Thank you for winning...

More than a decade ago I had a collection of James Hadley Chase thrillers. I bought the first one (Knock, knock, Who's There?) with money that was supposedly for buying my boarding school needs.
They were not political or how-to, but you could be absorbed throughout the night...

My first thick volume, political this time, was From Union to Apartheid written by Margareth Ballinger. It took you from the time when all people in the Cape enjoyed voting rights, through the period when the Black people in South Africa were scaled thin of their few civil rights, up to the 1948 National Party victory where apartheid nuts and bolts began to be screwed tight.
My other volume, Monsoon by Wilbur Smith, is an account of adventures of sea-bound travellers which also gives a close-up of what it feels like to come face to face with pirates.

I've read Papillon, and I've read Alex Haley's Roots - an epic account of how Africans were caught and thrown into the cruel den of slavery in Europe and America. I think one African Writers Series title, America, their America, is a sentimental reference to the role played by American slave traders and masters in subjugating the being of the African soul.

There's Jack Higgin's Touch the Devil; Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country and Ngugi wa Th'iongo's Weep Not, Child.

In Lulli Callinicos' Beyond the Engeli Mountains I learn the illustrious times of comrade Oliver Tambo, highly regarded as the unifying leader of the ANC during the turbulent times under the nooze of white rule. On the day the NP won the polls in 1948, a white man spat a mouthful of saliva and sputum on Tambo's face, which he silently wiped with his handkerchief. When he passed on, the handkerchief was still kept as memorabilia, and I hope during one of our Human Rights celebrations, this handkerchief should be displayed for public viewing (it's a political treasure!).

As I sit on my desk now, I can boast having gone through Monetize Your Passion by Rich German, Talane Miedaner's Secret Laws of Attraction, and now it's Negotiation by Roy .J. Lewicki and Joseph .A. Litterer.

Thank you for reading, because a reading nation is a winning nation. Heh? A reading you and I is a winning you and I. Heh? A reading you is a winning you!

Next we meet, I'll come with practical suggestions how you and I can lay our hands on a vast array of books.

Till then, cheeerioooo!