Two Bits – 12 February 2016

I come from a family of voracious readers and probably would have been made an honorary member of the Natal Society Library in ‘Maritzburg if I didn’t have the unfortunate habit of returning books late. I cannot remember the name of the head librarian but I do remember being absolutely terrified of her.
She would stand behind her raised counter and peer down at us children with a steely, humourless gaze. We thought she was ancient, but she was probably about 40. She was master of all she surveyed and heaven help you if she saw you doing something wrong. Sins covered talking, running, returning a book late, returning a book with a speck of dirt and, the worst sin of all, sucking a sweets.
“You will not come into my library eating, young man. Go outside and spit it out!”
Nevertheless, she did teach us to respect books and it was a great library. The first books I remember being absolutely entranced by were The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings. Read them four or five times.
Of all the authors I read, the ones I enjoyed most were those who could paint pictures with simple words. John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Awakes, John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, and so many others.
Lately I’ve been reading too many trashy detective novels, but every now and then something comes along that makes me realise I’ve become lazy and ought to expand my horizons. Salt Rock librarian Lorden (who is not at all scary, by the way) suggested I read a strangely titled book, All the Light We Cannot See, by American author Anthony Doerr.
He gripped me by the scruff of the neck from the very first page with the most hauntingly beautiful prose. It’s brimming with rich details and beautiful metaphors that paint rich images, but in simple English like the authors I grew up admiring. I didn’t want this book to end, but I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to read slowly so that I could soak in every detail before it ended.
It is set in wartime Europe, as the Allies begin shelling the French city of Saint-Malo to drive out the remaining Nazi troops. The two main characters are Marie Laure, a blind French girl who fled here with her uncle from Paris, and Werner, an orphan and radio expert in the German army who is stuck in the city when the attack begins. The story jumps back and forth in time, and between the two characters’ perspectives to see how both young people were brought to this place. The short, sharp chapters appear like the facets of the mythical diamond that lies at the centre of the plot.
You know, long before the book ends, that they will meet. But this is no ordinary wartime love story. The fascinating descriptions of the characters’ lives draw the reader on and on, but not before you choke back a tear or two over the cruelty of fate.
When I turned the last page I felt as though I had lost a friend. I want the library to find more of Doerr’s work. If you read no other book this year, All The Light We Cannot See will delight you with the amazement of the written word that film cannot hope to match.
I rather like a quote I came across recently: You are the sum of all you’ve done and everywhere you’ve been. I rather think that a book like that leaves an impression that you carry with you for a long, long time.

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Thank you to Umhlali Club manager John Boyce for donating a laptop that a medical student the Orphan Fund is helping will take to Cape Town to help with his studies. It is much appreciated.

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This is why you don’t play golf with your wife. . . and why some guys choose not to get married at all!
A husband reluctantly agreed to play in the couples’ alternate shot tournament at his club. He teed off on the first hole, a par four and blistered a drive 300 metres down the middle of the fairway.
Upon reaching the ball, the husband said to his wife, “Just hit it toward the green, anywhere around there will be fine.”
The wife proceeded to shank the ball deep into the trees.
Undaunted, the husband said, “That’s OK, sweetheart,” and spent the full five minutes looking for the ball.
He found it just in time but in a horrible position. He played the shot of his life to get the ball within a metre of the hole. He told his wife to knock the ball in.
His wife then proceeded to knock the ball off the green and into a bunker. Still maintaining composure, the husband summoned all of his skill and holed the shot from the bunker.
He took the ball out of the hole and, while walking off the green, put his arm around his wife and calmly said, “Honey, that was a bogey five and that’s OK, but I think we can do better on the next hole.”
To which she replied, “Listen, don’t you dare complain at me. Only two of those five shots were mine!”