Footnotes, October 2019: Book links from around the web

At The Reading List, we’re trainspotters when it comes to interesting book links, and here are a number that caught our eye over the last month. Browse and enjoy!

Starting with banned books. You wan’t ’em? We got ’em. It was banned books week in the US a few weeks ago, and CNN has the 11 ‘most challenged’ titles of the year – including the likes of Captain Underpants (!). Sies, Americans!
In reviews, Lawson Naidoo takes a look at Lawfare by Michelle le Roux and Dennis Davis; Sam Jordison reviews the ‘agonisingly meta but fun’ The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas by Daniel James; and David Runciman reviews a certain David Cameron’s memoir For the Record, and there are fireworks (the piece is called ‘His Fucking Referendum’, for one, and its opening line is ‘Are you a team player or are you a wanker?’)
Zadie Smith is outchea defending fiction and we’re 100% here for it
The Wall Street Journal asks the rather tired question, Does the book have a future? Erm, yes.
It’s the London Review of Books’ 40th birthday, and so we’re spreading the link love – here’s another review from the LRB’s anniversary edition, on top of the Runciman one above, by Patricia Lockwood on the novels of John Updike, which starts: “I was hired as an assassin. You don’t bring in a 37-year-old woman to review John Updike in the year of our Lord 2019 unless you’re hoping to see blood on the ceiling.” Tea, anyone?
Finally, steel yourself – no really – and read about the imminent end of the world. It’s not strictly books, but it’s important, in terms of maintaining the requisite level of moment-to-moment gut-wrenching despair. Bonus: Leonard Cohen features. The only consolation is that it’s not your fault, dear reader.
Actually, we can’t leave you on that link. Hey look, it’s #bookstagram!