BOOK SA – Reviews

Verdict: carrot. Book: unusual.

This book is about the Basotho people of the kingdom of Lesotho: how they live, play and work amid the beautiful landscapes. They come across as hard- working and peace-loving.

The pages and pictures are well co-ordinated in their layout. Gosselin’s skill shows in the way his subjects are relaxed as they go about their daily lives as he documents them; one can see that the photographer spent time with them, learning about their ways before documenting their lives.

• Complete review at IOL Tonight

Book Details

• Basotho People at Work by Rene Paul Gosselin
  EAN: 9780620453899
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Uitspraak: groen wortels

Dit is nogal ’n uitdaging om ’n tuinboek te publiseer wat werklik al die uiteenlopende streke van Suid-Afrika in gedagte hou.

Marianne Alexander se Tuinmaak in Suid-Afrika deur die jaar slaag in ’n groot mate daarin om iets vir tuiniers oor die land heen te bied.

Die boek bied ’n maand-vir-maand-gids van wat in die tuin gebeur, tuintake vir die spesifieke maand, wat om in die kombuis- en vrugtetuine te doen, die geurtuin, plae wat in daardie tyd beheer moet word en wat daardie maand blom.

• Lees die volledige resensies in Volksblad

Book Details

• Tuinmaak in Suid-Afrika deur die jaar deur Marianne Alexander
  EAN: 9781770077928
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Immergroen: Stories oor plante by Dave Pepler
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780798150934
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Healing Trees & Plants of the Lowveld by David Cumes, Rael Loon, Dries Bester
  EAN: 9781770078338
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

Marianne Alexander’s Gardening in South Africa Throughout the Year is comprehensive and beautifully illustrated, says Sally Scott:

One Christmas the man in my life, at the time, bought me a weed whacker. Sorry, I may sound ungrateful but I felt that this tool was somewhat lacking in romance.

Twenty years later, the weed whacker and I have formed an attachment. We have accidentally unearthed a hornet’s nest (and both landed in the pool as a result) and fallen, 224 deux, from a tree, to name a few shared moments.

• Complete review at IOL Tonight

Book Details

• Gardening in South Africa Throughout the Year by Marianne Alexander
  EAN: 9781770077911
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

To slightly rephrase the back jacket’s own question: what do you get when three South African friends — “a chef, an artist and a stylish woman” — semigrate to France, buy up half a village and set about out-Frenching the French with regards to food, snobbery and style?

Some of the answers are captured between the hard covers of this sumptuously produced coffee-table-cum-kitchen guide to the kind of good living that few have the time, talent or money to pull off.

• Complete review in the Mail & Guardian

• Festive France: Reflections and Recipes from the French Countryside homepage

Book Details

• Festive France: Reflections and Recipes from the French Countryside by Louis Jansen van Vuuren, Anet Pienaar, Hardy Olivier
  EAN: 9781868423613
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

Detailing the weekend habits of various local celebrities, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Sunday trips to Nando’s, Perfect Weekend will make the perfect Christmas present, intimates the reviewer:

Perfect Weekend is a great new book that takes readers into the private lives of very public South African figures, exploring all the things these figures rarely share with other people beyond their closest friends and family.

The book is an artful collaboration between journalist Dominique Herman, who interviewed 52 South African figures, and Durban photographer Brett Florens, who has been acknowledged by Nikon as one of the world’s most influential photographers.

• Complete review in the Tonight

• Perfect Weekend homepage

Book Details

• Perfect Weekend by Dominique Herman, illustrated by Brett Florens
  EAN: 9781919688817
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

Burbidge’s review is mainly a home-grown carrot, though he does cavil a bit when Featherstone waxes spiritual:

Throughout my childhood, the dusty two-volume Reader’s Digest book of South African gardening sat on the shelf, and I don’t remember anyone consulting it. The line drawings were in black and white and the spines were so stiff you could hardly open them.

Now, with Copenhagen under way, there can be no better time to pick up a copy of Pat Featherstone’s excellent Grow to Live (Jacana). She maintains everybody should grow some of their own food and that doing so is a healthy activity in itself.

• Complete review in the Mail & Guardian

• Grow to Live: A simple guide to growing your own good, clean food homepage

Book Details

• Grow to Live: A simple guide to growing your own good, clean food by Pat Featherstone
  EAN: 9781770096509
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

“By the dawn of the new century, Franschoek was firmly established as the food and wine capital of the Cape, if not South Africa …”

With these words author Myrna Robins chose Franschoek’s 18 top culinary destinations and put together a recipe book any South African would be proud to own.

• Complete review in the Weekend Post

Book Details

• Franschhoek Food by Myrna Robins
  EAN: 9781770077379
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

For somebody who loves cookery books as much as I do, Myrna Robins’s latest is one that goes straight to the most easily-accessible shelf.

That’s the one where I keep such treasured tomes as the Constantia Uitsig cookbook, the Roux brothers’ Cooking for Two, and the best of them all, the Marco Pierre White tome graced with a photograph of himself and his mate Michael Caine.

There are two reasons for this leap to the top of my charts.

• Complete review at IOL Tonight

Book Details

• Franschhoek Food by Myrna Robins
  EAN: 9781770077379
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: glazed carrot

La Petite Ferme, tucked into the slopes of the Middagkrans Mountain overlooking the Franschhoek valley hooks many regulars en route to what is considered the gastronomic capital of South Africa and everyone seems to know that booking well in advance is essential.

With an awesome view of the valley below and surrounded by vineyards now producing their own top quality wines, the property has been in the Dendy Young family since the early ’70s and run by Mark Dendy Young and his wife Josephine since 1994. This book follows Dendy Young’s mother Carol’s cookbook Country Cuisine published in 2002, and contains some of those popular recipes together with some more recent creations.

• Complete review at IOL Tonight

Book Details

• La Petite Ferme Cookbook: Franschhoek
  EAN: 9781770077829
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Verdict: carrot

AYURVEDA may be 5000 years old, but it is proving to be as relevant for health today as it was all those millennia ago. The Indian holistic healing system has been described as “one of the world’s most ancient and venerated healing and lifestyle modalities”.

Its popularity is growing in SA, in the wake of the launch of the SanAquam Urban Sanctuary day spa in Durban North last year headed by an orthodox-trained medical doctor, Dr Rajen Cooppan, who is also a doctor of Ayurvedic medicine.

The aim was to combine traditional healing wisdom with the best of modern, western medical science.

• Complete review in the Business Day

Book Details

• The Ayur Veda Handbook: Find the right diet and lifestyle for your dosha by Lisa Fromsdorf, Marie Opperman
  EAN: 9781770200241
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!