Time to get lost – and we’ve got just the right holiday reads to help you do it

Book cover of 'In the Shadow of the Springs I Saw' by Barbara Adair. (Photo: Supplied)

By Janet van Eeden

27 Dec 2023

Enlightenment or enrichment – you can choose. Not many of us want a brain workout at this time of the year, and that’s not what these books require. Instead, they’ll inform and perhaps even inspire you, or simply be a darn good read.

Non-fiction

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

A New York Times bestseller, Hari’s book investigates why people are unable to focus for any length of time. When his godson, an Elvis devotee, was nine years old, he asked Hari to take him to Graceland one day. Ten years later, the godson is a dropout and is living his life through the internet.

Hari takes him to Graceland with the proviso that he puts his phone aside. It is an impossible task and the godson still can’t focus on anything other than his phone. The author embarks on a quest to discover why society is unable to concentrate for longer than the length of a TikTok clip. He travels internationally to interview experts in the field of attention and focus.

In Silicon Valley, he learns that tech companies design platforms specifically to destroy long-term focus. In a time when multitasking is praised, we can learn to regain our ability to focus on one thing.

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Richard Green in South African Film: Forging Creative New Directions by Keyan Tomaselli and Richard Green

For any lover of film in the country, this book is a fascinating read. Green is a legendary producer in the South African film industry and his work spans more than four decades. He’s worked as a producer, line producer and first assistant director with more directors than one can count, including international greats such as director Tom Hooper, as well as Neill Blomkamp on Red Dust and District 9.

However, this book also documents his work on the New Directions project initiated by M-Net in 1994 to change the face of the previously all-white, all-male film industry. New Directions was a pivotal step in creating the filmmakers of the new democracy and Green spearheaded the process along with Bongiwe Selane and others.

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My Year of Not Getting Sh*tfaced by Pamela Powers

Powers’s book is a light-hearted but meaningful addition to my top reads. She writes a memoir about her former tendency to drink until she is sh*tfaced at every social event.

Her excessive drinking began at high school and was celebrated as a rite of passage. It subsequently became part of her “normal” life. Powers’s intimate tell-all style is endearing as she exposes her most embarrassing moments. Her decision to make a change in her drinking habits comes after a hectic Mother’s Day celebration. In the morning, Powers vaguely remembers picking a raging fight with a friend for no reason she could recall, and exhorting youngsters to drink while begging them for fags.

Mortified, Powers reassesses her relationship with alcohol. Her self-deprecating wit and brutal honesty makes this a compulsive read with laugh-out-loud moments. At its heart is a warning about how society normalises using alcohol as a social lubricant and getting sh*tfaced as socially acceptable.

Fiction

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Lost Property by Megan Choritz

Choritz’s lyrical debut novel is about Laine, a woman examining her life to find out how she arrived at where she is now. Laine has a job, a dog, and lives in her own house. She used to have a husband but doesn’t anymore. Trying to examine where things went wrong in their relationship, she sees a therapist. Nothing makes sense until a six-year-old girl, Tina, asks Laine if she can live with her. Tina is part of a multilayered household across the road where Laine senses something isn’t quite right. Laine soon finds herself more connected than she realises to Tina and her family.

Using a solipsistic style, Choritz writes “this is the part of the story where…” at the beginning of each chapter, which makes the reader aware of the tenor of what is to come.

Ultimately, Lost Property deals with the importance of belonging and being mothered well, and how much is lost when one isn’t.

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Bloomer by Anne Schlebusch

Bloomer is a delightful romp set in the unlikely world of an old-age home. Maggie has a group of friends in the Hazyview Retirement Home, who are “bowed, but not beaten”. With this line from the poem Invictus as their motto, they face the challenges of Covid lockdown by becoming a rabble-rousing group called the Boomer Zoomers. Learning to use FaceTime, WhatsApp and Zoom like millennials, they stage protests about the inhuman Covid restrictions placed on residents of old-age homes with the help of their grandchildren.

Soon their plight – being confined to single rooms, unable to see family or anyone else – becomes national news. The managers of the facility eventually adapt their rules. Along the way, Maggie finds herself with two suitors vying for her attention and reawakens her skills as an artist.

Suffice it to say, Maggie fulfils her dreams on her own terms, which makes this an inspiring and truly heart-warming read.

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In the Shadow of the Springs I Saw by Barbara Adair

This book just squeaks into the definition of fiction as Adair describes the work as ethno-fiction. It’s an ingenious look at the city of Springs, which used to be the home of rich immigrants from Europe where their Art Deco buildings took pride of place.

Adair and two of her students explore modern-day Springs where the immigrants are now largely from Africa and the buildings have become their domain. The Art Deco has lost its lustre, but Adair’s black-and-white photos of the buildings speak volumes. She loosely interviews people who live there and finds a way to imagine their life stories.

Using poetic licence, Adair “voices” the stories of the people she and her students meet, from druglords and women trying to make their way in an inhospitable world, to people working at the local KFC.

The stories and sometimes poems create an overall narrative in which the new incarnation of Springs comes alive. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.

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