An end of week fortnight recap
“and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.”
– Ruskin Bond
Here in the UK, we are in the midst of Shakespeare Week – a national celebration centred on schools and families across the country, designed to introduce children to the life and imaginative world of the Bard.🎭
Furthermore, Respect Your Cat Day is observed internationally today, as is Earth Hour, when people switch off non‑essential lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm local time to raise awareness about climate change and energy conservation. However, please be mindful that putting out the lights and putting out the cat are two entirely different things.💡🐈
Among today’s literary birthdays are Portuguese novelist and historian Alexandre Herculano (1810), Russian and Soviet writer Maxim Gorky (1868), American writer Nelson Algren (1909), French poet and one of the founders of the Négritude movement Léon Damas (1912), Peruvian novelist, journalist and essayist Mario Vargas Llosa (1936), American writer of fiction and poetry Russell Banks (1940) and American writer Lauren Weisberger (1977). On Sunday we can raise the roof for Finnish poet, writer and translator Uuno Kailas (1901), Welsh poet R. S. Thomas (1913), American crime fiction writer Reed Farrel Coleman (1956), Norwegian novelist and musician Jo Nesbø (1960) and American science fiction novelist Ernest Cline (1972).
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.
* Be Wyrdly Wonderful This Spring *
“The calendrical clock is ticking”, the spring equinox has passed and “the moon is just starting to show her face”, says Imyril of There’s always room for one more…, which can mean only one thing: it’s time to Shine a Light on Wyrd & Wonder in 2026. This May, prepare to “[delight] in fantasy under the light of not one but two full moons” as the crew join forces with “veterans” of this annual event and “embrace first-time adventurers” for a month‑long celebration of “fantasy books, movies, tv shows, games, music and anything else genre-adjacent that grabs your attention.” A rich programme of activities awaits – from readalongs and buddy reads to the ever-popular prompt challenge – though you’re equally welcome to chart your own course. If you’d like to take part, head over to the official sign‑up page but don’t delay, or your spaceship might sail.
* Follow Valancy into the Blue *
Canadian author and book blogger Sarah Emsley would very much like to celebrate the “100th anniversary of the publication of L.M. Montgomery’s novel The Blue Castle” this October. She has therefore issued an invitation for others to read and discuss this “beloved” work with her. Describing its heroine, Valancy Stirling, at the outset as feeling as though “she has had ‘nothing but a second-hand existence’”, she later notes that “everything changes when she decides to stop keeping up appearances and start[s] making her own choices.” It is, says Sarah, “a wonderful, powerful book,” and she encourages participants to “read at whatever pace suits you best.” Please let her know if this is of interest to you in the comments section of her post, Let’s read The Blue Castle.
* Blogs from the Basement *
Released from archival captivity this week: (1) Published in two parts (the second entitled Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand), Joseph Darlington’s The Disruptors “announces itself as a work of fiction but carries unmistakably the DNA of its author’s scholarly practice”, writes David Vichnar. In a September 2025 post, we are told by the critic that he reads the book as a “deliberately hybrid work, pitched between social satire, autofictional reflection, and avant-garde collage.” Its genre, however, remains fluid – part novel, dossier, notebook, cultural chronicle and thought experiment – centred on Zane Lund, an enigmatic inventor who creates a device capable of shrinking (and enlarging) objects at the molecular level. His pursuer and
eventual love interest is a feisty journalist in search of a career-making story. The author, we’re told, “revels in satirising banality,” and thematically the book “circles around the concept of disruption in multiple registers: economic, political, technological, psychological, and aesthetic.” To discover exactly what David thought about this “biting satire of contemporary Britain under late capitalism,” please head over to Disruptive Continuities at the Manchester Review of Books. (2) In August 2025, Suroor Alikhan of Talking About Books expressed her admiration for Mexican author Isabel Cañas’s gothic novel The Hacienda, in which the protagonist endeavours to “escape her circumstances as a poor relative who is treated by her aunt as a servant” by marrying a “wealthy landowner,” only to discover, upon arriving at her new home, the Hacienda San Isidro, that she has stepped into an unexpectedly hostile environment. Set in the 1800s, this unnerving historical tale is “also a tender love story” but, as Suroor notes in The Hacienda: Isabel Cañas, it “will chill you to the bone.”
* 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 this one – posted in recent weeks:
The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan – David Pearce was “absolutely enthralled by this novel from the [start]”, reading its “300 pages in two days.” Set in 2084, Neil Jordan’s (yes, the famous Irish film director) science‑fiction novel The Library of Traumatic Memory follows unassuming librarian “Christian Cartwright [who] works for the Huxley Institute”, an organisation that stores the world’s most painful memories. His role gives him “the time and the technology to ‘resurrect’ his lover, Isolde, who died in a car crash, [but only in the] form of digital avatar”, and though she “has no independent consciousness”, he draws comfort from hearing her voice. As Christian moves through this digital realm where the dead can speak, he begins to uncover a deeply buried conspiracy. This is a book “unlike any [David has] read before” and one that lingers for “days and weeks” after turning the final page. You can read the full review over at David Pearce – Popular Culture and Personal Passions.
* 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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Mid Theory Collective: Foiled Forms: A Review of Nina McConigley’s ‘How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder’ – “How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, the debut novel by Indian-Irish-American author Nina McConigley, critiques the ever-more-popular trauma plot – but with a twist”, writes Maggie Boyd. What’s more, it “resists resolution at every turn, repeatedly identifying a satisfying story arc and then refusing to take the exit.”
The Markaz Review: In Defiance, a Syrian Journalist Fights the Power – “A Syrian journalist from the Alawite minority, once in power under the Assad regime, turns against her father, family, and tribe, to become her own woman.” Anna Lekas Miller reviews Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria by Loubna Mrie – “a powerful excavation”.
Miller’s Book Review: ‘Feminine Hands’: The Hidden History of Women in Medieval Book Culture – “Monks get the credit”, says Joel J Miller, author of The Idea Machine, but “nuns deserve some too.” He offers “evidence from their manuscripts” and the discovery of “one sister’s teeth” embedded with lapis lazuli.
Sunday Times ZA: Mila de Villiers interviews Allen Zimbler on ‘Kalahari Diaries’ – “Some people dismiss them as primitives. I’m seeing something remarkable.” In an interview with Mila de Villiers, South African professor Allen Zimbler “reflects on his years among the Kalahari Bushmen and the stories preserved” in Kalahari Diaries: Impressions of a Desert People.
Chicago Review of Books: Why Criticism Continues to Matter: Book Reviews and Our Literary Community – Kathleen Rooney, founding editor of Rose Metal Press, remarks: “as critics we provide a service—not of explanation or puzzle solving, but rather of showing the expanded possibilities for what a book could mean, what it meant to us and could thus mean to other readers.” In fact, she continues, “criticism makes you slow down and stay and reflect, just like art does; good criticism makes its recipient stop and sit and feel and think.”
Moonbow: Why Are Fairy Tale Picture Books Misunderstood? – Writer and creative director Taylor Sterling looks at “how taking a close look at the new Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale picture book by Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis can help us understand and appreciate this art form.”
BookTrib.: Louise Fein’s “Book of Forbidden Words” and the Enduring Fight for Freedom of Thought – Linda Hitchcock describes Books of Forbidden Words as “a must-read, compelling warning of the necessity to preserve fairness, truth and justice.” In this gripping historical novel by British author Louise Fein, a mysterious 16th‑century encrypted manuscript resurfaces, “placed in the hands of former Bletchley Park cryptographer Millie Bennett five hundred years after it was created [in the hope that] she might be capable of cracking the code.”
CBC Books: 🍁 Heather Marshall’s new historical fiction book is about the Toronto women’s prison you’ve never heard of – The esteemed Toronto author discusses her latest historical novel, Liberty Street, with Mattea Roach.
The Anchoress Archives: Some Notes on Indexing. – Archivist Katy Jones-Gulsby “read a book about the history of the index and now it’s all [she wants] to talk about.” She fears she will never “escape the nerdy librarian/archivist stereotype,” should she ever wish to do so.
Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books: Ruth Dallas: A writer’s life by Diana Morrow and This Moment, Every Moment: Ruth Dallas, Collected Poems – Greg O’Brien rediscovers “the brilliant and necessary Southern Aunt of New Zealand letters” through Diana Morrow’s “exemplary biography”, Ruth Dallas: A Writer’s Life and the poetry collection that “anyone remotely interested in the literature of Aotearoa should own”: This Moment, Every Moment.
Public Books: “Disaster Has Happened and Is Happening”: Tara Menon on What the Novel Reveals – In her interview with Nicholas Dames, Tara Menon explains: “I wanted to propose grief as perhaps the most appropriate response we can have to what is happening to the natural world—the disappearance of coral reefs in the Andaman Sea and bird habitats in New York.” Her new novel, Under Water, “tells the story of a single life marked by two waterborne disasters.”
Kirkus: The Art of the Book: 75 Years of Thames & Hudson – The Art of the Book by Anna Nyburg, which commemorates 75 years of the London-based publishing house Thames & Hudson, is a “grand tribute and informative contribution to publishing history.”
The Australian (via Archive Today): 🦘 Why a young Tim Winton was almost rejected for writing short stories – “Hilary McPhee met Tim Winton in the 1980s after his first publisher rejected his idea to write short stories. She recalls the joy of nurturing the young Australian author.”
Review 31: What might be, could have been, or is not – “Deborah Tomkins’ novella, Aerth, starts as it means to go on, in the set of moods grammarians call irrealis — the ways we talk about things that only might happen […].” Hugh Foley enjoys this speculative work in which “fiction and the environment touch.”
EL PAÍS: Insult or adaptation? Why films still struggle to adapt novels – “From Hamnet to Wuthering Heights, the big screen has seen a wave of literary classics reimagined for a new generation. But a problem persists: cinema and literature are languages that are almost always irreconcilable”, says Ianko López.
Publishers Weekly: Andrey Kurkov Dispatches Kyiv – “After years spent covering the Russia-Ukraine war as a journalist and commentator,” Andrey Kurkov – “one of Ukraine’s most acclaimed novelists” – returns with mystery novel The Lost Soldiers (translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk), reports Elaine Szewczyk.
Ron Charles: ☘️ Why Irish Needs 32 Words for “Field” – “Equal parts memoir, history, and linguistics, Magan’s charming book [Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape] sings the praises of Irish”, says Ron, as he discovers “language of a landscape where magic still lingers”.
Smithsonian Magazine: Typos Have Plagued Us for Centuries. Just Ask the Publishers Who Printed the Seventh Commandment as ‘Thou Shalt Commit Adultery’ in 1631 – “A new exhibition at Yale Library explores the history of typos across five centuries. Visitors will see corrections that were listed inside copies of works by James Joyce, Upton Sinclair and Nicolaus Copernicus”, finds Sonja Anderson.
The Common Reader: Ruth Scurr: The Life and Work of John Aubrey – Writer and critic Henry Oliver has a fascinating conversation with Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, “about the great man himself, who was born four hundred years ago this month.”
Big Think: The centuries-old “love story” that was really a tale of psychological abuse – Henry Eliot argues that “classic literature reveals how resilience can be both a source of strength in troubled times — and a dangerous ideal.”
Compulsive Reader: A review of Tangerinn by Emanuela Anechoum – Catherine Parnell reviews Tangerinn (translated by Lucy Rand), the debut novel by Italian author Emanuela Anechoum, which follows a thirty‑something expat in London who, after the death of her Moroccan‑born father, returns home to confront her past and search for a place to belong.
Nippon.com: The Unnamed Cat Who Triggered Japan’s Literary Explosion – “Japan’s modern literary era was kicked off by Natsume Sōseki and his I Am a Cat, argues the critic, Damian Flanagan. At turns comedic, satirical, and dark, this work from the dawn of the twentieth century presaged the contemporary “Japanese cat lit” boom.”
ABC: 🦘 Melissa Lucashenko shares about genesis of new book Not Quite White in the Head – “The indigenous Australian writer Melissa Lucashenko “decided to do something a bit different with her latest book partly because of an encounter she had”, reveals Mawunyo Gbogbo.
Financial Times (via Archive Today): Sylvia Plath’s ‘daffodil days’ in Devon – “The poet is often stuck to the template of her tragic persona.” Helen Bain writes of The Daffodil Days, her new historical novel that depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th‑century literature’s most infamous couple, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
Times Now: 8 Books That Make You Rethink What Your Life Could Become – “Some books quietly change how you think about ambition, time, and possibility. They challenge the life scripts many people follow without question.” Girish Shukla suggests “eight thoughtful titles push you to rethink work, identity, creativity, and purpose, leaving you with a deeper sense that your future can still take unexpected and meaningful directions.”
Washington Independent Review of Books: 🍁 The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts: A Novel – In The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, a “harrowing work of psychological horror” by Chinese-Canadian author Kim Fu, “a woman grapples with the trauma of her mother’s death,” writes Emily Hall.
The Telegraph (via Archive Today): I was branded a Nazi and told I would burn alive for defending free speech – “I have run Oxford Literary Festival for 30 years. Our commitment to intellectual freedom will not be dampened by cowardly bullying”, says Sally Dunsmore, co-founder of the Oxford Literary Festival.
Two Tolkiens in one:
BBC News: Talk show host Stephen Colbert to write new Lord of the Rings film – “US TV host Stephen Colbert has announced his next move after his late-night talk show ends – co-writing a new Lord of the Rings film”, reveals culture reporter Ian Youngs.
The Tearoom: The Power of Femininity in Tolkien’s Women – “Tolkien has been accused of ignoring the role of the disparate feminine characters in The Lord of the Rings, accused even of sexism for women’s limited appearances throughout the fight for Middle-earth.” Emilia Nessuno writes in defence of “the role of female characters” in his epic high fantasy novels.
The American Scholar: Thinking in the Margins – Bill Hayes, author of Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me, offers an intimate glimpse into what his partner, British neurologist, naturalist and best‑selling writer Oliver Sacks, “jotted down in the books he read.”
Speculative Insight: Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1) – “Indian feminist science fiction grapples with female foeticide, caste erasure, honor killings, sex-ratio crises—concerns that emerge from refusing to separate gender from caste, class, environment, geography. As Urvashi Kuhad identifies in Science Fiction and Indian Women Writers (2014), the genre responds to Indian realities”.
The Skinny: The Delusions by Jenni Fagan – “Set against a striking celestial stage, [Scottish Novelist and poet] Jenni Fagan’s The Delusions addresses universal concerns through the intensely personal”, writes Alistair Braidwood. It is, he says, a deeply “humanist novel [that] explores the administrative structures of the afterlife”.
The New York Review (via Archive Today): A Most Particular Life – Catherine Nicholson reviews Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance, the diary of “sixteenth-century physician Felix Platter”, which, she says, “is without precedent in early modern literature.”
Holly’s Literary Magic: Side Quests: A Tudor Reading Guide – In honour of the year-long slow‑read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy (aka the “Wolf Crawl”), Holly Fairall shares her favourite fiction and non‑fiction books about Tudor England.
The Times (via Archive Today): I worked in a hostess bar — now I’ve written a novel about one – “In Sisters in Yellow, Japan’s rising literary star Mieko Kawakami reveals the grimy underworld of Japanese nightlife and the struggles of working-class women”, says Laura Hackett.
A Country of the Mind: The Making of Martyrs: A Story of Love and Sacrifice in Siberian Exile – “I can assure you of one thing: whatever your fate, I will share it” – American historian Maggie Desbaillets examines Daniel Beer’s “profound study”, Siberian Exile Under the Tsars, an unflinching history of a brutal system and the tragic yet inspiring fates of those who lived through it.
The Yale Review: Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel? – Critic and serial “nonfinisher”, Michel Chaouli, “considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page”.
BBC Culture: ‘Profit at an extraordinary cost’: The ultimate saga of British privilege and power – “The Forsyte Saga novels were ‘the lens through which we observe the state of the nation’. As a new adaptation is about to stream in the US, how did this tale – of an upper-middle-class family in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era – encapsulate the timeless themes of class, generational conflict and ‘new money’?”
America: Review: Parables of a Greenland priest – “Henrik Pontoppidan’s The White Bear gives us two novellas that work in conversation with each other. Both feature burly, uncouth protagonists who endure episodes of childhood trauma and develop a fiercely independent way of engaging with the world”, writes Michael Centore.
House & Garden: The enduring chicness of the ‘too many books’ aesthetic – Fiona McKenzie Johnston on “why we love abundance – and the romance of a library”.
Swedish Book Review: ‘The Point of Anthologies Is that They Should Surprise You. You Should Find Something There That You Haven’t Seen Before’ – “Out of the Darkness is a new collection of Swedish short fiction from the 1880s to the 1950s.” Alex Fleming talks to its three editors, Vendela Vida, David Katznelson and Ulf Olsson, about their “fifteen-year project, the magic of the short story, and why this ‘treasure chest’ of Swedish writing may surprise contemporary readers.”
A Narrative Of Their Own: Writing Rituals of Anita Brookner – This week in Kate Jones’s series on the writing of women, she discusses the English novelist and art historian Anita Brookner (1928–2016). The title featured here is her first novel, A Start in Life, about an intelligent, beautiful but lonely academic who studies the heroines of Balzac in the hope of discovering where her own life went awry.
Independent: Len Deighton death: Bestselling spy thriller author, who also taught men how to cook, dies aged 97 – “Best known for his debut novel The Ipcress File, which was adapted into a hit film starring Michael Caine, Deighton also helped to introduce a generation of men to the joys of cooking at home”, recall Jill Lawless and Roisin O’Connor.
Do Some Damage: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders – “It took until 2005 for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders to be translated into English, but Twisted Spoon Press, based in Prague, finally did it. They produced an attractively put-together volume, complete with the novel’s original illustrations by Czech artist Kamil Lhota¡k”, says Scott Adlerberg of the 1945 gothic fantasy by Vítězslav Nezval.
Afrocritik: The Ethics of Knowledge and the Difficult Conversation Around Book Piracy in Africa – Chimezie Chika asks: “Is piracy justified or unjustified? Is piracy good or bad in a continent like Africa? Or, to put it another way, what advantages and disadvantages can society hope to gain or suffer regarding piracy?”
The Duck-Billed Reader: Can the Fish Really Sing? – Following a recent visit to Iceland, Claire Laporte started reading Halldór Laxness’s 1957 historical novel, The Fish Can Sing – a work that “draws a melancholy contrast between pre-capitalist Icelandic values and the commercialized, artificial world [the author] associates with Danish colonial control.”
The Times (via Archive Today): Wartime Berlin: looted French wine, syphilis and cynicism – “Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-45 by Ian Buruma shows us how Berliners kept calm and carried on with black market luxuries, nude dancers and camel-dung ciggies”, writes Pratinav Anil.
The Observatorial: Élmer Mendoza is awarded the Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize – The Mexican author Élmer Mendoza, one of the key figures in the genre known as narcoliterature (or narco-lit), has been awarded the Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize for Literature for his outstanding contributions to the crime novel. He received his prize during the inauguration of the 68th edition of the Guanajuato International Book Fair on 19th March.
The London Magazine: Will Self on the End of Satire, the Rise of Fascism and Writing His Own Death – Alex Dommett sits down with the English writer Will Self for a jolly little chat about genocide, environmental collapse, coming down off steroids, secondary myelofibrosis, his recent brush with death and, er… oh yes, his latest novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality.
The Student: Why We Love Being Lied To: The Art of the Unreliable Narrator – “So, what makes a liar such a good storyteller?” asks Sophie Cosham. “Well, when readers cannot trust the narrator to tell the truth, it is up to them to decipher the real story and trust their own judgment rather than what is being falsely fabricated.”
A Book Designer’s Notebook: The Bizarre Books of Ben Denzer – Nathaniel Roy on “the weird and wonderful” imprints of Catalog Press’s Ben Denzer and “the art of asking what a book can be”.
Andrew Doyle: ☘️ Did Oscar Wilde predict the age of AI? – “Wilde imagined a world where machines would free us from labour” in his 1891 essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism. “It turns out he was probably right”, says writer, broadcaster and satirist Andrew Doyle.
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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 term, there is an excellent description on Urban Dictionary.
>> See my monthly digest at the Book Jotter Journal on Substack. >>
Categories: Winding Up the Week
Who knew there was a Respect your Cat Day – I thought they demanded respect every day…lol
So very true, Rach! 🤣