Kalk Bay Books

Ann Donald, former editor of Fair Lady and owner of Kalk Bay Books is passionate about books.  She writes a column for the Sunday Time called Between the Lines.  Here is one of her latest articles.

You wouldn’t be reading these words if you weren’t a book lover, so I write with the assumption that we are, if not of like mind (how boring would that be?), then surely of like habits.

You probably carry a book about your person at most times. You’re unlikely to pass a bookshop, sale, or shelf without stopping for a glance if pressed for time, or a browse if not. When you spot a book you’ve once loved, your heart quickens slightly. When you hear of a new title by a favourite writer you change your weekend plans to accommodate it. Not reading is as unthinkable as not breathing.

Your bedside table is piled with books, forcing the lamp into a corner. You have bookshelves wherever space permits – there is never enough space, but also, there is always enough space for more books to be added. You see no contradiction in or problem with this scenario. The books you keep are those you’d be bereft without. You select books that offer you something you need right now – entertainment, information, enlightenment. Then the unread books, accumulating patiently (my pension plan, I tell myself) – no guilt or hurry required. Living without books is as untenable as not reading.

The physical presence of books in your life is a given. You need to see them, hold them, touch the pages, absorb the content. In the process of reading, you become lost in an inner world. When your outer life calls, you mark or memorise your place and put the book down with a pang. It waits without complaint until you return to it, find your place and sink back into its story. When the last page is turned, if it did its job, you’ll sit for a moment holding it. You may go back and reread the first page, or look again at the cover, or the author’s picture. Then you’ll place it on a bookshelf, and whenever you see it in future, there’ll be that quickening of the heart, that memory of time well spent, that assurance of a continuing presence in your life. You understand that books are more than just their content.

As I stand before the bookshelves lining my sitting room wall, I try to imagine my life and my home without the presence of actual books. In the middle of the empty shelves I visualise the small electronic device that technophiles assure us is already replacing the codex. So magnificent a beast is the Kindle or the Sony e-Reader, we’re told, that it can hold hundreds of thousands of virtual books within its belly, ready to be regurgitated onto a screen at the push of a button for our reading pleasure. Wow.

The vision departs. I look again at my books. I spot Man’s Search for Meaning, a gift from a friend who knew how much the book meant to me. She’ll forever be linked to it both in my mind and in the inscription she wrote in it. How would she have done that on a Kindle? I wonder. Would she have sms’d me a link to the site where I could download data? When, years from now (technology permitting), I stumble upon the ‘book’ among the other 20,000 books stored on the device, will a digital inscription pop up to remind me of her? How meaningful.

I think of a favourite book quote: Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. From one book lover to the rest of you – cherish your collections. One day, your children may thank you for them.
Visit Kalk Bay Books today.  There is plenty more which you will love.

Tina Bester

Ann Donald’s Kalk Bay Books is having a launch.  It’s a wonderful place to visit where you can find book review and books online or if you prefer you can be helped by her friendly and knowledgeable team who are always in attendance.  Ann writes for the Sunday and here is one of her latest articles.

Reading makes magic of childhood

Between the lines

While the display tables at the shop would normally be laden with piles of new fiction, a few days ago the books made way for a most magnificent display of baked goods.

We need to challenge the stupidity of those who proudly assert that they never read

The occasion was the launch of Bake, the first cookbook by Queen of Tarts proprietor Tina Bester.

Pretty meringues, deep chocolate brownies, crispy phyllo wrapped around Camembert, bite-sized quiches, roses peeking out of chocolate-ringed cake, dipped strawberries – it was a feast to behold (and with considerable restraint most of the guests at the launch managed to just look until the speeches were over).

But there was one person who didn’t give the food a second glance – a four-year-old boy named Nicholas who had eyes only for the books in the children’s section. With a flop of fringe falling over his forehead, shining eyes and his hands busily turning pages, Nicholas spent two hours looking at books while all around him the adults chatted and nibbled (well, scoffed, to be truthful), and sipped wine. He had found on the shelves many of the books he already owned and pounced on them gleefully, then went back to look for more.

Nicholas is one of many children we see who have a love for books even before they learn how to read, and we love watching them at the beginning of what we know will be a lifelong passion. What most of these children have in common are parents or grandparents who read, one or more of whom will bring the children to the bookshop as an outing.

With the younger children, we see the care and love of their parent as they patiently sit and page through the picture books. The older ones prefer to read on their own, freeing their parents to browse for themselves.

But we also see children who don’t have the gift of parents who read to guide them. One girl comes in regularly after school to pick up on a book she had been reading and see what’s new. While this girl saves up to buy a favourite book once or twice a year, other children we see regularly simply don’t and won’t have enough money to buy their own books, but they can’t resist the lure. For them the shop has become a reading room – filling the role that a school or public library would play if there was one within safe walking distance.

All of these children are lucky in their own way. They at least know, however they came by their knowledge, that books are magical. There are many others who will never discover the spell of reading simply because books will never enter their frame of entertainment options.

Many fall into demographic and geographic boxes that limit their options, of which reading is just one. But far too many non-reading children do have access to books through well-equipped schools, or parents who can take them to a library or can afford to buy them books – but who don’t. And the primary reason is that the parents themselves don’t read.

I despair of aliterate parents: If they’re not reading for themselves I’m pretty sure they’re not reading to their children either. This is tantamount to neglect (in my book anyway).

I’m only half joking when I suggest that, just as the effects of smoking and junk food have been challenged in the interests of healthy bodies and a clean environment, we need to challenge the stupidity of those who proudly assert that they never read if we want an intellectually healthy society.
Visit Kalk Bay Books today.  You will be so glad you did.

Ann Donald’s has one of those book shops with a difference.  Ann is passionate about books and hopes to be able to continue with her book launches, book reviews and bringing every one books online.

Ann writes for the Sunday Times and here is one of her columns.

I wish I could go back to school and to university. In the ’70s, the school I attended in Kimberley was one of the few that offered literature as a subject in addition to English.

The choice we had on that subject line was literature or maths or shorthand. Duh — what choice? I had the joy of English setworks in the regular class plus all the books that made up the literature-course curriculum. Then, at university, I was exposed to the major literary and dramatic works, and the classical and philosophy texts that made up my BA degree course work. Most of what I learned, I no longer remember.

Thirty years down the line, I want to go back and do all of those courses again, this time with the knowledge and experience I have gained in the meantime tucked into my brain. Rereading the books I studied, listening to lectures on their meaning and structure, understanding the context in which they were written — how much richer the learning would be now (all this and knowing that I don’t have to write any exams — what bliss). In this desire, I know I’m not alone.

When UCT runs its annual summer school, the literature lectures are rapidly booked up. Another literary arena filled to capacity each month is the talk about women writers given by retired professor of English, Shirley Kossick, at the Fish Hoek Library. Our own lectures at the bookshop by Professor Lesley Marx on books that have been adapted into films are proving extremely popular, too.

And now, a new literary lecture series offered by UCT is opening another space for the intellectually curious. Under the title Great Texts/Big Questions, and co-ordinated by the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts and Imraan Coovadia of the university’s Centre for Creative Writing, a number of scholars have been invited to speak about literary texts that have influenced their lives. The lectures are open to the general public as well as staff and students, and are “intended to engender a culture of exchange of ideas, opinion and conjecture”.

André Brink presented the first lecture on Don Quixote — a book he believes is so important to the human and literary landscape that he rereads it every year. Others on the list are Zachie Achmat on The Communist Manifesto and The Gettysburg Address, Jonathan Shapiro on Art Spiegelman’s Maus, followed by Mamphela Ramphele and Tim Noakes, among others. You can find programme details at www.gipca.uct.ac.za.

This hunger for a deeper understanding of books and ideas is not confined to Cape Town. In Gauteng, you’ll find similar discussions being held at bookshops like Die Boekehuis in Melville or Xarra Books in Newtown.

Apart from the insight and knowledge gained from these lectures, I think it is the opportunity to meet with like-minded souls and to engage in debate and discussion with real people, that fuels the interest. For those of us who remember the years before television, computers and cellphones, the alienation of the Facebook world is horrible. (In his new book, A Week in December, due out next month, Sebastian Faulks offers a satirical and poignant warning of the cost of retreating into such a world.)

Some might argue reading is a solitary pursuit, taking us away from the real world. In truth, reading allows us a deeper connection with reality than most activities. And our desire to reach out and share that connection is why so many of us are lining up to go back to school.

Kalk Bay Books