An end of week recap

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien

Helen Keller Day (today) honours the woman who transformed isolation into insight and became a lifelong champion of human dignity. Additionally, it is Global Smurf Day – a cheerful splash of blue amidst some of the more solemn commemorations.

Among the literary luminaries born on this day are Bulgarian poet, novelist and playwright Ivan Vazov (1850), American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer Helen Keller (1880), Guyanese-born British-American novelist, writer and teacher E. R. Braithwaite (1912), American writer and university professor Alice McDermott (1953), British author, historian and TV presenter Simon Sebag Montefiore (1965) and Nigerian-American writer, photographer and art historian Teju Cole (1975). Sunday’s celebrants include Genevan writer, philosophe and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712), English thriller writer Eric Ambler (1909), Bangladeshi author and activist Abul Kashem (1920), Ecuadorian essayist, novelist, politician and painter Juan León Mera (1932), English playwright, novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach (1948), Swedish crime-fiction writer Åsa Larsson (1966) and American novelist and short story writer Aimee Bender (1969).

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 opinion 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.

* The Great Summer Moomincaper *

My latest addition to the Moomin shelf in the Tove Trove library is Finn Family Moomintroll, the third book in the original series, published in 1948. I chose to re‑read this title in June because the story begins in springtime and continues into late summer, so it felt like the ideal moment to pick it up again. >> Discover: Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson >>

Please don’t forget there is now a dedicated index page for everything Tove, making it easier to find all the relevant posts. You can access it from the main menu at the top of every Book Jotter page. >> Tove Trove Main Index >>. Plenty more will be happening with this over the coming months. 🎩👜

* Blogs from the Basement * 

This week I am blowing the cobwebs from (1) In December last, we find retired English teacher, science‑fiction reviewer and long‑time literary blogger Stefan of LIT.GAZ. reflecting on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000–2016, an “extraordinarily diverse” gathering of essays, reviews, book introductions and talks from the latter part of this much‑missed author’s life (republished in 2025 by Canongate Books). Describing Le Guin as a “great feminist, for whom the personal was alway[s] political,” Stefan notes that her “knowledge and understanding of the SF genre is […] immense”. Among the highlights, he points to pieces on “the craft of the writer and their use of language”, several “interesting ruminations on the notion that people read less” and “possibly the most powerful pro-choice piece [he’s] ever come across…” This anthology, he concludes, was “definitely” worth the wait. You can find out why at Ursula K Le Guin: Words Are My Matter. (2) Just creeping into ‘almost overlooked’ territory is Kate Macdonald’s admiring piece on Irish writer Orla Mackey’s multigenerational portrait of small‑town life in Ballyrowan, Mouthing – a historical novel that “blew [her] socks off” and very “nearly made [her] cry”, although it also left her “furious about the behaviour of at least one of the characters”. Find out what she had to say about Mackey’s “terrific, and quite brilliant […] storytelling” in Mouthing, by Orla Mackey. (3) Going back only three months to March, we find “passionate reader and dedicated book reviewer” Deana (aka The Book Muse) “intrigued but also a little skeptical” about Canadian author Glenn Dixon’s science‑fiction novel The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, in which “everyday household appliances have their own inner lives and loyalties.” She need not have worried, however, for this tale narrated mainly by a “smart Roomba” and other such gadgets proved far more “reflective” and “emotional” than expected. Dixon’s novel, with its “whimsical premise,” becomes a “thoughtful exploration of loneliness, efficiency, and the emotional connections that define our humanity.” You can see what else she had to say about this “bittersweet story” at What a Sentient Roomba Can Teach Us About Being Human: A Review of The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon. 

* Irresistible Items *

Umpteen fascinating articles appeared on my bookdar last week. I often 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 on your literary rambles through cyberspace, here are a selection of interesting snippets:

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest Tove Jansson and Moomin news, views and events, please head over to Tove Telegraph. 🎩👜

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Dear Fiction: 🎤 Crying With Jenna Bush Hager – Juliet Faithfull talks about Liar’s Dice, her debut historical coming‑of‑age novel, and “why she never gave up on her publishing dreams.” Set in Brazil during the 1970s, the story – which took her twenty years to write – follows a teenage girl torn away from her disabled twin sister and forced thereafter to learn to fight against all odds. 

Aeon: 🤖 Words, words, words – Martin Puchner, author of The Written World: How Literature Shapes History, argues that “Strong resistance to AI among writers is understandable. But it obscures what we share with the machines: language itself”.

The Critic (via Archive Today): ⚢ Embers to tend – “The brilliance of Sappho has been obscured by rumour and neglect”, says David Butterfield – though, “she is very probably the most famous poetess in the complete annals of world history.”

The European Review of Books: 🎤 Books | Interview Elina Alter – Back in May, Fernanda Eberstadt had a chat with translator and editor Elina Alter, who recommended “Russian-language writers we should be reading, and [the best] russophone platforms that have opened up in Europe since the 2022 invasion [of Ukraine].”

The Rumpus: “Beloved Son Felix”: Coming of Age in the Renaissance – Adam McPhee notes that “In October of 1552, sixteen-year-old Felix Platter set off from his home in Basel, Switzerland, with a few coins in his pocket and a few more sewn into his jacket” in a review of Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance (translated by Seán Jennett and with a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt). Travelling to France to begin his medical studies, Platter “kept a detailed journal of these years”, a fascinating record now reissued by McNally Editions.

Notes: ✍ Re-Noted: 3 Lessons on Writing from Joan Didion’s Notes – Before visiting Joan Didion’s posthumous note collection at the New York Public Library, Jillian Hess read everything she could find on the subject – but what she really wanted was “the nitty‑gritty […] regarding how Didion’s worked.” So, she made an appointment to see the papers, producing this fascinating account of what she discovered.

The Guardian: 🛸 The Uses of Utopia by Joad Raymond Wren review – can the ideal society ever exist? – Welsh writer and historian Joad Raymond Wren’s The Uses of Utopia: Travels to the Limits of Thought is described by Steven Poole as a “fascinating intellectual history of imagined paradises [that] takes us from Thomas More to Ursula K Le Guin”.

Literaria: 🫣 Italian Gothic Reading List. – Nicole Raimondi delves into gothic titles “from 19th-century classics to contemporary nightmares” and shares her “definitive guide to the dark side of Italian literature.”

Chicago Review of Books: Camille Bordas and the Delicious Pain of Living in “One Sun Only” – “The characters in One Sun Only, Camille Bordas’ new story collection, struggle to communicate in the wake of traumatic loss”, writes Max Gray in his review of French author Camille Bordas’s short story collection. You may also enjoy Emily Barton’s piece on this title for TLS: What’s with everyone? Stories of brooding, obsession and wit.

The Ideas Letter: 🎤 Closer to Rude than Snide: An Interview with Leo Robson – “Leo Robson, in a comprehensive interview with [Leonard Benardo], deftly and imaginatively explains the contemporary role of the critic. Few cultural critics are as wise and expansive as Robson, and [they] discussed what exactly the craft of criticism is about, how it has changed, and why it continues to matter. His explanations are lucid and deeply informed.”

Book of Titans: 👑 A King Arthur Reading List – Erik Rostad introduces several works capturing the tales around the Legends of King Arthur.

The Sydney Morning Herald (via Archive Today): 🦘 Hit or miss? Our take on the week’s biggest new book releases – “From a [gay] coming-of-age novel and serial killer family secrets to children’s books, cancer care and climate policy, this week’s books take readers in all manner of directions. [Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp] deliver their verdicts on the latest fiction and non-fiction books to hit our shelves.”

Two Jane-adjacent pieces:
Art & Soul: The years of danger – “Being a young woman left to her own devices in Jane Austen’s day was perilous. Is it any different now?” Christina Bieber Lake – “veteran educator and inveterate lover of all things LIT” – highlights the social and personal risks facing Anne Elliot in Austen’s 1817 novel Persuasion.
Vogue: 🎬 Here’s Your First Look at Daisy Edgar-Jones and the Cast of Sense and Sensibility – Daisy Edgar-Jones leads the cast of the upcoming film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility – Marley Marius offers “the first ravishing look” at her Elinor Dashwood.

Quill & Quire: 🍁 Blame: Death, Disability, and the Search for Justice for Guy Mitchell – In Blame: Death, Disability, and the Search for Justice for Guy Mitchell, Canadian historian and biographer Dustin Galer “explores the complexities of blame in the death of a disabled man, hoping to create ‘dramatic nonfiction that reads like a legal thriller.’”

Historia: ⛱️ Historical books for summer reading, 2026 – Frances Owen “asked 10 much-loved authors to each suggest a couple of books for history lovers to enjoy over the summer.” They “offered an intriguing mix of historical books, new and old, ranging from the 6^th century BC to the recent past, and spanning the world from Alaska and Orkney to the Holy Land and the Soviet Union.”

minor literature[s]: 🎤🛸 “[What] you do with a disaster is to get used to it…We no longer talk about changing things. We no longer talk about avoiding the consequences”: An Interview with M. John Harrison – In the English author and critic M. John Harrison’s “most recently published novel, The End of Everything […], the reader encounters a narrative that is as chaotic and combative as its title suggests. Strange life forms have invaded London and its environs (or have they?). A continent has disappeared. The trappings of civilization have begun to unwind.” Cristina Politano “sat down with [him] to unpack some of the novel’s most trenchant commentary.” Over at Caught by the River this title is described by Will Burns as “a kind of ‘anti-state of the nation novel’”. See his piece, The End of Everything to discover what else he had to say.

La Bibliotrek | Read the World: 🕵✈️ In Their Footsteps: Agatha Christie in Devon, England – “Exploring Greenway, Burgh Island and the landscapes that inspired the Queen of Crime”. The titled featured here is Agatha Christie’s 1939 mystery classic And Then There Were None, inspired by the Burgh Island Hotel – it was “often regarded as her masterpiece and one of the best-selling crime novels of all time.”

London Review of Books (via Archive Today): Luxury Muzhik – Adam Thirlwell writes: “Now at last there is a new translation [of Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev, translated from the Russian] by Bryan Karetnyk, [meaning] everyone can [now] contemplate this strange and moving work”.

Inside Story: 🦘⚢🎨 Into the light – “Nora Kate Weston and Eirene Mort lived together for sixty years in a ‘homosocial world of women artworkers’ in early 20^th‑century Sydney,” Stephanie Miller tells us in her review of the joint biography Double Act.

Still Sketching: The Name on a Penguin Cover – Deborah Vass shares the “unexpected story of Shirley Thompson, Melissa Harrison’s The Given World and vintage radio listening” – it makes fascinating reading!

The Telegraph (via Archive Today): 🎨 DaisyDixon: The young British philosopher standing up for depravity – British academic and author of Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art Daisy Dixon “discusses the ethics of art, statues, and being a victim of misogynistic Grok deepfakes” with Alastair Sooke.

The Ink-Stained Desk: Female Led Retellings of Our Favourite Stories. – In her latest thematic essay, Christine Maree Reid considers “taking stories we’ve known forever and sliding the lens over to the women, who were often the enslaved or the voiceless, all previously relegated to the background”. She describes this as “engaging in a radical feminist act.” For example, Sarah Miller’s Caroline: Little House, Revisited.

The Star: BETWEEN THE COVERS: The brutal math of survival in Nairobi’s dark underbelly – This “is not a novel that gently invites you in. It grabs you by the collar, drags you through the dust, sweat and moral grime of Nairobi’s industrial underbelly, and dares you to look away.” Nelly Muchiri reviews Meja Mwangi’s Going Down River Road, “first published in 1976,” describing it as “a slim, sharp-edged book that reminds us how thin the line is between stability and collapse, and how quietly lives can be worn down when the world decides they are cheap.”

Longreads: 🎤 Curiosity as Compassion: A Conversation with Susan Orlean – Krista Stevens talks to American author and journalist Susan Orlean about “Why it’s important to cultivate resilience and curiosity as a writer.”

The Atlantic (via Archive Today): ✈️ Paradise Revisited – “The Galápagos Islands owe their place on rich travelers’ bucket lists to the vision of them as an unfallen Eden, touted as ‘the laboratory of evolution’ that inspired Charles Darwin to write On the Origin of Species”, writes Helen Lewis in a fabulous piece on this archipelago of volcanic islands in the Eastern Pacific, located around the equator, 485 nautical miles (898 km; 558 mi) west of mainland Ecuador.

New Voices Down Under: 🦘 🐎🐎🐎 You had me at Lady Bushranger… – In the June edition of NVDU, Meredith Jaffe asks: “Is Billie King the new Cloud Street? The new Boy Swallows Universe? It’s a big call but read on to find out if Shannon Kelly-White’s debut is destined to become THE new Australian modern Classic.”

Deccan Chronicle: Book Review | A Clear Recall of a ‘Many-Splendored Life’ – Just Being: A Memoir “is not a look back at history scholarship in India. It is about the joys and passing sorrows of [Romila] Thapar’s life”. An “embattled scholar in saffron times” and, according to reviewer Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr, “the target of rowdy and vicious baiting”, she nevertheless “holds her own and continues to make her point about history, calmly and in a dignified manner, [asserting] that history is not a plaything and it needs to be backed up by scholarship and evidence to be serious.”

Literary Review: 🧪 Out of the Armchair – Peter Moore waxes lyrical about Andrea Wulf’s “irresistible new biography” of the German‑Polish geographer, naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary George Forster (1754–1794). In The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity, “Wulf makes a convincing case for George” – a young man who journeyed to the far reaches of the known world – “as a thinker who has too long been dismissed or ignored”.

The Conversation: 🎬 The overlooked Virginia Woolf novel about to hit cinemas – Night and Day – “Woolf’s second novel, Night and Day, published in 1919, is often seen as an anomaly. Unlike her more famous books, it has a realist, almost Victorian style and a slow, languorous plot. What is surprising”, says Peter Adkins, “is that it has just been adapted for the big screen – the first major adaptation of any Woolf novel in decades.”

Freefall: 🍁🫣 Review of Lauren Carter’s “The Longest Night” – “The major tension in this superbly plotted story is situated shortly after […] 9/11, and the ensuing questions of how to change the future for a few seemingly unimportant people”, writes Vivian Hansen of Canadian author Lauren Carter’s The Longest Night – a fusing of horror, time travel, magic realism and thriller. 

DW: Why Ingeborg Bachmann remains a literary icon – “A new documentary featuring Sandra Hüller celebrates the Austrian poet and author who was a literary star of her era. She would have turned 100 this year”, reports Elizabeth Grenier. 

Metropolis: Book Review: Tokyo These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto – “The manga industry in Japan produces thousands of new volumes each year, yet few turn their focus inward. Tokyo These Days does exactly that. Taiyo Matsumoto steps away from spectacle to examine the quieter, often overlooked realities of creative life”, finds Jessie Carbutt.

3:AM Magazine: The Jaguar’s Roar: Introduction – Brazilian writer Micheliny Verunschk’s historical novel The Jaguar’s Roar, first published in 2021, opens with two German scientists travelling into the Amazon to collect flora and fauna for display in Europe. Along the way, they also collect two Indigenous children and transport them back to the Bavarian court. This is the stark chronicle that frames translator Juliana Barbassa’s introduction to the latest edition.

Two Tolkiens in one: 🧙‍♂️🍻
The Library of Lewis and Tolkien: Songs of the Old North – The Kalevala, the great Finnish epic, which like the Iliad and the Odyssey, grew out of a rich oral tradition with prehistoric roots, was major influence on [Tolkien’s] world-building and myth-making.” His love for it “lasted all his life”.
The One Ring: 1966 Tolkien Letter Confirms Welsh Town Crickhowell Inspired Crickhollow – Jonathan Watson reports: “A letter Tolkien wrote in 1966 has settled a long-running local debate. The Welsh town of Crickhowell, in Powys, really did inspire Crickhollow in The Lord of the Rings, and we now have it in Tolkien’s own hand.” I should also like to point you in the direction of Chris Lovegrove’s excellent post at Calmgrove Books, Crickhollow: #TalkingTolkien, in which he makes some very interesting observations about this story.

The New Arab: ⚢ Mariam, It’s Arwa: Love, loss, and memory collide in the shadow of Egypt’s revolution – Mariam, It’s Arwa by Areej Gamal is the story of “two women who meet during political unrest in Cairo and begin a relationship rooted in grief and connection”.

A Country of the Mind: 📖  Reading Guide: Dostoevsky and the Siberian Influence (p. 1) – In the first instalment of this series, historian Maggie Desbaillets offers a “reading guide […] to serve as an introduction into [Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher Fyodor] Dostoevsky’s work,” allowing her to concentrate “on the influence of Siberian exile” and consider his 1862 semi‑autobiographical Notes from a Dead House. Here she contends that “such an understanding is pivotal to deciphering everything he [subsequently wrote].”

The Wire: ✈️✍️ How to Write on Travel at a Time When Everyone Knows Everything – “In her latest book, [Travels in the Other Place: Pursuing the Self in Eight Acts, Indian author] Pallavi Aiyar compiles her reading, her notes, her life as a mother, a journalist, a daughter, a patient of cancer, a wife, and as a curious traveller into a fun volume that retains its levity despite the weight of some of the topics she covers.”

The Stories Behind the Stories: 🕵🚂 All aboard the Flying Scotsman for cocktails, movies and dinner! – Thriller and murder‑mystery writer Anna Sayburn Lane “had a plot (family secrets), a setting (a castle in Northumberland) and all [she] needed was to transport [her] sleuth there from her usual setting of Bloomsbury”. It wasn’t long before she came up with the perfect solution — it was time to board “the runaway train of research into the Flying Scotsman, probably the most famous train in the world.”

Global Voices: 🎤 ‘Galician identity and literature are deeply rooted in land,’ award-winning Galician writer explains – In this 2023 conversation between Juan Manuel Montoro and writer and philologist María López Sández (translated by Molly Furnival-Phillips for Galician Literature Day 2026), they discuss “language, landscape and literature as anchors of Galician identity” in this autonomous community of Spain.

Pulse Tasmania: 🦘 Phrontisterion: Mona opens $100 million library where books have no fixed shelf – A 17^th-century First Folio of Shakespeare’s works, the only copy in Tasmania, is the centrepiece of a new $100 million library at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona).

The Atlantic (via Archive Today): 🍁 A Close-Up Look at the Waste of Modern Life – Trash! A Garbageman’s Story, a new memoir cum exposé by a Montreal binman Simon Paré-Poupart (translated from the French by Pablo Strauss), “shows the actual work of cleaning up the world’s junk”, says Lily Meyer.

Vijesti: The passing of Slavenka Drakulić, a writer who defied nationalism and oblivion – “The [Croatian] writer, journalist and one of the most important intellectuals of the region passed away at the age of 77, leaving behind a body of work that has marked generations of readers. She was a voice of conscience that outlived ideologies”, reports Nina Vujacic.

The New York Times (via Archive Today): ✈️ Call It a ‘Book-cation’ or a ‘Readaway,’ Literary Travel Is Having a Moment – “Resort book clubs, tour companies, hotel libraries and a growing number of literary festivals are offering readers new ways to indulge their interests”, reports Elaine Glusac.

1000 Libraries Magazine: 📖 Meet the Kenyan Author Who Read for 73 Hours Straight to Save Reading Culture – “Kenyan author Emmanuel Muchui stunned many after completing a 73-hour reading marathon to revive Kenya’s fading reading culture”, reports Millie Ramm.

Halmail: My breakup with Amazon – “Jeff Bezos can kiss my ass”, says illustrator, author and Cincinnati-dweller with attitude Hallie Bateman, reflecting on her fiery breakup with Amazon.

Independent: 🤖 Short story prize clears winners of AI allegations after month-long review – “Three of five regional winners had been accused of using AI to write their short stories”, reports Shahana Yasmin, but the Commonwealth Foundation has now dismissed the claims, “saying a month-long review had found ‘AI wasn’t used’ to write them.”

Financial Times (via Archive Today): Searching for the naked truth in ‘War and Peace’ – “What is Tolstoy’s Hélène really, truly wearing at the Moscow opera?” asks Rosa Lyster in this amusing piece about a character arriving topless at the opera in Leo Tolstoy’s 1863 classic War and Peace.

The extremely difficult realisation: 200 + 200 books of the 20th century – Here we have another long list to add to our ever-growing list of literary lists – in this instance, “200 works of any genre published as books between the years [1900] and [1990].” Then, apparently, in “square brackets there is a secret Secondary List of 200 works of any genre published as books between [1900] and [1990] by the same 200 authors.” “The List”, we are informed (in another list containing much detail about how to read The List), “is organised chronologically according to the publication date”. You will find another explanatory list at the end of The List followed by a list of questions. Got that? Good!

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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

Tags: Agatha Christie, Camille Bordas, Canadian Literature, Charles Darwin, Crime Fiction, Glenn Dixon, Global Smurf Day, Helen Keller Day, J.R.R. Tolkien, Juliet Faithfull, Latin American Literature, Micheliny Verunschk, Orla Mackey, Pablo Strauss, Science & Nature, Short Fiction, Simon Paré-Poupart, Summer Reading, Tove Trove, Ursula K. Le Guin