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 month. Browse and enjoy!

• Gotta kick off with the first excerpt on the non-dark web of The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale; the first review of the book – by Michiko Kakatuni, no less!; and the first supply chain stuff up, which saw some customers getting the book well in advance of its 10 September embargo date.
• Since Nobel literature laureate Toni Morrison passed away last month, there have been dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of tributes and obituaries, but here are a few you might have missed, by Mapule Mohulatsi, AJ Verdelle and a bevy of writers at New Frame, including TO Molefe and Mohale Mashigo.
• You want excerpts? We got excerpts! Of Jonny Steinberg’s new book, One Day in Bethlehem; Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng’s A Guide to Sexual Health and Pleasure; and These are the Things that Sit with Us, edited by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Friederike Bubenzer and Marietjie Oelofsen.
• Did you know? Israel’s national library has added a batch of Franz Kafka’s letters to its collection, ‘ending more than a decade of legal wrangling between Israel and Germany over the author’s legacy’. Sounds Kafkaesque.
• RIP Richard Booth, aka as the King of Hay – he’s the bloke who made Hay-on-Wye, Wales, the ‘booktown’ it is today. Here’s an obit.
• Melinda Ferguson, author of the bestselling memoir Smacked – and now a successful publisher in her own right – looks back on twenty years of being clean and sober.

• Find our previous Footnotes here.

Categories Fiction International

Tags A Guide to Sexual Health and Pleasure AJ Verdelle Dr T Footnotes Friederike Bubenzer Jonny Steinberg Mapule Mohulatsi Margaret Atwood Marietjie Oelofsen Mohale Mashigo One Day in Bethlehem Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela The Handmaid's Tale The Testaments These Are the Things That Sit With Us Toni Morrison