Last year when I got together with some of my invisible friends (people I know via h2g2) one of them brought this book over with her from England. She's finished reading it over the weekend we were together and asked if I'd like it. Well, English books don't often just fall on my lap, and knowing that the other books in the series had been good I readily agreed and put it on my "to be read" shelf.
A terrible habit I have is buying books when I should really put them on my Amazon wish-list. This means that my "to be read" shelf is bursting at the seams and overflowing and is, frankly, a mess. I love it. In my defence, I should add, whenever I'm in the UK I tend to visit charity shops and charity book sales and stock up on anything and everything that takes my fancy. That way I get a lot more book for my buck and the charities get a donation. And I try a lot of books, subjects and authors that might never get a look-in from me.
And now on to The Double Comfort Safari Club in which Mma Ramotswe and her sidekick Mma Makutsi investigate a couple of cases: a friend who suspects her husband of having an affair; a man who is being cheated out of a house by an unscrupulous woman; a guide at a safari lodge who was kind to an American woman, now late, who has left him some money.
These books are very gentle and along the way we drink more bush tea than you could possibly shake a stick at, hear more of Mma Ramotswe's admiration for the Queen and Nelson Mandela and some homespun wisdom, Botswana style. It is an excellent read and now I am definitely going to go back and read the ones I've missed.
Reading this I was reminded yet again of the apparent incongruousness of a white, middle aged, middle class Scottish barrister being able to get inside the character of a traditionally built, female Batswana. Marvellous!
4 comments:
I'm totally with you on the charity shop front. There are three within a five minute walk of my job, and I go to one or other of them most lunchtimes. I keep buying stuff, and now have a big "to read" pile, so must rein in a bit! As I spend two hours on a train three days a week, I do get through them.
I felt the same way about Al. McC Smith's "44 Scotland Street" books - read three in quick succession and then felt they were a bit samey. Haven't tried the No 1 Detective Agency as yet.
I think that my new strategy with a series like this will be to read them with a gap of at least 6 months in between.
I'm very jealous of your close proximity to charity shops - although it's much much easier for me to get books (in English) now via the Amazon marketplace - it usually works out at EUR 3 or 4 per book including postage which is fine for me. (and one of the places that I use takes up the unsold books from charity shops and sells them on, and every year they make a substantial donation to charity which I like)
In fact this very afternoon I ordered Let's Parler Franglais - I used to love reading that column in Punch magazine while waiting at the dentist as a teenager.
I love this series. They are indeed gentle yet incredibly moving at times - they sneak up on you!
There was a TV adaptation a while back and I was really happy to see how well it was done.
Oh yes, the TV thing was good, but I wish they'd used someone a little more traditionally built.
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