Book of the Month

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

by Bill Bryson

In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything so hugely enjoyable and well received, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live. He was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history often really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business – eating, sleeping and merely endeavouring to get more comfortable. And that most of the key discoveries for humankind can be found in the very fabric of the houses in which we live. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way he did a prodigious amount of research on the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets; and the brilliant, creative and often eccentric minds behind them. This is a delightful and engaging read, surprisingly page-turning, and wonderful comfort reading for the cold winter – and, as he discovers,  though there may seem to be nothing as unremarkable as our domestic lives, there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement – and even a little danger – lurking in the corners of every home.

“Enchanting…a book about reinventing the ordinary, and finding the extraordinary in the humdrum business of living…Bryson tackled science in his brilliant A Short History of Nearly Everything. This new book could as easily be categorised as ‘a short history of nearly everything else’…extraordinarily entertaining.”                 The Times

Celebrating The Orange Prize with the Book Lounge and Book Promotions

We have 3 copies of this year’s winner – The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver – to give to 3 lucky winners. Just email us on booklounge@gmail.com to be entered in the draw on August 12th.

“Every few years, you read a book that makes everything else in life seem unimportant … Tender, tragic, always compelling.”           Independent on Sunday

“Breathtaking…dazzling…Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence.”           New York Times Book Review

“I was both smiling and crying when I reached The Lacuna’s conclusion … A novel worth waiting a decade for.”           Literary Review

A Feast of Stories

Tooth and Nailed

by Sarah Lotz

Georgie Allen – Cape Town’s most down-at-heel lawyer – is back, and this time he’s…Well, actually, he’s doing just fine. That is if fine can be classified as taking on a case for a promiscuous professor who may or may not have murdered one of his students, dealing with South Africa’s first gay divorce, and coping with feelings of inadequacy thanks to the hotshot attorney he’s hired to pick up the slack at his office.

Border Songs

by Jim Lynch

Brandon Vanderkool thinks in pictures; he used to think everyone did. Six-foot-eight and dyslexic, he is not an obvious candidate for the Border Patrol, which polices the frontier between the United States and Canada, but somehow, as he ambles round the forest bird-watching, he seems to stumble upon every illegal immigrant and drug trafficker in the area. Meanwhile, his father is dealing with diseased dairy cows, his mother battles encroaching dementia, and their neighbour’s daughter Madeline flirts with the cannabis underworld…Border Songs is an extraordinary love story and a gently satirical celebration of the coincidental and the miraculous.

In the Company of Angels

by Thomas E Kennedy

“How much of a survivor, in fact, survives? How much must remain of a survivor for him also to be called a man? You tell me to remember. All over again. To remember. Perhaps there is nothing left there, doctor. Perhaps it is all gone.”

Trickster City

edited by Shveta Sarda

Trickster City is an extraordinary composite of writings on Delhi by a group of young people who have sustained, over several years, among themselves and others around them, a relationship of conversing about the city. This collection chronicles the loss of home and livelihood through urban eviction; encounters with the agencies of the state; love stories gone awry; the fragility of relationships; and the sustained effort to build life in anticipation of beauty and pleasure. The writers draw from experiences and events, fiction and documentary, and portray an image of the city that is rare and unusual. There is a yearning in their writings for the expression of the poetic alongside the harshness of everyday existence. Trickster is a playful meander in search of a new language that expresses the profound uncertainties and delicately realised joys of urban life.

“Trickster City is a groundbreaking collection of writings about the South Asian city, its authors so free in their intelligence and imagination that they put conventional, pious analysis to shame and demonstrate, ultimately, that even the most pressing material circumstances can never constrain the kind of intelligence that lives in them.”                                Rana Dasgupta

Tell All

by Chuck Palahniuk

Tell-All is many things: a Sunset Boulevard-inflected homage to Old Hollywood when grand dames like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost. It is a Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama full of big gestures and muted psychic torment. It is a veritable Tourette’s Syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list. It is a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond. Our narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine ‘Miss Kathie’ Kenton, a star of the wattage of Elizabeth Taylor and the emotional torments of Judy Garland. The survivor of multiple marriages, career comebacks and cosmetic surgeries, Miss Kathie lives the way legends should. But danger lurks when gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III arrives and worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart and boudoir. Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written his celebrity tell-all memoir and that it foretells her death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman-penned World War II musical extravaganza Unconditional Surrender, in which Miss Kathie portrays Lily defeating Japanese forces from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans – and for posterity. A dark reimagining of All About Eve and an hilarious assault on celebrity, Tell-All is vintage Palahniuk.

Our Tragic Universe

by Scarlett Thomas

Can a story save your life?

Learning to Lose

David Trueba

Set in contemporary Madrid against the backdrop of its congested and contested streets, this novel weaves together the stories of three generations of a Spanish family and a talented young footballer just arrived from Buenos Aires. The novel opens with a series of dramatic events – a violent murder, a traffic accident, and the discovery of an illness – that sends each family member swerving off in an unexpected direction. Guilt, purity, the search for happiness, love and, above all, survival form the spider’s web which binds the characters together and holds the reader fast.

Secrets of Eden

by Chris Bohjalian

“There,” says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism. Twelve hours later, she suffers a violent death at the hands of her husband who then shoots himself. But when the medical examiner autopsies the two bodies, what appeared to be a straightforward case of domestic abuse, turns out to be far more complex. Given the angle of the bullet and the amount of blood spattered around the room, he can only conclude that someone other than George Hayward fired the gun. Told through the eyes of four narrators, Secrets of Eden is full of twists and turns, making you question the innocence of each character. Stephen Drew goes first and wins our trust as he draws us into his world, describing his shock at the violence that hit this small, sleepy town, and his sudden loss of faith which ultimately will make him flee. But Catherine Benincasa, the tough State Attorney, has her suspicions about Drew. Following is Heather Laurent, whose appearance in the town on the day after the killings is curious in itself; she is a bestselling author of national fame, far removed from this local community. And yet she herself lost her parents in similar circumstances and easily identifies with Alice’s 15-year-old daughter, Katie, who was safely at a rock concert with her best friend the evening her parents died, well away from the killer’s reach…

Short Stories of the Month

Homing

by Henrietta Rose-Innes

Just a glimpse in the life of someone else, a peek through a curtained window, a moment of spoken truth, this is a short story. Henrietta Rose-Innes’s long overdue collection of short stories, Homing, is a first class tribute to this genre of writing. The stories are all written with a tender pen and that bit of caution that one encounters in later life when you know that all dreams don’t come true exactly as you wished. Henrietta is indeed a wordsmith, the reader can almost sense the long debates she must have with herself to find just the right word to fit into the moment. Her careful exploration of the spaces we call home leads the reader on paths of discovery, some more intrusive, some with delight.

Chattering Stories

by Louise Stern

Louise Stern’s stories are peopled with brave young girls, out to party, travel the world, go a little bit wild. The one thing that marks them out from their peers is that they have grown up deaf. They communicate with the outside world via a complicated mixture of sign language, lip-reading, note-scribbling, guesswork and instinct. Yet they are full of daring, ready for adventures that take them into unfamiliar places and strange, cockeyed relationships with people whose actions they observe, but never wholly understand. It is this sense of dislocation from common experience that marks out Louise Stern’s original voice. She is fully engaged in the world we recognise and share, but the way she observes it sets her apart. Her eyes are keen; she notices things we would never see; she is quick to judge, wary, suspicious and vulnerable. She experiences the world like a voyeur, always watching, yet able to retreat to an interior silence that nobody from the outside can ever reach.

“Wry, deceptively gauche, and gets better with each piece.”      Guardian

Food for Thought

The Marginal Safari

by Justin Fox

In 2004, much loved and much respected travel writer and photographer Justin Fox left Cape Town for a trip around the borders of South Africa. The trip was in part an attempt by Justin to engage with the question of what it means to be South African by investigating the borders or the margins of our country. The Marginal Safari is an account of that trip and is one of the finest pieces of non-fiction to hit the Book Lounge shelves this year. This is so much more than a travelogue – Justin’s meticulous research enables him to share fascinating snippets of the history of the various areas that he visits and his descriptions of the marginal characters that he seeks out on our edges are memorable. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in shipwrecks, lighthouses or surfing. Come to think of it, it’s required reading for anyone with any interest in what it means to be South African and indeed for anyone interested in top quality non fiction writing. The winner of the 2010 Alan Paton award for non-fiction has just been announced. The Marginal Safari is our early recommendation for the 2011 award – it’s that good!

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Reasons Why We Can’t Stop Reading Jane Austen

by Susannah Carson

This book brings together 33 writers, past and present, on just what it is about Jane Austen that continues to delight, amuse, console and provoke us. Here Jay McInerny confesses to serial crushes on most of Austen’s heroines, and celebrates her belief in true love. Amy Hecherling reveals how she transformed Emma into the hit romantic comedy Clueless, and Martin Amis muses on Pride and Prejudice as a divine comedy of love – and imagines a twenty-page sex scene between Lizzy and Darcy. Susanna Clarke shows how happiness depends on a good marriage in Austen’s world, while Fay Weldon wonders whether the ˜bad’ girls in Mansfield Park have more fun. Whether discussing Austen’s gift for comedy, why men and women respond to her differently, or why she would be an ideal dinner guest (although she wouldn’t want to come), A Truth Universally Acknowledged shows that there is much more to Jane than ladies in empire-line dresses admiring the roses – and reminds us why we still love the author who wrote about love better than anyone else in the world.

E.M. Forster: A New Life

by Wendy Moffat

One of the great mysteries in the life of E. M. Forster (1879-1970) is why, after the publication of A Passage to India in 1924, he never published another novel although he lived to be 90. In Wendy Moffat’s biography, based on a lifetime’s dedication to her subject, we gain extraordinary insights into a man with a gift for writing fiction of great humanity, warmth and humour, who realised early that the society of his time would not allow him to publish the fiction he really wanted to write. At the end of A Passage to India, his readers were left with the melancholy sight of Aziz and Fielding, friends of different races and cultures, riding out of the novel down separate paths. In real life, although frustrated at not being able to write out of his true self – it would not be until after his death that Maurice, his novel of a homosexual affair, would be published – E. M. Forster led a full and energetic life. He was a successful broadcaster, a brilliant essayist and a leading figure in Europe’s intellectual life. Moffat argues that with his support for colleagues from Lowes Dickinson and Radclyffe Hall to Christopher Isherwood and Benjamin Britten, and his quiet championing of humanistic values, he helped create the more tolerant world we now enjoy. Moffat’s achievement is not to show that Forster was homosexual (this is well known) but how deeply his ideas on individual freedom, tolerance, sexuality and love, permeated every act and aspect of his life.

“Moffat isn’t gossipy or reductive – the Forster who emerges from her work is a more human and satisfying figure then we’ve known.”          Time Magazine

The South Bank Show: The Final Cut

by Melvyn Bragg

What drives a musician to write extraordinary songs? How do writers create their worlds? How does an actor achieve greatness?

“I think we owe more to Melvyn Bragg than to any, other single person when it comes to promoting arts and culture, and increasing our pleasure in them, it’s always been pleasurable.”        P D James

“The beauty of The South Bank Show in its heyday was its eclectic mix of subjects: from the high priests and priestesses of modern art, the Francis Bacons and Germaine Greers, to popular entertainers such as Billy Connolly, Dolly Parton and Dusty Springfield.”       Telegraph

“These 25 vignettes offer intriguing comments on the film-making process and present valuable new insights into their subjects. Most have the shape and phrasing of short stories and his meetings with the gravest maestros read like mini-epics. Bragg’s book is a thesaurus of delights…”        Spectator

The Last Dance: 1936 The Year of Change

by Denys Blakeway

“The year has, indeed, begun in gloom. The King ill, and Kipling dead . . .” – so wrote the diarist Chips Channon in 1936 as George V lay on his deathbed at Buckingham Palace. The passing of two such pillars of the establishment sent tremors through the nation and heralded the ending of the old order.

1936 was to be an extraordinary year: at home social and constitutional crisis threatened, while in Europe, the dictators were on the march. It was the year of the abdication and civil war in Spain. The tectonic plates of history were shifting – Britain would never be the same again.

The Last Dance is told using the accounts of those who lived through this turbulent period. Through extracts from diaries of shopkeepers, socialites, bishops, and volunteers in Spain, and the memoirs of the unemployed, housewives and hostesses, as well as the contemporary accounts of politicians, journalists and poets, Blakeway offers a compelling and vivid account of a turning point in our nation’s story.

Norman Foster: A Life

by Deyan Sudjic

Norman Foster is a phenomenon – as an architect, but also as an individual. He is responsible for a dozen or more of the most recognisable buildings of the last thirty years. Under his driven leadership, what is now called Foster and Partners has grown to an international firm with almost 1,000 employees, building all over the world. Deyan Sudjic explores the nature of the impact that he has had on architecture, and on the contemporary city. It traces his remarkable journey from the backstreets of Manchester, the determination with which he has built a global architectural practice, and his huge creative impact on what we see around us. Norman Foster designed Beijing’s new airport, the Rossiya tower in Moscow, one of the towers at Ground Zero in Manhattan, and for a crop of new towers in London. He designed the Reichstag, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banks headquarters in London and China, the new Wembley stadium and the British Museum’s new court. Sudjic’s insightful and elegantly written biography charts the remarkable life of one of the world’s most influential architectural figures.

“It is an extraordinary story of a truly self-made man who seems a kickback to the great Victorians, the engineers and industrialists who made the Manchester he came from and conquered the world with their machines.”                Financial Times

Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us

by Ferdinand Mount

So much about the society that is now emerging in the twenty-first century bears an astonishing resemblance to the most prominent features of what we call the classical world – its institutions, its priorities, its entertainment, its physics, its sexual morality, its food, its politics, even its religion. The ways in which we live our rich and varied lives correspond – almost eerily so – to the ways in which the Greeks and Romans lived theirs. Whether we are eating and drinking, bathing or exercising or making love, pondering, admiring or enquiring, our habits of thought and action, our diversions and concentrations recreate theirs. It is as though the 1500 years after the fall of Rome had been time out from traditional ways of being human. This eye-opening book makes us look afresh at who we are and how we got here. Full Circle is not only wonderfully witty and brilliantly astute, but also profound and often disquieting. Ferdinand Mount effortlessly peels back 2000 years of history to show how much we are like the ancients, how in ways both trivial and crucial we are them and they are us.

“A readable, stylish, expansive, occasionally sharp and stimulating series of reflections ranging widely over the modern world.”                 Literary Review

“An author of obvious erudition with a great flair for anecdote.”           Guardian

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

by Anthony Bourdain

In the ten years since his classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, from Monday fish to the breadbasket conspiracy, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business”and for Anthony Bourdain.

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs…and more

by Chuck Klosterman

Reading Sex Drugs & Cocoa Puffs recently led to one of those infuriating “why did it take me so long to discover this guy?” moments. Klosterman is a WONDERFUL author, and a whipsmart social commentator, combining the analytic perspicacity of an essayist like David Foster Wallace with the streetsmarts and irony of a Dave Eggers and the stylistic panache and brio of a Lester Bangs, not to mention the irreverent wit of a PJ O’Rourke; what makes him remarkable is that his voice is nevertheless all his own. His subjects are everyday pop culture phenomena, from the Pam Anderson-Tommy Lee sex video to the Sims computer game, to soccer (which he hates, but we’ll forgive him for that) to Guns ˜n’ Roses tribute bands, but he finds surprising and thoughtful ways of mining this material for ideas and insights that only seem obvious in retrospect. Aside from Sex Drugs & Cocoa Puffs, we also now have his wonderful satirical novel Downtown Owl,  as well as the other collections of columns and essays, V4 and Eating the Dinosaur. Really, why didn’t I think to read this guy before?

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)

by William Poundstone

Why do text messages cost money while e-mails are free? How does Apple persuade people to pay for music instead of downloading it for nothing? In Priceless, bestselling author William Poundstone reveals how we perceive value and why businesses set the prices we pay. Rooted in the emerging field of behavioural decision theory, Poundstone reveals the secrets that multinationals Рincluding Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Nokia and Mercedes Рare willing to pay millions for from so-called price consultants. Revealing how conventional economics gets it all wrong, this is a brilliant expos̩ of how irrational we all are and how global businesses are taking advantage.

Poundstone dives into the latest psychological findings to investigate how and why prices are allocated. Beginning with the controversial lawsuit in which a jury awarded $2.9 million in damages to a woman who had spilled a scalding cup of McDonald’s coffee on herself, the author presents a very readable history of how we are subtly manipulated into paying more (or less) for goods and services – and the research that attempts to explain our baffling and irrational susceptibility to pricing. The idea of anchoring and adjustment – setting an arbitrary number to subconsciously drive higher or lower estimates – is just one of many research areas explained at length. The scope of the analysis – its attention to economic abstractions as well as real-world consequences – braids together theory and practice to leave an indelible impression on the reader. Grocery shopping will never seem so simple again when one realizes how much work goes into assigning a price to a box of cereal.

An Autobiography

by Agatha Christie

This is Agatha Christie’s ‘most absorbing mystery’ – her own autobiography, complete with a CD containing newly discovered recordings of Agatha dictating excerpts more than 40 years ago. Over the three decades since her death in 1976, many of Agatha Christie’s readers and reviewers have maintained that her most compelling book is probably still her least well-known. Her candid Autobiography, written mainly in the 1960s, modestly ignores the fact that Agatha had become the best-selling novelist in history and concentrates on her fascinating private life. From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, Agatha shares the details of her varied and sometimes complex life with real passion and openness.

Peter Pan’s First XI: The Extraordinary Story of J.M. Barrie’s Cricket Team

by Kevin Telfer

The creator of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, was a hugely enthusiastic cricketer of very little talent. That didn’t stop him from leading perhaps the most extraordinary amateur cricket team ever to have taken the field. Some of the twentieth century’s most famous writers including A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome and Arthur Conan Doyle, regularly turned out for Barrie’s team between 1890 and 1913. This very Edwardian vision of village cricket was only brought to an end by the First World War.

“We have an increasing need for Edwardian idylls in the 21st century, and Barrie’s idyll, which involved the creation of a cricket team who tried very hard indeed never to grow up, is lovingly recorded in Peter Pan’s First XI, by Kevin Telfer. The tragedy is that we all have to grow up, but at least we have cricket to keep the process at bay.”            The Times

Letters to My Torturer

by Houshang Asadi

Prominent Iranian journalist and political activist Houshang Asadi was used to being arrested. This time, however, was different. Little did he know, when arrested in 1983, that he would spend the next six years being brutally, mindlessly tortured by the very people he supported. His brother Hamid says “Asadi’s torturer, stopped at nothing to extract his confessions”. Asadi was a spy for Russia, for Britain, for anyone or anything. Hamid became an ambassador; Asadi a fugitive, haunted by nightmares and persisting pain. His feet lashed till lame, blindfolded, he was grilled until he could no longer phrase a simple question himself. Through these letters, Asadi recounts how his accidental friendship with a fellow prisoner, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, finally saved his life – and he confronts his torturer one last time.

25 Years of the Mail & Guardian

edited by Shaun de Waal

This full-colour, jam-packed history of South Africa’s most interesting newspaper also provides a snapshot account of 25 turbulent and exciting years of South African politics. 25 Years of the Mail & Guardian provides diverse perspectives on the paper’s and the country’s progress, some serious, some humorous; all written by top journalists and generously illustrated.

Past editors of the M&G – Anton Harber, Irwin Manoim, Philip van Niekerk, Howard Barrell, Mondi Makhanya and Ferial Haffajee – tell the story of this iconic paper by reflecting on the pressures and the triumphs of the past, including bannings, court battles and financial problems. Current editor Nic Dawes discusses the state of South African media and how being critical of the government today is both different and the same as in the in the darkest days of the past. The story of the paper’s progress from a tiny ˜alternative’ paper to the successful M&G of today is set against the backdrop of a changing South Africa, from the oppressive 1980s of States of Emergency and ˜unrest’, into the time of democratising and moving up to the complex South Africa of today.

The lavishly illustrated book has sidebars written by some of the best known journalists and commentators at work today, comments from long-time readers, and a fascinating section called Where are they now?, updating readers on the current status of people featured in the M&G. A front-page picture of Firoz Cachalia being dragged off by the police in the late 1980s is for instance juxtaposed with a picture of him as Gauteng MEC for security and leader of the police, showing just how much South Africa has changed.

Red Card: The Very Best of Hayibo.com

This is it. Red Card is the best of the best from Hayibo.com. In print. On the page. In your own hands. Take a breath. Take a break. Have a laugh. Fresh, irreverent, topical news that’ll tickle your twisted South African funny bone.

“Instant millionaire, Julius Malema, says his last few tax returns are not available for scrutiny because the dog ate them. Meanwhile he has accused a reporter of faking his signature, despite testimony from skeptical forensic experts who say that it is almost impossible to forge a thumbprint.”

Hayibo.com is South Africa’s second best source of made up news after the SABC!

Something Different and Lovely…

Veld Sketchbook: Wildlife Portraits and Essays

by Jeff Huntly

Veld Sketchbook is a collection of some of the finest paintings by Jeff Huntly, renowned natural history painter and popular columnist for over 30 years. Thoughtfully compiled and exquisitely presented, this collection brings together not only some of his best wildlife portraits over the years, but also the text from his regular column of the same name – sometimes witty, sometimes poignant, always captivating. Abundant in both colour and sensitivity, the pieces presented here are a visual and intellectual celebration of the animals, flowers, plants and trees that make up the colourful face of the southern African landscape.

The Wavewatcher’s Companion

by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

One bright February afternoon, on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting and started watching the waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, and decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don’t just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us, and our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of our hearts, to the movement of food through our digestive tracts and of signals across our brains, waves are the transport systems of our bodies. Everything we see and hear reaches us via light and sound waves, and our information age is reliant on the microwaves and infrared waves used by the telephone and internet infrastructure. From shockwaves unleashed by explosions to torsional waves that cause suspension bridges to collapse, from sonar waves that allow submarines to ‘see’ with sound to Mexican waves that sweep through stadium crowds…there were waves, it seemed, wherever Gavin looked. But what, he wondered, could they all have in common with ones we splash around in on holiday? By the time he made the ultimate surfer’s pilgrimage to Hawaii, Gavin had become a world-class wavewatcher, although he was still rubbish at surfing. And, while this fascinating, funny book may not teach you how to ride the waves, it will show you how to tune into the shapes, colours and forms of life’s many undulations.

Reading Magic

by Mem Fox

At the Book Lounge we obviously believe in the magic of reading aloud. We have authors reading aloud to us from their new works at launches, we have poets read their words of wonder and on Saturday mornings we have our regular story time slot for the young ones. Mem Fox is one of Australia’s most loved children’s authors (she wrote the wonderful Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes) and in Australia she is known as ˜the-read-aloud-woman’. In her book, Reading Magic, she emphasises the importance of having young children (from birth) listen to stories being read aloud to them. She talks of the advantages children who were read to a lot when they are younger (apparently 1000 stories within the first 6 years is a great start!) have once they go to school. She talks about the importance of first introducing them to a story as a whole and then through play (and not teaching) looking at the different words that might be repeated, etc. Her approach to reading aloud is hands-on and puts the emphasis on you, as the parent or guardian, to instill the love for reading, which will help your child throughout their lives. An inspiring practical guide book for all who believe in reading magic.

An Education of Sorts

Do Try This At Home

by Punk Science

Bored during the winter? Would you like to make a fizz bang rocket or a helicopter? Then you need this very funny book packed with dozens of amazing, easy-to-do home experiments, ably demonstrated by the Science Museum’s own Punk Science comedy team. You will have lots of fun, and will learn lots about Science at the same time. Do Try This At Home is crammed with facts, jokes, big ideas and experiments. The book is full colour and illustrated with artwork and photographs. It includes a cover mounted DVD featuring the Punk Science team showing us some brilliant experiments that should NOT be done at home! The book is divided into 6 sections: Flight & Space, Light & Sound, Forces & Gravity, Energy, Chemistry, Electricity & Magnetism .

How To Speak Zombie

Like Farts: A Spotter’s Guide, this is a thoroughly useful sound, picture and word guide. It enables you to be super-prepared for that inevitable day when the world is overrun by zombies, and you just have to fit in. The book features different everyday situations in which you might need to speak zombie and gives different intonations for zombie sounds, including a large BRAINS button that you can hit if you panic. BRAINS is a useful all-purpose zombie phrase, which will get you out of any tight situation. You might want to order a latte from a zombie barista, but if you don’t say it correctly, they’ll know you’re not a zombie and try to eat you, which is why this book is so essential!

Afrikaanse Hoekie

Toeris in Hillbrow

by Andries Bezuidenhout

Andries Bezuidenhout is ‘n effense aweregse (of is dit awelinkse?) Afrikaanse ikoon. As lid van die Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes het hy gehelp om ‘n Afrikaanse teenkultuur te skep, maar as skrywer besit hy ‘n stil dog diep stem, wat melankolies maar met ‘n verbete optimisme deur die bladsye van hierdie versameling rubrieke murmureer. Soos stellig baie Afrikaners, sukkel Bezuidenhout klaarblyklik met die ambivalensie van iemand wat homself nooit heeltemaal hier kan tuisvoel nie, maar homself desnieteenstaande nêrens anders kan inprent nie. Nêrens slaan dit sterker deur as die talle stukke wat handel oor die Johannesburg wat hy met ‘n mengsel van afgryse en fassinasie bewoon nie. Baie van die rubrieke gaan dan ook oor sy pogings om die wortels wat hom aan hierdie land bind na te spoor. Van iemand wat sy brood as akademiese sosioloog verdien, sorg dit vir ‘n besonderse intieme styl, en die persoonlike invalshoeke wat hy in elke storie vind is verassend en verbasend teder. Ook besit hy ‘n groot sensitiwiteit vir landskap en die emosionele band wat hy met die land voel slaan telkens sterk deur. Hierdie is, in kort, ‘n asemrowende, aanroerende, diepsinnige versameling nadenkinge van ‘n groot intellek – en, meer belangrik – ‘n groot gees.

Winner Wena!

Congratulations to Imraan Coovadia (and his publishers Umuzi at Random House Struik) for scooping the Sunday Times Literary Award 2010 for his brilliant novel High Low In-Between.

Congratulations too to Judge Albie Sachs (and his publisher Oxford University Press) for winning the 2010 Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction for The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law.

Steve