talks to Martin Doyle about] writing ‘kick-ass older women’, and her fascination with Victorian times”.
Aeon: A lesson in coexistence – “The 17th-century town Cacheu [modern-day Guinea-Bissau] was a hub of West African and European cultures, languages and beliefs (and run by women)”, reveals Toby Green, author of The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa.
From My Bookshelf: Chasing the Blue Dragonfly – Peter C. Meilaender presses Plants Don’t Drink Coffee by the Basque author Unai Elorriaga (translated by Amaia Gabantxo) into our hands, describing it as “a delightful book, full of whimsy, love, friendship, humor, and appealingly eccentric characters.”
An Unfinished Story: Edith Wharton in Paris, and at war – Sarah McCraw Crow explains “how the Great War might have led [American writer Edith Wharton] to The Age of Innocence”.
Contemporary Japanese Literature: Bone Ash – “Tow Ubukata’s horror novel Bone Ash (translated by Kevin Gifford) “is a story about cursed architecture”, says Kathryn. “Deep under [a] construction site is a hole, and inside that hole is… Just some random guy? What’s he doing there? And what happens if he leaves?”
JSTOR Daily: Dorothy Parker: Sharp-Witted Writer, Bitter Professor – “Dorothy Parker’s year as a visiting professor shows how a celebrated literary voice struggled to adapt to the realities of academic teaching”, says Emily Zarevich.
Vox Femina Books: The High-Stakes Lives of Two Light-Skinned Black Women – Passing, Nella Larsen’s classic exploration of Black identity, “exposes the hidden economy of race and risk”, writes Brittany Lloyd.
The Bookseller (via Archive Today): 🐻❄️ Narratives of hope – “Remarkably, judging the Climate Fiction Prize has not been depressing,” says broadcaster and presenter Simon Savidge. You may also wish to read fellow book blogger, Brona of This Reading Life’s post on the award’s longlist: The Climate Fiction Prize 2026.
The Express Tribune: Fatima Bhutto details all in her new memoir – The Hour of the Wolf by Pakistani journalist and author Fatima Bhutto “covers [a] decade-long abusive relationship”.
Traveling in Books: 🍁 Book Review: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter – Kim shares her thoughts on Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, Heather Fawcett’s “charming historical fantasy for fans of cats and shadow lords” set in Québec.
1000 Libraries Magazine: 💝 8 Beautiful Love Letters That Read Like Poetry – “From Nabokov to Dickinson, these love letters prove that some hearts write in verse without ever meaning to.” Millie Ramm with “romance at its rawest.”
Kate’s Substack: Small Things Like These – Writer and teacher Kate Clanchy examines the Clara Vulliamy/Joanne Harris/Society of Authors imbroglio. It is also well worth reading Clanchy’s companion piece, Who Framed Philip Pullman? for a fuller grasp of the matter.
On Landscape: Walking with Tolkien: A Trip to Switzerland – In this issue of On Landscape – an online magazine for photographers – landscape photographer Lewis Phillips traces the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien through the Swiss Alps, exploring some of the dramatic scenery that helped shape Middle‑earth.
The New India Express: Crossing A Boundary: Talking existential questions with Jhumpa Lahiri – “By writing in Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri has had to answer why she has taken leave of English. A conversation on home, mother tongues and dangers of making language a nationalistic project” recently took place between the author and Paramita Ghosh at the Italian Cultural Centre in Delhi.
The Duck-Billed Reader: Begetting and Birthing: First-Person Origins in Dickens and Sterne – “How can Dickens’s protagonist David Copperfield tell the story of his own birth?” wonders Claire Laporte. She finds “an earlier novel, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, provided an example.”
The Observer: Paperback of the week: The Virago Book of Friendship edited by Rachel Cooke – “The late Observer journalist anthologises the experience of female relationships in all their myriad complexity – from the tender to the toxic”, says Chris Power of Rachel Cooke’s newly published paperback edition of The Virago Book of Friendship.
Deccan Chronicle: Deepa Anappara: I Reconstruct Marginalised Voices Through My Fiction – Sucheta Dasgupta talks to Indian writer and journalist Deepa Anappara about forthcoming projects, thinkers of interest and The Last of Earth, her new historical novel based in 19th century Tibet.
Palatinate: I’ll be the Monster: the monstruous depths of the familiar – “Gripping, alluring, addictive and, at times, grotesque, Sean Gilbert’s I’ll Be the Monster is a book I could not put down”, says Gwen Smit of this thriller about a homicidal couple with a plot “of chaos, mystery and paranoia”.
The New York Review (via Archive Today): Things Fall Apart – Adam Kirsch writes: “Gabriele Tergit’s [German novel] Effingers [first published in 1951, now translated into the English by Sophie Duvernoy,] chronicles how one prosperous German Jewish family struggled to answer the question: When is it time to leave?”
LARB: A Void Filled with Possibilities – “The protagonist of Antônio Xerxenesky’s [historical] novel An Infinite Sadness, newly translated by Daniel Hahn, searches for ‘something beyond psychological solutions’ at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps”, writes Rachel Gerry.
Something Eve Read: 💝 The Weight of Two Souls – Eve with “a love poem for you by Elizabeth Barrett Browning” (plus a few explanitory details) on Valentine’s Day.
ABC News: 🦘 Before opening Meg’s Bookshop in 1991, the Arnolds were told kids ‘didn’t read’ in Port Pirie – “After 35 years, Margie and Mark Arnold have closed the doors for the final time at Meg’s Bookshop in the smelter city of Port Pirie”, reports Jenae Madden.
Notes from a Small Press: The Form & Purpose of Book Reviews – Anne Trubek laments the recent “shuttering of the Washington Post book review staff” while looking back at the type of reviews that traditionally appeared in newspapers and magazines that once “focused on the reader”.
The Times (via Archive Today): There’s a crisis in non-fiction book sales. What’s to blame? – Ceci Browning says, “we’re buying 17 million fewer factual books than six years ago.” She wants to know: “Is the rise of podcasts to blame? Or publishers’ obsession with celebrities and influencers?”
The Ink-Stained Desk: 💝 Genre Genealogy: Paranormal Romance: Love Bites & Lore – As part of her Genre Genealogy Series, C M Reid examines Paranormal Romance – quickly discovering that “humans have imagined themselves having friendly, romantic, and sexual relationships with paranormal entities throughout history!”
Greek Reporter: “In Greece, There Is Everything”: Why Russian Genius Chekhov Claimed He Was Greek – “Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the Russian who revolutionized literature in the 19th century, was shaped by the bustling culture of the Greek diaspora, which thrived along the Black Sea as well as the Azov”, finds Tasos Kokkinidis.
Graphic Policy: Neil Gaiman Resurfaces after a Year of Silence Denying Allegations and Pointing to a Substack Newsletter as Proof of Innocence – “It’s been a little over a year since a bombshell article revealed details of abuse by Neil Gaiman towards multiple individuals.” After “retreating” for some time, he has “posted to Instagram claiming his innocence and linking to a Substack newsletter named TechnoPathology, which bills itself as the ‘Neil Gaiman is Innocent’ project.”
Gizmodo: For Some Reason, Someone Who Generates AI Slop Books Has Unmasked Herself – “Someone who calls herself ‘Coral Hart’ is telling the world all her tricks”, finds Mike Pearl.
The Eclectic Reader: Reading for pleasure – Chelsey Feder explains why she intensely dislikes books with deckle edges. Apparently, it’s “sensory” – and I know just what she means!
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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
Guardian Australia 🦘”A cultural icon the axed Australian literary journal Meanjin finds new life in Queensland.” Hurrah, back where it belongs. Meanjin is the traditional Turrbal and Yuggera name for Brisbane. Thanks Paula. G.🌴
It’s excellent news, Gretchen! 😊👍