Footnotes, June 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.

Sudan’s Rare Books Library Destroyed in Fire as Civil War Ravages the Country.
‘Eat, pray, pander’: there were mixed reactions to Elizabeth Gilbert pulling her new Russia-set novel.
The Three Punctuation Rules of Cormac McCarthy (RIP), and How They All Go Back to James Joyce.
A new comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of JRR Tolkien, expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, is to be published.
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published 74 years ago this month. Take a look at its first reviews.
A wonderful interview with Barbara Kingsolver, newly minted first-ever twice-winner of the Women’s Prize.
Feast your eyes on Vladimir Nabokov’s hand-drawn map of the character-paths through Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Librarians once worried about shushing patrons. Now they have to deal with mental health episodes, the homelessness crisis, and random violence.
What to Do If Your House is Overflowing with Books!
A Maltese conservator discovers a fragment of the ‘oldest-known book in the world’.
“Another murder. I hate these crimes,” said Inspector Jack Slaten. He hated them even more than he hated other crimes. Presenting the winners of the Lyttle Lytton contest, where people compete to write the worst first sentence of the worst imaginary novel.
And finally, Isaac Asimov’s disturbing message for 21st-century humankind.

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