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 couple of months. Browse and enjoy!

• Read African Books has interviews with poet, healer, and co-founder of impepho press Vangile Gantso, and giant of African publishing Brian Wafawarowa, here and here.
• Yoh. If you haven’t read about it yet, April and May saw a full-blown scandal erupt around indie bookshop African Flavour Books, which closed abruptly and left writers in the lurch. The Sowetan covers (the same) Vangile Gantsho’s displeasure here, and author Zukiswa Wanner weighs in both on the bookshop and its proprietor’s fitness (or otherwise) as a literary prize judge in the M&G here.
• Daily Maverick has two juicy books articles to check out: this interview with author Ekow Duker on his new novel, Yellowbone; and this excerpt from Christo Wiese – Risk and Riches by TJ Strydom.
• Speaking of interviews and excerpts, our sister site The Johannesburg Review of Books publishes lots and lots of them, including this double feature on Masande Ntshanga, whose new novel Triangulum is making waves. Read the interview here and the excerpt here.
• Did you hear about the fellow (read: hero, pictured) who reads books while running marathons? He started off at the Two Oceans with Zakes Mda’s The Zulus of New York and next plans to read Moletlo wa Manong (Feast of the Vultures) by Sabata-mpho Mokae while running the Comrades!
• Finally, internationally: Google’s new reading app for kids, Rivet, uses loads of books from South African book startup Book Dash: ‘beautiful, progressive, African children’s stories, helping kids everywhere to learn to read’, as Arthur Attwell points out on Twitter; heard about the US state of Alabama’s ban on abortions? (Who hasn’t?) Well, a group of doughty romance writers are rising up against it by ‘putting abortion in our books’, as one says; and South Africa’s own Lauren Beukes makes a list of ’50 great thrillers by women’ – and in so doing makes us proud (again).

Photo: Marukgwane Moremogolo trains for the Comrades. Credit: the Sunday Times via Facebook.

Categories Fiction International Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

Tags Abortion African Flavour Books Alabama Book Dash Book Links Brian Wafawarowa Christo Wiese Comrades Ekow Duker Footnotes Google Lauren Beukes Marukgwane Moremogolo Masande Ntshanga Moletlo wa Manong Risk and Riches Rivet Sabata-Mpho Mokae TJ Strydom Triangulum Two Oceans Vangile Gantsho Yellowbone Zakes Mda Zukiswa Wanner Zulus of New York