At The Reading List, we’re trainspotters when it comes to interesting book links, and here are a number that caught our eye.

• Crime writer Ann Cleeves lost her laptop containing a draft of new book in a Shetland blizzard (someone tell her about the cloud!).
• Is Sally Rooney the undeniably universal millennial experience as the rest of the world claims? Chaoyang Trap interviews Na Zhong, the Simplified Chinese translator of Sally Rooney’s three novels to date, to find out.
• As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate, James Patterson is to complete an unfinished Michael Crichton book.
• According to new research by the Beckman Institute, reading for pleasure can strengthen memory in older adults.
• The 13 best literary adaptations of 2022, according to LitHub.
• The best books of 2022, according to The Guardian.
• Confessions of a celebrity children’s book ghost writer.
• Do we need literary prizes? Haruki Murakami ponders the point in his new essay collection.
• Where do books get reviewed these days? On the demise of a ‘book discussion’ culture (goodbye, Bookforum).
• The occupational hazards of the second-hand book trade.
• The murky path to becoming a New York Times bestseller explained …
• An AI-generated comic book titled Zarya of the Dawn, created using the text-to-image engine Midjourney and the first to be granted copyright in the US, has had its copyright protection revoked.
• Meanwhile, a tech worker is selling a children’s book he made using AI. And professional illustrators are pissed.
• Legally bookish: Reese Witherspoon and the boom in celebrity book clubs.
• The notoriously reclusive postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon has sold his papers and archive to the Huntington Library.
• 1984, George Orwell’s novel of dystopian repression, is topping Russian bestseller lists.

 

• Find our previous Footnotes here.

Categories Fiction International Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Footnotes