Footnotes, August 2023: 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.
- The author embracing AI to help write novels – and why he’s not worried about it taking his job …
- … And the 10,000 authors who have joined together to request control over how AI utilises their work.
- It has just been revealed that George Bernard Shaw set lawyers on DC Comics after their publication of the comic book Superman in 1939, concerning his 1903 play Man And Superman.
- This month marks the 50th anniversary of the ‘Pots and Pans Protest’, a student uprising in Rhodesia that had lasting consequences for Zimbabwean literature. Author and poet Musaemura Zimunya, a key protagonist, remembers.
- As fighter jets circle Sandton, 25+ Essential Books for a Broader Understanding of China.
- Why do old books smell so good? The distinctive scent comes from volatile organic compounds like benzaldehyde, vanillin and ethylbenzene released as the materials decay over time. Yum.
- When Naomi Klein realised people regularly confused her with Covid conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, she went down a rabbit hole – and wrote a book.
- Jordan Peterson’s latest book cover quoted a line from the Times saying it was ‘a philosophy of the meaning of life’ – but it didn’t mention that the review described that philosophy as ‘bonkers’.
- What is it about Terry Pratchett‘s books that make them so difficult to adapt to the screen?
- ‘She was a beautiful woman; more specifically she was the kind of beautiful woman who had an hourlong skincare routine that made her look either ethereal or like a glazed donut, depending on how attracted to her you were.’ The 2023 Bulwer-Lytton ‘Terrible Opening Lines’ contest winners have been announced.
- ‘My mother planned her own death for a long time. Why didn’t I believe her?’
- ‘This power is reaching a natural end’: Michael Wolff’s new book predicts the fall of Fox News.
- And finally, the shortlists for the annual University of Johannesburg Prizes for South African Writing in English have been announced.
Header image: Superman #1, 1939
Categories Fiction International Lifestyle Non-fiction South Africa
Tags Footnotes South Africa
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