Have you ever noticed that sometimes you need to read a certain book at a certain time? If you read it at any other time, the impact is just not the same. My Mommy is busy sorting out the Book Club’s books that need to be returned to the D.E.A.R. ladies end of May and as you can guess, she now realizes how many books she still needs to read. We’ll tell you more about the Book Club in a later post. Anyhows, one of the books  my Mommy is/was frantically trying to finish before they need to be returned to their rightful owners, is The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker. This book has been in the Book Club since early 2019 and it wa published in January 2019.   In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads […]

Greetings! We haven’t done a Wednesday Wisdom in ages. I’m convinced that is the reason for my Mommy doing all sorts of funny and crazy things lately. She needs to start enjoying the holidays now and gain some new wisdom. Like the wisdom of Marvellous Ways. Yes, that is actually someone’s name. I don’t care if it’s a fictional character, I think her name is simply, well, marvelous! It was a strange little book and my Mommy didn’t like it quite as much as When God was a Rabbit. But Marvellous’ infinite wisdom sure did earn her a place for a Wednesday Wisdom post. A Year of Marvelous Ways by Sarah Winman       Cornwall, 1947. Marvellous Ways is a ninety-year-old woman who’s lived alone in a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she’s taken to spending her days sitting on the steps of her caravan with a pair of binoculars. She’s waiting for something – she’s not sure what, but she’ll know it when she sees it. Freddy Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the war. He’s agreed to fulfil a dying friend’s last wish and hand-deliver a letter to the boy’s father in Cornwall. […]

  My Mommy has been contemplating about how to handle The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin. What an absolutely brilliant book. She spend more than 2 weeks reading this one, because she was constantly Googling all the facts. What a wonderful history lesson. “That is what historical fiction does best. It leaves the reader with the desire to know more.” Of course we know who Charles Lindbergh was and I guess somewhere we did realize that he had to be married. But just like so many other “famous heroes”, their wives were left in shadows.  How marvelous to have discovered that for a change, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wasn’t shuffed into a corner, but rather that my Mommy didn’t know her aviation history all that well. Okay, she actually knows nothing about aviation. She does know a great deal more now, thanks to this marvelous book.   When Anne Morrow, a shy college senior with hidden literary aspirations, travels to Mexico City to spend Christmas with her family, she meets Colonel Charles Lindbergh, fresh off his celebrated 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. Enthralled by Charles’s assurance and fame, Anne is certain the aviator has scarcely noticed her. But she is wrong. […]

Greetings! We haven’t done a Wednesday Wisdom post in weeks. Terrible, I know. We all need some Wisdom and it truly is just wrong to keep it for yourself. Luckily the book we share with you today, is filled with the most marvelous words of wisdom. She says it will most probably be her book of the year. It’s about a beetle. Don’t we just chase those little buggers around and squash them if they get under your feet? Apparently not. Miss Benson’s Beetle is very special and you will be ever so fortunate to meet one of of them.   It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition. She is going to travel to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty, in her unlikely pink travel suit, is not the companion Margery had in mind. And yet together they will be drawn into an adventure that will exceed every expectation. They will risk everything, break all the rules, and at the top of a red mountain, discover their best […]

It’s that time of the year. Everyone is obsessed with ghosts, vampires, zombies, pumpkins and of course – haunted houses. Are there a more well-known haunted house than Hill House? Even if you’ve never read the gothic classic by Shirley Jackson, I bet you’ve heard of it. Even more so with the hit series streaming on Netflix. I haven’t watched it yet, will get to it soon. We are slam-dunk in the middle of the Fraterfest Read-a-thon and what better time to read this novella. It was my first time reading it and I started reading in bright daylight, because I was scared the book might just go bump in the night. I ended up not being scared, but rather psychologically spooked. I strongly suspect that has been the main aim of the book for the last 60 years. It’s not about what happened, rather about what you thought and perceived. Aaaah perceptions and interpretations. Are you ever really wrong? But maybe it really was just a haunted house. Some houses are just not fit for human habitation. “It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot […]

We haven’t done a Wednesday Wisdom in a couple of weeks. Time flies by so quickly. On Sunday, I promised you that my Mommy is not done with the elephants. She is still going to talk about them for a few posts to come. Todays Wednesday Wisdom, comes from most probably the best known Afrikaans book of my Mommy’s generation. Luckily it’s been translated into English, so I can share this post with all of you. Kringe in ‘n bos was the prescribed book for Grade 11/12 for over 20 years. I’m sure there are still schools in South Africa that use this for Afrikaans first language literature studies. If you ask a large number of people, especially men, who are my Mommy’s age (ancient in cat years), what their favorite book is, they will say Kringe in ‘n bos. For some of them, it’s most probably because it’s the only book they’ve ever read. But for a read-aholic like my Mommy, it’s just one of her favorite books and truly the greatest Afrikaans book ever written.   Saul Barnard is a woodcutter with a restless soul – he wants to keep strangers away from the Forest and stop the […]