Books for April

  

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

 in Cape Town, South Africa

 

Escape into a good book with me. The accompanying pictures I chose happened all blue-grey, but we have a sparkling blue sky day today. Tipped back to warm mid-twenties shorts and T shirt weather.

 

Bernadine EVARISTO

Girl, woman, other

~

12 women, 12 stories. She weaves the threads tighter together with each chapter. I was immersed in this one. Amma, Yazz and Dominique. Carole, Bummi, LaTisha. Shirley, Winsome and Penelope. Megan / Morgan, Hattie and Grace.

 

Eryngium at Hampton Court 2009

Beth MILLER

The good neighbour

~

Getting to know the new neighbours - so nice after the nasty lot moved out. Intense and disturbing.

 

Good fences make good neighbours 
back in 2015

Beth MILLER

When we were sisters

~

(I found her first book later) Picking up a broken besties forever childhood friendship after life had moved on.

 

His Three Sisters hike at Kleinmond in 2018

Julietta HENDERSON

The funny thing about Norman Foreman

~

It wasn't until I held my own son for the first time that the constant, dull pressure of keeping the scar together receded. When a nurse placed that slippery, crumpled-up bundle of boy on my chest, I tightened my grip on a handful of hospital sheet as my world creaked on its axis, bumped into a comfy spot and was finally facing the right way.

~

A page turner, with gritty bits and LOL bits.

 

Memories of Loch Awe

Vincent PIENAAR

Too many tsunamis - a tale of love, light, and incidental humour

~

Set in Johannesburg. Same old daily grind (blind dates and virtual car racing) until...

 

Witbank coal fired power station 2019

Bernard MacLAVERTY

Midwinter break

~

From Scotland to Amsterdam for a midwinter break. A long marriage and the cracks are opening wider. Written with sympathy and understanding for both Gerry and Stella (who has a particular purpose in choosing Amsterdam) This book I will enjoy again one day.

~

A religion which prays, which has satisfying and beautiful rituals - like Easter...

And now the substance of the things she had hoped for had come to nothing.

~

she knew all the bus routes in the city of Glasgow that would bring her home. That was until the City Fathers decided to change the bus route numbers, all on the same day. And for months on end Glasgow folk were seen wandering around the city of Barcelona looking for Drumchapel.

 

Zurich tram in 2016

Vivian de KLERK

Not to mention

~

For crossword fans. But - warning - a deeply disturbing book - school, social workers, medical staff, and neighbours - all failed a teenage girl, and her mother. The girl's morbid obesity is enabled by her mother, but the girl is complicit. Many hard questions. While confined to bed she writes a memoir. A chapter for each clue which leads us to that answer, and she builds her own crossword. Set in small town Port Alfred on our coast, they must go to Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) to consult specialists.

~

'Wake' is an interesting word, isn't it? The opposite of sleep, the trail a boat makes as it moves through water, and the happy-sad gathering some people have after a funeral. How ironic: me lying awake here, desperately seeking sleep, enjoying the memory of watching the wake behind his boat.

 

Fleur de Passion
researching ocean microplastic in 2019

 

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Pictures by Diana and Jürg Studer

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