By Ben Williams, Sunday Times books editor
Although books are made for all seasons, they come and go like the weather. Here are some currently affecting the barometric pressure in your area.
Monday: Partly cloudy with a chance of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. In a time of double-trouble economic bubbles, this 19th-century classic on our collective “seasons of excitement and restlessness” is making a comeback. Cautionary tales abound in this book — best you read it.
Tuesday: Scattered thundershowers and The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. Dossier on the author: Malaysian, lives in Cape Town, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his first novel, won the Man Asian Literary Award for this one; prefaced it, as he always does, with a dedication in Afrikaans. The gentleman is going places. You need to tag along.
Wednesday: Clear and sunny. Anyone for The Inner Game of Tennis by W Timothy Gallwey? It’s not just athletes who suffer from “lapses of concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation”, after all. Recommended for those who want to perform better when doing the things that matter to them most. Writers, please report to your eReaders and download this book. Unlike serve and volley, it has never gone out of style.
Thursday: Winds easing but turning cold in the southeast with Left Over, Kobus Moolman’s new collection of poetry. The poems “slow time down to a crawl and hold a magnifying glass to the minute details that make up a full human life” (Kayla Roux). Moolman is published by local indie imprint Dye Hard Press. To both we say: Long live, long live!
Friday: Clouds will thicken from the northeast, just like the plot around Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling. The crime novel received critical acclaim but few sales when it was published in April. That all changed when its true author was revealed — with the help of authorship identification software — as JK Rowling. She had “hoped to keep this secret a little longer”. She forgot to use the Fidelius Charm.
Saturday: Gales around the coast, blowing in The Twelve by Justin Cronin, which is, according to an impeccable local source, “fast-paced and riveting”. The Twelve and its predecessor, The Passage — each weighing in at 700-plus pages — are starting to gain notice in South Africa. They’re postapocalyptic, they’re vampire-y, they’re going to keep you up at night later than the box set of Grey’s Anatomy.
Sunday: Frost, mist and a risk of icy patches, clearing later in the day. Perfect weather for late-morning coffee and the Sunday Times book pages. In August, this column will be taken up by four women, starting with the irrepressible Helen Moffett, who writes about the time she went viral as a result of her epic blog post “Take Your Women’s Day and Shove It”. Till September, then, good reader. Make the most you can of winter’s remaining nights: light up the darkness with the flint and tinder inside a good book.
books@sundaytimes.co.za @benrwms
Book details
- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay
EAN: 9781607960744
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- The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
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EAN: 9781905802623
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- The Inner Game of Tennis by W Timothy Gallwey
EAN: 9780330295130
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- The Cuckoo’s Calling by JK Rowling
EAN: 9781408704004
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- Left Over by Kobus Moolman
EAN: 9780986998225
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- The Twelve by Justin Cronin
EAN: 9780752883335
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