Verdict: carrot
According to reviewer Sello S Alcock, Black Jerusalem is filled with fascinating anecdotes from Ntshingila’s Herdbuoy years, but it is only “half-baked”. This is not, however, to call it a stick:
This a great snack-read, especially in between all that serious daily consumption of newspapers and … well, blogs.
It is filled with nuggets of interesting stories, mostly from the writer’s exploits as one of three founding fathers of South Africa’s first black-owned advertising agency: Herdbuoys.
The tales include sheer bravado — typical of the hero’s journey related by a township storyteller — and testosterone-fuelled defiance, such as the time Happy Ntshingila and co-founders Dimape Serenyane and Peter Vundla told global giant Coca-Cola it never made them and therefore could never break them.
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Verdict: synopsis = carrot
The Weekender, in the person of Anonymous, details how Tomson came to write Surfer’s Code rather than what makes the book good. However, with the absence of any negative remarks, this review counts as a carrot:
Former world surfing champion Shaun Tomson has put together a book in which he shares the life lessons he’s gathered from his boyhood spent catching waves on Durban’s beachfront to his myriad successes on the world tour and the highs and lows he’s experienced in the business world.
The 54-year-old six-time Gunston 500 winner wears many hats these days, including as filmmaker, motivational speaker, businessman, environmentalist and now author, with the launch of Surfer’s Code: Twelve Simple Lessons for Riding through Life.
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James Mitchell presents two very short reviews – but no less worth reading – the first for Bill Coster’s Creative Bird Photography and the second for Your Guide to Buying and Selling on bidorbuy by Andy Higgins and Lana Stevic:
Verdict: carrot
The good news: this isn’t intimidatingly complex. Example: “I use autofocus virtually all the time in bird photography…” The bad news? Here, none, merely an explanation of which “mode” of autofocus is likely to do the best job.
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Verdict: carrot
In online shopping, eBay’s the big name internationally, but our own South African BidorBuy now claims more than 700 000 users and, of course, being on the ‘Net, isn’t restricted to locals.
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Verdict: carrot
Black Jerusalem tells the story of HerdBuoys, South Africa’s first black-run advertising agency, but you do not have to be an advertising-enthusiast to enjoy it, writes Merrett.
FED up with the ranting of Julius Malema? Then this book is the antidote.
Written by a survivor of the Soweto uprising, it is a highly personal account of South Africa’s first black-run advertising agency, HerdBuoys, founded in 1991. Having experienced a real revolution in 1976, they opted for the evolution of the marketplace.
Happy Ntshingila writes with a light and often humorous touch. His is a classic tale of the triumph of determination, intelligence and initiative over adverse circumstances.
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Verdict: stick
Business journo Lynley Donnelly finds parts of the The South African Dictionary of Finance useful, but places it at the bottom of her list of similar reference titles.
Financial terms and economic concepts are regularly lobbed at the public, often burying the much more important “bigger picture” issue in industry jargon.
The business and financial media are particularly guilty of this, though large corporates can be just as bad when communicating their business to the wider public.
Sadly, the workings of this world can be remarkably relevant, even interesting, to the average person. But they are effectively locked out by alienating and pompous language.
With this in mind, it does not hurt to have a guide into this universe of arcane terminology or a dictionary of finance — in this case The South African Dictionary of Finance by Rudy Wuite (Pan Macmillan, sponsored by Absa Capital).
But how does one review a dictionary? The answer of course lies in comparative literature — or dictionaries of the same ilk and how they communicate financial terms.
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