An end of week recap
“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”
– Ray Bradbury (The October Country, 1955)
The good news is that I have an actual, if unexpected, wind up for you today. The inescapable bad news is that there will be zilch next weekend. No dashed dispatch or scribbled one-liner, because I am taking to the skies in search of a little autumn sunshine. Hopefully, you will hear from me next on 7th November – though it may be with the briefest of brief notes – after which I will get down to some serious literary link truffling. 😎
Around the world, Global Media and Information Literacy Week starts today and runs until 31st October, then for our creative cousins, tomorrow is International Artist Day and World Opera Day. Sadly, British Summertime officially ends on Sunday, too.
A hearty rendition of the birthday song is required the for the American writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale (1788), Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini (1886), English poet and writer Elaine Feinstein (1930), Irish novelist Frank Delaney (1942), British mystery crime writer Ann Cleeves (1954), American novelist Amor Towles (1964), Irish-Canadian novelist and literary historian Emma Donoghue (1969) and American author Gabrielle Zevin (1977). 🎶 Once again for the Sunday crowd, including American writer of dime novels Gilbert Patten (1866), American poet John Berryman (1914), American novelist, short-story writer and literary critic Anne Tyler (1941), British thriller author Stephen Leather (1956), mystery-fantasy children’s writer Pseudonymous Bosch (1967), Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak (1971) and English novelist, essayist and short-story writer Zadie Smith (1975).
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.
* Lang May Yer TBR Reek *
Joanne from Portobello Book Blog is launching a marvellous new reading event next month. If you are a Scotophile or simply interested in getting to know more about Scottish literature, please make your way over to An introduction to Reading Scotland Month 2026 #ReadingScotland26 for all you need to know about taking part in Reading Scotland Month 2026. The aim is “to read, promote and celebrate books set in Scotland, or books written by Scottish authors, or books by authors living in Scotland”, says Joanne. She chose November primarily because St Andrew’s Day is celebrated on the 30th and, apparently, until quite recently, Scottish Book Trust ran Book Week Scotland at this time of year but for some reason moved it to June in 2027. This is a minimal stress challenge in which you can take part merely by discussing Scottish books you’ve read in the past (and perhaps making recommendations) or go the full hog by reading and reviewing one or more books. There are plenty of helpful suggestions, so please have a wee keek at Joanne’s ideas and see what you think. Slàinte! 🥃
* Drink in that Spirit of ‘73*
It was a period in which Ferdinand Marcos became President for Life of the Philippines, The Godfather won Best Picture at the 45th Academy Awards, the English novelist and one-time Bright Young Thing Nancy Mitford passed away, US involvement in the Vietnam War ended and Australian novelist and playwright Patrick White received the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, of far greater importance to us bookish types is the revelation by Karen Langley and Simon Thomas of the first of their two big reading challenges in 2027 (see Announcing the next club…). From 12th to 18th April, absolutely everyone who fancies getting involved is invited to take part in the #1973Club, which means reading newly published titles from that year and sharing your experiences in blogs and on social media platforms. There is plenty from which to choose, including bold, enjoyable and sometimes groundbreaking works by the likes of J. G. Ballard, Rita Mae Brown, Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, Clarice Lispector, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Iris Murdoch, Anthony Powell, Milan Kundera, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nancy Friday, Antonia Fraser, Gore Vidal, René Barjavel… Oh, and Agatha Christie. Please take a shufty at #1949Club – the ones that got away! Plus – where next???? as now might be the perfect time to do your research and compile a list of likely reads.
* 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 all the more difficult to pick only these two – posted in recent days:
New Books (September-October) – It seems likely that “the next 12 months or so are going to be great for readers of all genres and stripes” – with books “for everyone, and plenty of opportunities to try something new and unusual”, says the Civilian Reader in a post featuring fresh works by authors ranging from the German literary scholar Adrian Daub and American legal-thriller novelist John Grisham to Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. The cover featured here belongs to The Art of the Unusual: Inside the Auction House That Made the Impossible Possible by Arlan Ettinger, the founder of Guernsey’s auction house in Manhattan – a book described as rather “different” from the usual publications offered for review. Published by Sourcebooks, it tells the true story of “a scrappy, anything-goes auction house that turned the industry on its head.” Guernsey’s, it seems, “sold the unexpected, the irresistible, the downright bizarre”, such as doors “from the legendary Chelsea Hotel” and the “entire contents of the SS United States.” This business, we are told, could sell just about anything and “everyone wanted in.”
Who Wrote This English? Translation, Attribution, and the Limits of Literary Reviewing – Over at Reading in Translation, there was a noteworthy post this week in which the writer, literary critic and translator Elton Uliana took issue with “eight reviews or review roundups” in Literary Hub last February, “covering ten books translated from Japanese, German, Czech, French and Danish among other languages.” With the exception of two pieces, it would seem that although the translators were named, in most cases they “promptly disappeared” thereafter, almost as if the critics had assumed “that English had happened to the books more or less by itself, [through] some minor alchemy.” Uliana, who, incidentally, “coedits the Brazilian Translation Club at UCL, where he also contributes to teaching in Translation Theory”, discusses the treatment of these texts, along with similar instances in a variety of well-respected publications (The New Yorker, Kirkus, The Guardian and so on), in some detail and rightly suggests that literary critics “might reasonably be expected” to raise awareness that “the prose being assessed has passed through another writer’s language and labour.” It would also be immensely helpful if authors did likewise when speaking about “their books in English”.
* 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 is a selection of interesting snippets.
Additionally, if you would like to stay up to date with the latest Tove Jansson and Moomin news, views and happenings, please head over to Tove Telegraph or the Diary of Tovian Events. Be sure not to miss out on all the goings-on in your part of the world! 🎩👜
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The Boston Globe (via Archive Today): 🎶💘 Yiyun Li’s new novel makes beautiful music with an unlikely love story – Cory Oldweiler writes: “You might balk if I tried to sell you on a romance about a couple who don’t meet. Or a history book that never gets to the era’s most consequential events. What about a biography of a relative unknown that only alludes to their most noteworthy achievements? [Well, how] about a book that commits all of these ostensible sins? Because that basically describes the wonderful and bewitching new novel from Yiyun Li, Music Against the Night.” You can also read an interview with Yiyun Li about her novel in the Chicago Review of Books: Before Hopelessness, There’s Hope: A Conversation with Yiyun Li about “Music Against the Night”.
The Telegraph (via Archive Today): ⚫🔴🟡🎤 The literary superstar caught up in Germany’s culture wars – Charlotte Gneuss’s depictions of East Germany [in Gittersee, translated into English as Red Skies by Lucy Jones] have made her a lightning rod for critics. Now she warns of ‘dark times’ ahead for her country”, writes Lucy Thynne.
Gundwyn: 📖 A directory of good books published in the past 10 years – Despite what we are told, not all contemporary writing is bad. Good books are still published and therefore, “we should support the authors who write [them]. If some element of the literary world frustrates you, [it] is all the more reason to find [the] books you like and champion them”, argues Gundwyn, who is now creating an “ongoing list of books published since 2016 that [she has] enjoyed and would recommend to [others]. If you want to have a say on what goes on the list,” she invites you to suggest a title that you think deserves to be added.
The Arts Fuse: 🕵️♂️ Book Review: The Swallows Are Watching — Radka Denemarková’s Dark, Restless “A Contribution to the History of Joy” – “In this ambitious Czech novel, a detective’s inquiry into an apparent suicide becomes a meditation on violence against women, historical memory, and the possibility of joy”, writes Bill Littlefield of Radka Denemarková’s fourth novel, A Contribution to the History of Joy (translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood).
New Scientist (via Archive Today): 🛸🔮🐺 This prize-winning sci-fi novel about wolf rewilding made me cry – “When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift somehow delivers both a determined call for more wildernesses globally – and a great novel. Sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson is thrilled she gave it another chance”.
Literary Hub: 🧚🧝🧌 On the History of the Aes Sidhe, Ireland’s Seductively Dangerous Fairies – In an excerpt from Perilous Enchantment: The True History of Faeries, historian Sarah Clegg “explores the origins and meaning of Irish legends”.
Asian Review of Books: “Have You Seen Romit?” by Chital Mehta – Susan Blumberg-Kason reviews Have You Seen Romit? by the award-winning South Asian writer, Chital Mehta, about what happens when a mother who has always ‘known her place’ takes it upon herself to defy her husband and go in search of their adopted son after he disappears into the forests of southern India.
Quill & Quire: 🍁🤠🐴🐺🎤 Mark Anthony Jarman on the decades-long ride behind his second novel – “When Flying Books publisher Martha Sharpe initially proposed that author Mark Anthony Jarman compile a novel out of a clutch of short stories set in the 19th century of Louis Riel and General George Custer, the author’s reaction was not enthusiastic”, says Steven W. Beattie. Almost three decades later, she finally “wore the author down”, leading to the publication of Wild West – a story of one man’s brutal odyssey through the Northern Frontier. It is being described by some as ‘the great Canadian novel’.
BBC Culture: ⚖️👨 Medieval women could make accusations’: The true story of a 15th-Century sexual assault survivor’s quest for justice – “A new book [by Sara McDougall] offers a remarkable account of one woman’s legal battle after suffering a brutal attack in 1472 in the French city of Dijon. It defies our modern assumptions about women’s lives in the Middle Ages.” Laurie Clarke examines Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor – a detailed portrait of a woman who set in motion an extraordinary legal battle for justice.
BookTrib.: ❓🕵️♀️🔪✨ Childhood Friends Confront a Deadly Legacy in a Mystery Imbued With Magical Realism – Set in Cuba, Teresa Dovalpage’s The Novel Detective is “described as ‘a metafictional mystery’ with a ‘life as art’ storyline. The author is the main character, immersed in the fictional plot set in vividly detailed Havana, […] related by the protagonist-slash-narrator in alternating dual timelines”, explains reviewer Linda Hitchcock.
C-Ville: 🎤👩🏿🎨 Artist Data Oruwari on the influence of African spiritual traditions – Authored by brothers Ayodeji and Oludamini Ogunnaike, Mythology: Stories of the Oriṣa from West Africa and the Diaspora “offers an in-depth look at Yoruba culture and religion around the world, collecting more than 300 myths and tales.” Sarah Lawson spoke to its Nigerian-born illustrator Data Oruwari about her “relationship with African spiritual traditions”, exploring “Indigenous knowledge systems across different African regions” and “symbolism in [her colour] choices for the book’s artwork”.
La Bibliotrek | Read the World: ✈️ A Literary Tour through the Streets of Oxford – “Oxford is famous for its university, but it’s also a city steeped in literary history. Its beautiful colleges, medieval streets and centuries-old traditions have inspired some of Britain’s best-loved writers. This guide takes you to some of Oxford’s most iconic literary landmarks, as well as a few lesser-known spots worth seeking out.”
Jacobin (via Archive Today): 🖨️ Publishers Killed the Paperback, Then Blamed Readers – “In 1939, the 25-cent paperback made America a nation of readers, delivering thrillers, classics and Pulitzer-winning books. So why did the Big Five publishers just kill the mass market paperback?” asks Ned Rust.
One Night Stanzas: 📚 The often short life of the second hand book – “Charity shops are weathering a difficult period at the moment […] and donors are experiencing the disappointment of having their well-intentioned donations turned away at the […] door with increasing regularity.” Claire Askew gets to the bottom of why thrift shops are turning away books.
Ancillary Review of Books: 👩💻🛜 Fanfiction as Networked Literature: Review of Suzanne R. Black’s Between Novel and Network – “Networks are with us all the time now. We are entangled and embedded in them”, says Sebastian Sparrevohn. “But what are the ramifications of this comprehensive digital entanglement for the literary? This is the question Suzanne R. Black’s Between Novel and Network: Technology and Literary Form in Fiction and Fanfiction seeks to answer.”
The Common: Review: What Remains by Brais Lamela – “It is 1939 [and] Spain is emerging bruised and broken from its Civil War as a plaything for Franco’s crushing rule. People are hungry. The country’s agriculture and rail networks are in shambles. Citizens go where the work is, leaving expanses of rural land unpopulated. Intending to reform Spain’s agrarian economy and redistribute the population across the country, the [regime] draws up plans for several hundred new settlements to be built across the [nation]. Some [people] move voluntarily, others are forced to do so”. Narrated by an unnamed PhD student in New York who is writing a thesis on the Franco regime, Brais Lamela’s debut historical novel What Remains (translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers) is reviewed by Zara Karschay.
LARB: 🕯️🎓🔮🤖 Endlessly Reproducible Originality – English poet and author, “Sam Riviere’s new novel suggests that, in a literary culture already organized around copying, the machines may prove better at being writers than we are”, says Zachary Smolar of Doppelgänger, set in an elite creative writing academy in the near future.
Register of Aliens: ✍️ Literature + Hard Work – Robert Minto has written an interesting piece on the remarkable literary output and work ethic of the British writer and book critic V. S. Pritchett (1900 –1997), who was particularly renowned for his short stories.
The Observer (via Archive Today): 🫣👻 TH Huddleston’s 21st-century gothic – “In the [English gothic horror] author’s genre-savvy The Cracks, a widow is invited by friends to live at their decrepit mansion only for it to weave its insidious spell”, says Chris Power – comparing it to works by Poe, Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King.
Uncanny: 🎬 When the Book Wasn’t Better or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Adaptation – Can you name a film adaptation that is better than the book? Writer and podcaster Luke Elliott and university instructor in digital cinematography James Bailey, having studied adaptations for almost a decade, attempt between them to provide an “in-depth answer.”
The Irish Times (via Archive Today): 📚 Bookshops are lovely places, but they do create this one hazard – “These repositories of joy, knowledge, respite and armchairs need to be cherished.” But “things can go very wrong” and “we shouldn’t gloss over the trauma”, explains Laura Slattery.
The Writerly Reader: 8 Works of Literary Theory That Made Me a Different Reader – “Literary theory can seem intimidating, difficult, maybe even boring, but if you are in the middle of this sentence, I assume you’re at least a little intrigued by it.” Andrea C presents her “personal introduction to literary theory.”
The Japan Times (via Archive Today): 💘 Nao-Cola Yamazaki is your favorite writer’s favorite writer – More than 20 years after their literary debut, two of Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s books, Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives (translated by Polly Barton) and Beautiful Distance (translated by Charlotte Goff), have finally appeared in English translation for the first time.
What to read if: What to read if… you’d like apple tart – “Most of us know E. Nesbit as a magnificent children’s author; but she also wrote a handful of novels for adults”. Here we are introduced to her 1922 novel The Lark, with an introduction by Penelope Lively – “a story about a lot of the big things going wrong and making it all right; written with a breezy light-heartedness that must have been most attractive just after the First World War; and still is.”
Literary Review: ✨ Just Projecting – A woman is bitten by a dog and ends up in hospital where she meets an elderly German lady who collects pre-cinema toys and instruments. Following a series of dream-like conversations and a magic lantern show, she is sent on an important mission. Constance Higgins reviews the magical realism novel The Shadow of the Object by Mexican-American writer Chloe Aridjis.
The New Statesman (via Archive Today): Emmanuel Carrère betrays his parents – “The French novelist and screenwriter’s new [biography Kolkhoz (translated by John Lambert),] is an unsparing yet seductive portrait of his parents [Hélène Carrère d’Encausse and Louis Carrère]”.
Shewolves of History: 💘🕯️🫣 Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’ and Why Gothic Horror Belongs to Women – Kat Dewar discusses the “basic plot” of Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s “gothic parody” first published in 1817. She does so not merely because it is a “wonderful story” but also because she considers “its biting social commentary [every bit] as poignant today as it was in Austen’s time.”
The Saturday Newspaper (via Archive Today): 🦘 Kate Grenville: The Country Schoolmaster – “Kate Grenville discovered [the 19th century Irish-born teacher] Joseph Connor, the subject of The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters, by accident”, while researching family history. Rummaging through a file, she came across documents yielding “a prize that gave [her] a ‘blood-running-fast, itchy-palm, eyes-wide-open feeling of stumbling on something’.” Connor, she found “was the subject of letters of support, denunciation and accusation” and several “serious charges” against him for “brutality, pulling […] ears, whacking and bruising” his students.
University of Liverpool: 📚🛸 Arts Council designated status for Europe’s largest science fiction collection – The University of Liverpool houses “the largest repository of science fiction materials in Europe and [it is recognised as being] one of the most significant collections of its kind anywhere in the world.” It has recently “been awarded Designated status by Arts Council England, recognising its outstanding national and international significance” – placing it “alongside a select group of museum, library and archive collections considered to be of exceptional importance.”
The Green Light Newsletter: ✍️ The Narrative Technique that Kazuo Ishiguro Stole from Charlotte Brontë – “A first-person narrator can cry without saying so”, says Joshua Porter. “Two scenes from Jane Eyre and The Remains of the Day show us how.”
Equator: 🤖⚠️ Apocalypse Now and Then – “AI has crashed into the world of literature, leaving writers, publishers, literary agents, readers, critics, teachers and students feeling the ground give way under their feet. And when this happens to a whole society, a whole species, when we can no longer rely on instincts that have been learned over centuries, passed down from generation to generation, [might] we [be] setting ourselves up for mass psychosis?” asks Indian author, political activist and commentator Arundhati Roy. Here she explains why she thinks “artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination”.
Paroxysms: ❌📕 Cancel Culture and the Contemporary Novel – In this longish piece, academic Edmund King attempts to get to the bottom of “anxieties of contamination and the threat to art”. Or, as Eve Ng describes cancel culture: “[…] the withdrawal of any kind of support … for those who are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, and related issues”.
Publishers Weekly: 🫣💘 Horror Romance Embraces the Deadly Side of Desire – “At first blush, the horror and romance genres may seem like unlikely bedfellows: the former thrives on terror while the latter promises the comfort of a happily ever after. But horror romance, sometimes called horromance or horrormance, works because it capitalizes on the similarities between the two”, writes Samantha Puc in a piece in which “authors discuss why romance and horror are a match made in Heaven, and in Hell”.
Financial Times (via Archive Today): ✨🦄 Primeval and Other Times — Olga Tokarczuk’s exhilarating, genre-defying fairy tale – “The Nobel Prize-winner’s kaleidoscopic novel [Primeval and Other Times (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)], newly reissued, charts the stories of a Polish village — its people, plants, animals and angels — through the upheavals of the 20th century”, reveals Rebecca Abrams.
Liberties: 🗣️📖 The Polylinguist’s Many Lives – Growing up in Siberia, reading books and learning new languages was an escape for Sara Karpukhin and her brother. But as her relationship with the English language deepened, the gap between herself and native speakers felt wider.
The New York Review (via Archive Today): 🎤 Major Details – “In Ordinary Human Failings, [Irish author] Megan Nolan works to balance her novel’s ambitious scale and grave themes with an attention to emotional minutiae”, says Lola Seaton in this outstanding and deeply considered review. Indeed, you can read an interview with Seaton in which she discusses her craft in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books: Switching On: An Interview with Lola Seaton.
InDaily South Australia: 🦘 ‘The only ecstasy in my life’: Reopening Barbara Hanrahan’s diaries – A great piece from Jo Case earlier this year in which she reflects on the “expansive and exposing journals of the late artist and writer Barbara Hanrahan, published posthumously in 1998. Initially pored over for literary gossip, today they reveal an artist deeply, painfully permeated by the world.” I should also like to point you towards Lisa Hill’s excellent review for ANZ LitLovers LitBlog last April of Sea Green (1974, reissued 2025), by Barbara Hanrahan.
William Davies: 🔉👂 What if it’s not all about ‘screens’? – William Davies, a London-based writer and researcher, presents a pleasingly upbeat essay about how AirPods may be helping to solve the literacy crisis.
The Connexion (via Archive Today): 🖨️ The US authors finding literary success in France – David Vann, Jean Hegland, Pete Fromm, Benjamin Whitmer and Lance Weller share something in common. They are five US authors whose books are published in French, but whose recent work has struggled to find publishers in their native country. Théophile Larcher looks at the “French publisher [championing] writers tackling difficult themes”.
Il Messaggero: 🆎 Michelangelo’s Handwriting Becomes a Global Font – “A new typeface inspired by Michelangelo’s calligraphy is now available for millions of users through a collaboration between the Vatican and Microsoft, blending artistic legacy with modern technology.”
MIT Press Reader: 🛸🛰️ The Teenagers Who Imagined GPS Before the Civil War – While at Harvard in the 1830s, a 13-year-old Edward Everett Hale and his brother dreamed up a brick satellite that could pinpoint any ship’s location on Earth. Published in The Atlantic Monthly between 1869 and 1870, [he] used deft literary realism to tell the first pioneering story about an artificial satellite, The Brick Moon.” It was, says Alexander MacDonald, author most recently of The Spaceflight Narrative, “remarkably prescient as the first work to describe an orbiting space station.”
The Rooney embroglio (from various angles): ❓🤔
The Irish Times (via Archive Today): Will Sally Rooney’s books now be removed from shops across the UK? – “Rooney’s Normal People has sold one million copies in UK while her first and third novels have each sold over 500,000 copies”, says Martin Doyle. He endeavours here to answer the most common questions being asked about the Irish author’s works no longer being supplied to booksellers in the UK as a result of her backing the proscribed terrorist organisation Palestine Action.
Newsweek: Sally Rooney’s Martyrdom Is a Work of Fiction – “Sally Rooney has made a literary career out of exposing the contradictions of people convinced of their own moral clarity. Now the Irish novelist faces a contradiction of her own”, says Anna Rahmanan. She asks: “Does the moral imagination that makes Rooney a gifted novelist necessarily make her a reliable political guide?”
Independent: UK bookstores scramble as Sally Rooney’s novels are withdrawn because she supports Palestine Action – Following the announcement that Rooney’s British publisher (Faber) will no longer distribute her books, “Civil liberties groups say the ban unjustifiably restricts the rights to protest and free speech. In response to the government’s decision, thousands of people have tested the law by silently holding signs reading ‘I support Palestine Action.’” Furthermore, writes Jill Lawless, Palestine Action itself says “it does not advocate violence against people,” although, “a police officer suffered a fractured spine when she was hit with a sledgehammer” when the group broke-into an Israeli weapons factory in 2024.
Europe Says: 🏆✨ Isabel Allende wins €1m Spanish literary prize under pseudonym – The Chilean-American author Isabel Allende has won Spain’s €1m (£843,000) Premio Planeta, one of the world’s most lucrative literary prizes, under a pseudonym, with [La hora antes del alba,] a sequel to her celebrated debut novel, The House of the Spirits.
The Ideas Letter: 📖 The Right Words in the Right Order – “Cultural elites and educators of the Global North are now in an advanced state of panic surrounding reading, literacy, and the humanities generally.” William Davies shares his “notes on the literary crisis”.
The New Yorker (via Archive Today): ☭🪖🎤 Fiction by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in English for the First Time – Deborah Treisman talks to Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the son of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – the Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union – about the story Narrow Escape (follow the link to read it) from his father’s unfinished novel Love the Revolution, which “wasn’t published in Russia until 1999, and is only now forthcoming in an English translation.”
Two Austen adaptions in one: 🎬
British Vogue: 📺 Inside The Making Of Dolly Alderton’s Lavish New Pride And Prejudice – With the latest Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set to hit our TV screens later this year, scriptwriter Dolly Alderton “shares her funny, intimate and illuminating day-to-day diary of making [what is described by some as being] the television event of the year.”
Variety: 🎤🎥 ‘Sense and Sensibility’ Costume Designer on Blending Historical Accuracy and Modern Styling for the Dashwood Sisters: ‘We Want to Do Jane Austen Justice’ – “Sense and Sensibility costume designer Grace Snell [tells Mya Copeland that she] thought in chapters for Georgia Oakley’s new take on Jane Austen’s 1811 novel, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, respectively.”
America (via Archive Today): ✝️ Sigrid Undset: Scholar, storyteller—and future saint? – “Sigrid Undset’s writings were admired by everyone from Willa Cather to Dorothy Day. Her life is being studied by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Who was this Norwegian teller of truths?” asks James T. Keane.
China Daily: 🛸 Reflections on the global success of a sci-fi milestone – “This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Three-Body Problem, which was first serialized in the Chinese monthly magazine Science Fiction World in 2006”, say Yang Yang and Zhu Xingxin. Set during China’s Cultural Revolution, the “trilogy continues the narrative perspective of traditional sci-fi works, offering a strong retro quality and a sense of nostalgia”.
Books of Titans: ✍️📔 Books as Journals – Erik Rostad uses “physical books” as journals. He writes “in the front, in the margins, at the end of chapters, and in the back”, so that when he flips “through books on [his] shelves, [he] can see the questions [he] asked the author, the ideas [he] encountered for the first time, things that made [him] angry, and pages that [changed his] life. He tells us that he also adds “keepsakes and bookmarks between the pages.” He very much hopes he can persuade you to take up this “peculiar habit of treating […] books as journals”.
Elle: 📖 Are We in a Reading Monoculture? – “BookTok promised us endless discovery. So why does everyone seem to be reading the same thing?” asks Véronique Hyland.
EnVols: ✈️📚 This fairy-tale library is hidden in a small Austrian town — and it inspired Beauty and the Beast – “Nestled at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Admont is home to a spectacular Baroque library. With its frescoes, sculptures and thousands of books, it looks as though it has come straight out of a fairy tale.”
The Spectator (via Archive Today): 🍁🖨️ How progressive politics ruined Canadian literature – When it comes to literature, “Canada punches far below its weight” – but it certainly “isn’t for lack of trying”, says Alex Diggins. In his opinion, the “dominance of grants, prizes and arts councils queers the field” because the “priorities – and politics – of awards juries and civil servants become the hoops through which publishers must jump”, making the quality of literature “subservient to demands for equality, representation and a fuzzily-defined conception of ‘fairness.’” But having produced big names like Atwood, Mistry and Ondaatje, is this an entirely reasonable argument?
The Mainichi: Japanese author Ryu Murakami, known for ‘Almost Transparent Blue,’ dies at 74 – “Ryu Murakami, a Japanese author known for his Akutagawa Prize winning debut novel Almost Transparent Blue, has died” aged 74.
Home: 🎤🖊️📓 Me & My Desk: Marina Hyde – “Marina Hyde is very, very funny and very, very clever, a lethal combination. Until about two weeks ago, she was Britain’s best and most fearsome (also fearless) newspaper columnist. Now she has migrated her work to a new platform […], thereby turning herself into a whole online ecosystem.” India Knight, a UK-based author and journalist, thoroughly enjoys prying into “other writers’ work routines and work environments.” In this 18th instalment of the series, she learns that Hyde has a penchant for black Uniball Eye broad-tip pens and crocodile-finish Smythson Panama notebooks of varying colours.
Insufferable Bastards: 🗣️🤬 What Makes a Cliché? – “In 2012, Nigel Fountain published a wan little coffee table book called Clichés: Avoid Them Like the Plague” – described here as a 190-page publication detailing “aphorisms and bromides, with an amusing snapshot history for each, detailing where the phrase came from and how long […] it’s been around.” Fountain, we are told, wrote “under the common assumption, […] that clichés were definitely to be avoided.” However, in a review of this book, a certain Hephzibah Anderson strongly “defended [the] poor friendless cliché,” setting off a still-ongoing war of words between “earthy” Andersonians and “uptight” Fountainites. “Blood has been shed over this ever since”, says the Literarian.
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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
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