BOOKS Good reads for the word people in your life
Lovely bookie ideas for the curious, poetic, creative, horn-rimmed word-guzzlers in your life.
I HEAR SHE’S A REAL BITCH BY JEN AGG
Highly recommended by that rude and lovely chef, Anthony Bourdain: a true story about the equally rude and lovely Jen Agg’s struggle to make her way in the boytjie world of Toronto’s restaurants. Smart and savage.
Because it is proudly SA and won an international gold medal in 2017,
and because widower, single parent and renowned writer JG Ballard would have a stiff glass of whisky before starting to write: ‘I used to have my first whisky at 9am, after I’d taken the children to school,’ he said, in order to shift from domesticity to writing. ‘Then I’d have a glass on the hour, every hour. I was never drunk, but I would have a glow all through the day.’
PRIESTDADDY: A MEMOIR BY PATRICIA LOCKWOOD
Patricia Lockwood’s father converted to Catholicism while watching The Exorcist on a submarine (‘all around him men in sailor suits were getting the bejesus scared out of them, and the bejesus flew into my father like a dart into a bull’s eye’). And that’s the tone of her book about their lives: irreverent and hilarious… but there is always the sense of something darker left unsaid. Really fascinating.
WHAT WE LOSE BY ZINZI CLEMMONS
The debut novel of the year, says American Vogue: Thandi, like Zinzi, is half South African (mother) and half African American (father). Raised in the US, she feels adrift. When her mother dies, she looks at identity through short, raw, heartfelt vignettes. Moving, honest and unusual.
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO BY GEORGE SAUNDERS
George Saunders’s short stories are unusual and deeply compassionate. This, his first novel, is about Abraham Lincoln mourning the death of his beloved 11-year-old son, Willie. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Bardo is the space between death and rebirth, and while Abe clings, Willie is tempted to stay… but the graveyard is full of funny and profane spirits determined to see him on to his next life. Quirky and brilliant.
THEFT BY FINDING – DIARIES 1977–2002 BY DAVID SEDARIS
David Sedaris’s essays about his life are hilarious, and the diaries he’s kept for years are the source of most of them. He ferrets away overheard comments, cultural observations and chance encounters, and these are those moments in raw form. It’s like rummaging through an attic: a total mess and a total delight.
THE RULES DO NOT APPLY BY ARIEL LEVY
‘Thinking we should get everything we want in life isn’t the thinking of a feminist, it’s the thinking of a toddler,’ says journalist Ariel Levy, who is insightful and clever, and whose remarkable life story (up to now) this is. Fierce and compelling, it’s about her realisation that competence, control and choice are very thin veneers, and easily lost.
THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE BY CHIARA BARZINI
Newly transplanted from Italy to LA, Eugenia feels as restless and experimental as the post-riots city itself. She’s a teen – she tries to fit in in various ways: clothes, gangs, drugs and, most importantly, her friendship with Deva. She’s on shaky ground (literally)… but things get rebuilt after earthquakes; maybe not quite as perfectly as before.
WE ARE NEVER MEETING IN REAL LIFE BY SAMANTHA IRBY
A hilarious, raunchy, sweary and frank collection of essays/blog posts about reality TV, race, modern dating, being fat, cats and strap-on sex. But it also covers the pain of depression, the death of parents and growing up poor. Definitely one for the stout of heart.
GOODBYE, VITAMIN BY RACHEL KHONG
Ruth’s relationship over, she goes home to her parents for the holidays. But she is 30 and feeling like a failure, her father has Alzheimer’s and she ends up staying for a year. Touching, funny and offbeat.
DARK MATTER BY BLAKE CROUCH
Unputdownable thriller: Jason wakes up in a strange world to find himself a hero for managing to come back to this world from another time and life. But which life is the real one, and what if he prefers the other one?
IQ BY JOE IDE
Sherlock Holmes will never die (thank God), and IQ is one of his most interesting incarnations. Isaiah Quintabe may be ‘Unlicensed and Undaground,’ but he is also an extremely smart, sometimes criminal investigator with a fasttalking sidekick, Dodson. They live in South Central LA, right in the thick of gangster town, where he’s the last hope for victims – or families of victims – who feel unheard by the LAPD. Original and slick: a fabulous read.
THE ARRIVAL BY SHAUN TAN
A brilliant, wordless graphic novel about the world as seen through an immigrant’s eyes – but the images have subtle shifts in what you expect to see, and you become that immigrant. It is profound.
THE BREAK BY MARIAN KEYES
Marian Keyes is genius at applying lightness to heavy issues. When Amy’s husband of 17 years asks her for a six-month Time Out from their marriage, does that mean she can also take a break? What about the kids? And what happens after the six months? Easy, witty, wise.
Best response to an invitation when you’d rather stay in and read than go out (borrowed from Phoebe, in Friends):
‘Oh, I wish I could! But I don’t want to’.