Footnotes, October 2021: 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.
- Richard Osman’s follow-up to The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, has become one of the fastest-selling novels since records began.
- Book buyers, beware: international publishers have warned that new books will be in short supply for the rest of 2021.
- US streaming giant Netflix has acquired the entire catalogue of children’s author Roald Dahl, in one of its biggest content grabs ever.
- An ‘exceptionally rare’ first edition of Mary Shelley’s gothic classic Frankenstein sold for $1.17m – breaking the world auction record for a printed work by a woman.
- Game of Thrones actor Emilia Clarke has written a comic book series called M.O.M.: Mother of Madness, about a woman who gets superpowers from her period.
- Ebooks Are an Abomination by Ian Bogost. Yes, we are apparently still talking about this.
- Mandela’s secret meetings revealed – read an excerpt from Breakthrough by Mac Maharaj and Z Pallo Jordan.
- ‘A cataloging system steeped in the values and worldview of a racist, misogynistic anti-Semite’ – some librarians are still calling for the end of Dewey classification.
- Looking for something hefty to dig into? The 2021 National Book Awards longlists have been announced.
- ‘I require books to advise and to warn, not to make me feel good. You want to be enriched, not consoled.’ A treat; a new interview with Hilary Mantel.
- ‘I don’t want to kill the lady, Ma’ – read an excerpt from The Krugersdorp Cult Killings, the book that the new series Devilsdorp is based on.
- Read Booker-shortlisted novelist Deborah Levy (who was born in Johannesburg, by the way) on Simone de Beauvoir’s lost novella The Inseparables – deemed too intimate to release during her lifetime.
- Jaki Seroke’s memoir Our Land traces his life as an anti-apartheid activist, his time on Robben Island and how this affected his family life.
- Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead chats about his new novel Harlem Shuffle.
- A school board in Canada says it ‘regrets’ burning books in the name of reconciliation as part of educational programme 🤔
- Listen to Jonathan Franzen.
Image: Louis Staples on Twitter
Categories Fiction International Non-fiction South Africa
Tags Footnotes
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