Footnotes, August 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!

WhatsApp in the world of books? Find out on the new WhatsApp voice note show Read This!, hosted by The JRB and Volume.
Did you know? SA author Andie Miller (Slow Motion: Stories about Walking, 2010) had a career as a voiceover actor – and voiced Alice in a cartoon adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, no less. All episodes of the show are online, on YouTube: start here with episode one. Something for the kids!
The Enforcers: Inside Cape Town’s deadly nightclub battles lays Cape Town’s underworld bare: here’s a review, and here’s an excerpt, which entails a bizarre plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela.
‘Schadenfreude‘, a key word for understanding modern times, became part of the English lexicon in 1853. Read more about how it made the jump from Europe here.
Ocean Vuong‘s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is attracting attention. Here’s an excellent introduction to the book.
‘I want to point out, because it suddenly seems relevant, that the only ones who read my book were women.’ Here’s a terrific long read by Ayşegül Savaş on practising literary citizenship as a woman.
An epic new biography of Eric Hobsbawm, by Richard J Evans, has come out from Oxford University Press. Fresh reviews here and here.
Bring back Iris Murdoch! Issa thing.
Here are some new love letters between Saul Bellow and Bette Howland.
Bookshops as we know them were invented by a fellow called James Lackington; read more on him here.
Last, Laurent Binet charmed us all when he attended the Franschhoek Literary Festival some years back. Here’s a review of his latest, The 7th Function of Language.