Quite a pile of books, starting with a charming novel about the publication of James Joyce’s controversial novel Ulysses in 1919 and an English language bookshop in Paris run by Sylvia Beach. Then moving on to an interesting ‘popular science’ book about why and how we feel pain: The Painful Truth by Monty Lyman. Ann Cleves introduces her newest detective Matthew Venn (the book is already been made into a tv series) in The Long Call. The series is set in Devon. A slightly older book, In Shackleton’s Footsteps is a readable account of an expedition undertaken by author Henry Worsley in 2009 tracing the exact journey taken by Shackleton a hundred years earlier, in his second Antarctic adventure on the Nimrod in which he almost made it to the South Pole two years before Amundsen. The author parallels the two journeys in a fascinating account of hardship and leadership – which is poignant in that Worsley died a few years after this in a solo attempt to walk across Antarctica. Another journey – this one across Africa in an old Toyota Conquest – is brought entertainingly to life in My African Conquest by the ebullient 80-year old Julia Albu, also sadly deceased since completing her road trip. Lastly, Andrew Smith from UCT has written First People: The lost history of the Khoisan in which he sets out the latest research on the origins of the Bushman and Khoekhoen people of southern Africa. It’s a fascinating and readable account, but does rather suppose the reader knows a thing or two about the subject. Although the book does not delve into the political, it is quite apt at the moment as the decidedly political Goringhaicona Khoi Khoi Indigenous Traditional Council has played a big part in opposing the River Club development astride the Liesbeeck River in which Amazon’s African headquarters will reside on the grounds that the Khoisan people were not consulted.
3084 The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher
3085 The Painful Truth by Monty Lyman
3086 The Long Call by Ann Cleeves
3087 In Shackleton’s Footsteps by Henry Worsley
3088 My African Conquest by Julia Albu
3089 First People by Andrew Smith
