So many books, so little time

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the endless list of books you’d still like to read? I certainly have. But then I look back at the nearly two dozen books I devoured over the last two months, and I start to fear that I’m consuming too much literature too quickly, and that, in another two months, I might not be able to recall what each of them meant to me.

That is where I find myself in this second month of 2020. With a head filled to the brim with beautiful covers, amazing characters, story-lines, plots, history, memoires, and so much more. Of course, if I were a more disciplined person, I would first consider, contemplate and perhaps write a blog after finishing each book before plunging headlong into the next one. Yet, it’s compulsive, isn’t it? We try and fill the void left by characters who we’ve gotten to know intimately and who’ve become as familiar as friends, with the next cast as soon as possible so as to quell the separation anxiety.

A possible solution, then: I hereby swear and affirm that I will, henceforth, jot down at least a few coherent thoughts on those books that have had a profound effect on me, before diving into the next one.

Here goes:

The Tannie Maria mystery series by Sally Andrew – Sheer delight. There are three books in this series so far: Recipes for Love, The Satanic Mechanic and Death on the Limpopo. Tannie Maria is a typical “Karoo-tannie” with a voluptuous figure, a love for food, a great cook, a compassionate friend and a crime fighter of note, albeit a naive one. You are guaranteed to fall in love with her and the wonderful group of characters that surround her in this little Karoo community. I met Sally Andrew at a book launch at Book Revue with Pippa Smith and after hearing her talk about her books and the characters she created, it was a done deal to read them all, one after the other.

We are all Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler – Highly interesting, funny, analytical and chock-a-block with social commentary. Rosemary is a complicated young woman who does not talk about her family and especially not about her sister Fern or her brother who mysteriously disappeared, so that she is now an only child from, what seems to be, quite a dysfunctional family. Excellent writing that will keep you interested, intrigued and glued. I am giving away no spoilers here, but believe me it is not all what is seems.

When God was a Rabbit by Sara Winman – I loved this little book. Charming, endearing and filled with interesting and quirky characters that had me in stitches. It’s a story about growing up, about families, friendships, tragedy, loss, and the love between siblings – in fact, love in all its other forms. I am so glad I picked it up after all this time. A great read.

Simon Sebag Montefoire’s Moscow trilogy: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, won the Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year Prize and was long-listed for the Orwell Prize: the novels are published in 27 languages. I read Sashenka and One Night in Winter. Montefoire is a historian and the writer of historical works such as Stalin and Jerusalem: the Biography.

Montefoire spoke at the 2019 Franschhoek Literary festival and after his talk I rushed out to buy Sashenka, which is, like the others in this trilogy, a historical novel based on real events that happened during the warped, obscure, secretive, vindictive and highly dysfunctional Russian society under Stalin in the late 1940s. It is dark and some of the things that happened then are now downright unthinkable. But the books are, for lack of a better word, 'unputdownable'. One of my most esteemed reader friends did not like Montefoire’s style of writing at all. Yet for me, it was an extra-ordinary journey.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving – Way too big a book for me to even venture talking about. A tour de force. A masterpiece. If you like John Irving (not everyone does) you just have to pluck up the courage to tackle this one. Owen Meany is the little boy who hits a foul ball in a baseball game and kills his best friend’s mother. It’s gripping, terrifying, all encompassing, forever relevant – its John Irving.

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe – Which my son would say was my regular Holocaust fix due to my fascination with this dark period of our world’s history. This is the true story of Dita Kraus, the 13-year-old librarian of the smallest but also the most dangerous library in the world. A gripping page-turner that once again confirms the enormous tenacity and bravery of the human race under the most challenging and life-threatening of circumstances – that of being a prisoner in one of the deadly Nazi concentration camps. I was fascinated by how Dita’s understanding about the importance of books and of reading can help one escape from your harsh reality, and how this helped her to overcome all her fears in order to protect her library and herself.

The last one I have to mention here is Under a Camelthorn Tree by Kate Nichols – a memoir that is so well written and so delightful that you simple have to read it. Set around Maun, Botswana, a place I visited with my own young family on a safari many years ago and therefore strangely familiar, Kate tells her story of how she left England to raise her five children in a lion conservation camp. Kate home-schools her amazing children whose book based on their homework, The Lion Children by Angus McNeice was published in 2001 and

was inspired by their deep attachment and understanding of these animals.

But this memoir is about much more than that – Kate tackles all the issues: about surviving in the wild with young children, about motherhood, education, independence, responsibility; and the dismissal of women in the local culture. It is therefore also very topical as the memoir addresses the long-lasting effect of gender violence on not only the victim, but on family members as well and what a powerful role family love can play in overcoming trauma. Google Kate Nichols and make sure to read her book.