Book binge…

The clock struck midnight on 31/12/17 and I wrote down my intentions for the year following through with my “Write it down and make it happen mantra”. One of those intentions was to challenge myself and find out how many books I would read in one month. This was an upgrade to the previous year’s plan which I had truly accomplished of reading a book a month. By the end of 2017, I had read 30+ books of many different genres so I thought I would get a great start to the year and see if I could read more than 4 books for the month of January. Well, I am pleased to say I managed to read 8 books in the month of January, a record I am not sure I will ever beat with work back in full force and without the long commute to work I used to have. This count excludes the multiple books I have been reading on repeat for the little one or the Losika Writes books we have just published.

I thought I would do a quick review of each book and rate it to complete my book binge month.

How to break your own heart- Maggie Alderson

This is a chick flick kind of book about a lady who has been married for 15yrs and then finally realising that despite never actually discussing parenthood with her husband, she is really keen to have a child. She is sick of the “missionary sex once a week with a condom” routine her husband has developed and seems content with. The book explores the people who come into her life as she tries to assert herself in her marriage.

3 stars for light-hearted reading but not much substance although I don’t think it was meant to be a book about substance

Mad about the Boy- Maggie Alderson

This is a chick flick book about a couple and their toddler son who migrate from Europe to Australia only for the man of the house to declare that he has been queer all along and would like to move in with his boyfriend. The book then follows the deserted wife as she tries to get her mojo back by jumping in bed with some guy she met at the gym.

2 stars- this book just got weirder and weirder as you read and one minute I was about to stop reading, but I had to finish the book. From the criminal investigations, the gay purple haired uncle and the bookstore antics, I felt there was too much going on.

Don’t Bitch, Just Get Rich- Toney Fitzgerald

This book is about changing your perspective about “what the universe has dealt you and getting on with life”. There are 7 people who enroll for a class through which they discover why their lives are stuck in a rut and what they can do to change things

4 stars- this book highlighted to me that we are all given 365 days a year during which we can choose to wallow in despair about the hand the universe has given to us, or we can choose to work towards something positive.

Hush Little Baby- Joana Barnard

This book is about a little baby who is found to have a broken arm and everyone in the home has something to hide. He is then taken out of his parents’ house as investigations on whether this is a case of child abuse occur and things start to unravel.

3 stars for the let down of an ending after setting up the story for all ¾ of the book only for the ending to leave you wondering what the? Is that it?

Secret Keeping for Beginners- Maggie Alderson

This is another chick flick book reinforcing that “all that glitters is not gold.” It is about a family of sisters who all have little secrets of their own they are not ready to divulge to each other whilst all putting up a façade that they all have their shit in order. Eventually, the secret longing for another man, the queer secret of one of the sisters and the true extent of how broke and in need of help the other sister is, takes a toll on the family and they have to come clean to each other.

3 stars for the light-hearted reading and true illustration that no family is “perfect”.

Bush Doctors- Annabelle Baryley

This is a collection of reflection stories of doctors that are practicing medicine in rural and remote Australia and how everyone started on their journey to become doctors as well as how they ended up doing rural medicine.

4 stars for the enjoyable book and insight into how people choose their career path and how great a role chance plays into who we eventually become.

Leaving home- Jodi Picoult

This is the shortest book of the lot. Basically, it is a compilation of short stories about transitioning from home ie leaving for college or burying a child.

3 stars for the beautifully written stories, however, as they are all short stories, by the time you get into the meat of the story it is then quickly finished.

Leaving time- Jodi Picoult

Now Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors and her book Small Great Things is one of my favourite all-time books. This book, however, is a confused mish-mash of ideas and a great disappointment. Parts of the book are a documentary about elephants of Botswana, my birth country, a book about a young girl looking for her mother, a psychic trying to get her mojo back and a private investigator who is trying to solve a cold case. At the end of it, I was tired of the storyline as I felt it kept switching from one to another.

2.5 stars- a great disappointment by a great author

Pants on Fire- Maggie Alderson

This is a story about a young lady who runs away from a cheating fiancé to try and start a new life in Sydney, Australia. She is immediately thrust into a very fast lifestyle of queer mates, loose sexual relations, drinking and drug use and eventually gets spat out after the merri-go- round ends.

3 stars- I guess it’s about a lifestyle I would never be interested it so I really could not relate.

The Scent of You- Maggie Alderson

This is a book about a perfume blogger who sees and experiences the world through her sense of smell. Her husband moves out of home under mysterious circumstances only to be found out that he has been going to work as usual and living not too far from home. The book then follows lady of the house who smells her way to another man’s arms and all the challenges she faces as she transitions to being a ready to mingle single mother.

3.5 stars for the perfume recommendations at each chapter and for the education about the making of perfume.

On closer inspection, the books I read for the month of January were light-hearted chick flick type of books and I suppose they reflect the season and mood I was having at the time. With everything else being hectic, sometimes you just want to get lost in a silly, frivolous book and escape into its pages and I must say, I really cherished reading each book although admittedly some were more enjoyable than others.

I challenge you to try and find out how many books you can read in a month too…

 

*Images from Google

 

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Introducing Losika Writes

A while ago, I wrote a blog entry about ” Write it down and make it happen “ This was about how important it is to make your intentions known to the universe and working hard to make those intentions a reality.

Well, we have been working hard on one of those many “intentions”, hence the sporadic blog writing, and it is with great pleasure that I now let you in on a little secret…

Inspired by our son Losika, we have developed a collection of children’s picture books, some of which are bilingual (Tswana/English, Ndebele/English) to help in passing down our beautiful language to the next generation.

We are proud of the quality product and hope that you enjoy reading the books, as much as we have enjoyed creating the collection. We are continuously working to add to the collection and look forward to your support…

Head to Losika Writes and use discount code #LAUNCH to get a 20% discount on all the books…

Expectations…

I have recently moved into a new neighbourhood and I must acknowledge that I might have set up really high expectations of my neighbours, all of which have spectacularly failed. I thought I would write down what I thought would happen so that at least the universe can digest my crazy thoughts and maybe one of my potential neighbours might read this and do the needful. Despite not moving into a beach neighbourhood, I had this picture in my head of moving into a Home and Away-esque neighbourhood. Sadly, the reality was far from my expectations.

I imagined coming with the moving truck and parking in the driveway and having all our neighbours coming out of their houses like a mob squad to each help with unloading the truck. After quickly sorting the offloading, each family would then invite us to their place for cupcakes and tea only to then realise we couldn’t visit all of them on the one day. They would then come up with a roster as to whose house we would visit and when and we would diligently attend each of the 13 houses on our street to get to know each neighbour better finishing off with a massive “Welcome to our street” party where we would be the guests of honour. After those 2 weeks we would have quickly gone on to have a meeting as to what the street was doing for the Halloween parade and after that go into organising the annual Christmas street party. All the grandparents on the street would be happy to dote on little Mr L and allow us to have date night more regularly as we would come home to find that he was picked up from school, had had a bath and dinner and spending the night at William’s house at number 12. Occasionally we would also have a few kids over at our place to share the care duties and birthday parties, street garage sales would be massive! Okay let me stop before you report me as being a bit special…

The reality of our new street, however, is that I have waved hello to a few people and that is it… No cupcakes, parties or anything for that matter. We even bought candy for Halloween and no one knocked on our door. I will have to try to introduce myself to my neighbours eventually but for now, I am just building my courage up and still crossing fingers that some part of my wild imagination can be made a reality.

*Actual names of my neighbours may be used in this post. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of them

*Imagefrom boredpanda.com

From the hood…

I just completed Trevor Noah’s “Born a crime” semi-autobiography and thought I would pen something down about it. When it finished, it truly felt like I was saying goodbye to a friend that I had come to know very fondly during the past few days. If you have read my previous blogs, you know how I love audiobooks and how they allow me to multitask and this one was certainly a great accompaniment to the recent transition of my life and will forever remain one my of my great reads.

Trevor, yes, we are now on a first name basis, is someone who has always seemed to be different and far removed from the kind of life I grew up in. He is currently hosting one of America’s famous late-night shows and when he was introduced in that role, I thought that was another notch that would seal our differences. Here he is now, being famous, being a millionaire etc and here I was, not being famous and certainly not a millionaire… yet. But this book gave me a glimpse of the humble beginnings he comes from and what a transformation he has made to be where he is today. Some of his early stages are somewhat like mine, not the having the white father bit or growing up during apartheid South Africa bit obviously but a lot more than I would have known had I not read the book.

Growing up in Gaborone West, G-West/G wa-wa as it is colloquially called, I can appreciate when he says he grew up in the hood. My hood had everything his hood had.

• No tarred road which meant cleaning off the dust from the house every morning only for some hoon undo all your hard work by the evening.
• Those guys who wake up to sit on the side of the road when you are going to school and you find them in the same spot on your return home
• That guy who is the hood mechanic, who has a few scrap cars in various states of repair cluttering the yard and occasionally spilling onto the side of the road
• Being sent off to buy half a loaf of bread at the neighbourhood tuckshop, which Australians call a milk bar, which was a room in someone’s house that was converted from a bedroom to a shop by installing shelves and having a large sign next to the window. My mother eventually converted our garage into one of the tuckshops which sold simple groceries and progressively added beer and braai, otherwise called BBQ, to what was on offer to its patrons. This obviously attracted a few interesting characters and we could sit at the back of the house and listen to never-ending stories about the hood.
• I was one of the girls he talks about who was essentially instructed to spend all my after-school time indoors, doing chores and studying and would get a serious hiding if ever my sister and I sneaked out and got found out.
• My mother left her teaching job to get a better-paying employment as she wanted my sister and I to attend private school despite us coming from the hood. Having been part of the public-school system, she wanted different for her children.
• There was a very famous cannabis dealer at the end our street and his place was fondly called HQ by those in the know. It was not astonishing to see the celebrities of back in the day, chilling outside the premises drinking or smoking joints as I made my way home from school.

When you grow up in the hood but then experience a totally different life compared to the average hood resident, it can be very tempting to try and shake off that part of your past. I remember battling with that part of my identity in high school where I knew no one who came from the hood like me. I have however, through passage of time, learnt to look back with fondness at my history and those beginnings I came from. I even had part of our wedding ceremony in the hood, where the whole neighbourhood was invited and we sure did have a blast. Hearing Trevor recount his memories of growing up in the hood with such affection, the laugh out loud moments of his cheekiness and the overall book made my day and allow me to proudly say that I am from the hood and glad Trevor and I somewhat share that history.

*Image from Google