A Christmas list to make readers drool

ANYONE who has walked into a bookstore to buy Christmas presents knows that you will fork out far less than you would for going to France to watch rugby. But not much less either. The era of sampling and abandoning books is over. You want value for your money.

This week, I want to make a few suggestions. Like any shrewd reviewer, I know that tastes differ. Just read between the lines. I have yet to read some, but I include them because the consensus seems to be that these books might bring about world peace.

Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake by various authors

Introduction by Bee Wilson. You should know that this book's title was not randomly chosen. Plath's tragic end makes us forget that she kept a record of what she cooked. That's how we know she made her tomato soup cake on the day she wrote “Death & Co". She's an interesting cook; one would try out her dish with anticipation. But this book is meant for those who can use their imagination to cook and are wise enough not to always follow the authors' lead.

The contributions are by Joan Didion, Agatha Christie, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Daphne du Maurier, Christopher Isherwood, George Orwell, and many more from a previous era but today's writers are largely absent. Now, I'm not going to mention names, the judgment is yours, but some horrific recipes are included. Picture this: Steak and fried bananas? No fun on a plate. A few from the older guard don't disgrace the writers' gang. I'll definitely try to make Rosamond Lehmann's shepherd's pie (who would have thought her secret weapon was orange peel?), and Nora Ephron's recipes are always doable and delicious. But at best this book is destined for the Christmas stockings of those who can occasionally enjoy the embarrassment of others.

Sylvia Plath's Tomato Soup Cake (several authors) is published by Faber & Faber and costs $13.30 (~R237) at Amazon. 

Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE by Christopher Ehret

Ignore everything that has happened in Africa since 1960. The focus is on the clues found on the continent itself; it tells a story of so many eras that Ehret rightly notes we need to stop thinking in terms of “civilisations". His instrument of measurement is centralised societies whose communities have been able to stratify themselves, and have evolved towards the formation of towns and cities.

This book was published in 2023 but is only now hitting our shores. I am reading it now and am amazed by what a study like this reveals about the agrarian foundations of human development.

Christopher Ehret's Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE is published by Princeton University Press and costs $19.95 (~R356) at Amazon.

Holmes and Moriarty by Gareth Rubin

Rubin (The Turnglass, The Winter Agent, Liberation Square) has received permission from the guards of Conan Doyle's intellectual property to write a new “official" Sherlock Holmes novel. His previous novels established him as a stylish, somewhat old-fashioned writer with a particularly modern imagination. That's why I can't wait to start reading.

Who would ever have thought that Sherlock Holmes and Prof. James Moriarty would collaborate in solving a mystery?

Gareth Rubin's Holmes and Moriarty is published by Simon & Schuster UK and costs R282.42 at Amazon SA.

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The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

I'm always grateful that I don't have to write the advertising copy for Murakami's books. How do you capture something in words that refuses to become clear even with the reading of the story? This time, the advertising man delivers with “a parable for these strange times" to describe a quest that is at the same time a love story.

I'm only a chapter into the reading – but I have put it aside for now. The lazy week after Christmas is Murakami Days. Then The City and Its Uncertain Walls will go down well and wash through my mind, every enchanting page of it.

Haruki Murakami's The City and Its Uncertain Walls is published by Harvill Secker and costs R655 at Amazon SA.

♦ VWB ♦

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