On Preparing for Death (Audio Reflections On “When Breath Becomes Air”)

Unforgettable reads (May 2016, Joburg)

I’ve been reading “When Breath Becomes Air” over the last several days, and this morning over breakfast, I finished the book. My husband looked up from his breakfast and I was in tears, unable to control my emotions over the ending of this book, and in particular its last paragraph. (After this paragraph there is a final chapter written by his wife Lucy, but it is his last words that reduced me to tears). This is a book that I hope everyone reads – it’s powerful and beautiful and just full of lessons and strength and honesty. It is an extraordinary read, and it was an incredible act of generosity for Paul Kalanithi to have written it. Below are my audio reflections about this wonderful wonderful book.

(Side note: I say in the audio story that he did his philosophy of education, what I meant to say is that he did a Masters in the philosophy of medicine)

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A Restless Journey to Naples (On Reading Elena Ferrante)

Tranquility (Hartbeespoort, April 2015)

I’ve been living in 50s and 60s Naples over the past few days and my trip has left me unsettled and restless. This week I read the first two books of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels (it’s a four book series) called “My Brilliant Friend” and “The Story of a New Name”. I’ve wanted to read these books for a long time. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about the series and have heard friends rave about how beautiful and unusual the books are, and so I was really looking forward experiencing them for myself.

The first book “My Brilliant Friend” is the May selection for the Seriously Planning bookclub. The books follow the lives of two friends Elena and Lila from childhood to their early twenties and chronicles their friendship, deep love, loyalty and hatred for each other. Lila is brilliant but stops her studies after elementary school because her father refuses to let her continue. She studies Latin and Greek on her own regardless and has a natural aptitude for learning and a quickness of mind that far surpasses Elena. Elena on the other hand, completes elementary school, middle school, high school and university by studying relentlessly and through feeling keenly the difference between herself and her friend. Whether it is in beauty, in intelligence, in love, in marriage, or any other sphere, to Elena it constantly feels like Lila is better and luckier than her, and the series is about their lives and how they influence one another.

My Brilliant Friend is an incredible book, and the author paints a detailed picture of Elena and Lila’s neighbourhood that makes it alive and real. She makes you feel like you can see, smell, taste Naples in the 50s and because you care about the characters, you willingly immerse yourself in their terrifying world.

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We All Like Different Books (A Post about Diversity Things)

Friday stops (Port Elizabeth, South Africa, April 2016)

About a month ago, I discovered a magical community on YouTube called BookTube. “BookTubers” make videos where they review books they’ve read, display their latest “book hauls” of the books they’ve recently purchased or received from publishers, give tours of their personal bookshelves and and generally discuss topics that are literary related. Not all of this appeals to me – it’s far less interesting to hear about the books you own/have recently bought than hearing what you’ve recently actually read and what you gained from the read, and a lot of existing BookTube content is YA related, which is not really my thing, but still, the premise about books on YouTube fascinates me.

When I first discovered BookTube I found a few people I really liked, and hearing enthusiastic people talking about books they’ve just read felt almost as nice as having a conversation with a wonderful friend who has read something amazing and wants to tell you about it. But at the same time, when I discovered BookTube one of the first thing I noticed is that it’s not a very racially and geographically diverse community – the vast majority of the people making videos about books are white, female and from North America or the UK. Though this surprised me I wasn’t sure if it mattered so much, after all, good books are good books no matter who you are right?

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A Funny Eurocentric Read ( On Reading “Love Illuminated” by Daniel Jones)

Beautiful beginnings (Krugersdorp, South Africa, April 2016)

A year ago, I was in a bookshop in the Vancouver International Airport trying to pick a good read for my journey to South Africa to get married to my best friend. As I browsed the shelves, I came across a book called “Love Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject with the help of 50,00 strangers” by Daniel Jones, who has been the editor of the New York Times Modern Love column for the last ten years. As I stood in front of the shelf debating whether I wanted to spend $20 on the book and whether the book would help me in my new married life, an announcement came on the PA system making a last call for the flight I was waiting to board, and so I dropped the book and ran. Since then, I’ve wondered about the book. Reading “Modern Love” is a weekly personal ritual and since I always benefit from reading the column’s stories, I was interested to know what reading thousands of essays from strangers worldwide over the course of a decade had taught Jones about love.

To pursue this question, a few days ago I borrowed the book from the public library and have been reading it steadily over the past few nights. Last night I finished it, and although I enjoyed the read, I’m glad this is not a book that I own. Despite the subtitle of the book (which uses the word exploration rather than lessons) I thought the book would be about love lessons and practical advice one could apply to their own relationship. Instead, the book is organized into ten chapters with each chapter title/subject being one of ten topics related to love. Because the book’s chapters are not structured very clearly though, at times it was not clear where the book was going and the lack of clear direction interfered with my enjoyment of the book.

The ten principles/topics are pursuit/finding the person for you, destiny, vulnerability, connection, trust, practicality, monotony, infidelity, loyalty and wisdom. Each chapter talks about the principle in question but the majority of each chapter is about the flip side of the principle; the things that take place in relationships when things go wrong. The chapter about pursuit for instance, talks about the rise of online dating and the people we miss meeting because we exclude entire categories of people in our preferences and matching algorithms.

The chapter following pursuit discusses vulnerability and explores how many modern relationships (at least those that make it across his desk) strive to avoid vulnerability and are about acting aloof, both behaviours Jones says are aided by technological tools of today. If being aloof is something you are interested in learning how to do, “Love Illuminated” takes a “tongue in cheek” approach and delves into strategies to avoid openness and vulnerability and to maintain your distance from romantic partners. If you’re interested in real connection, the book and specifically the chapter has advice on how to be vulnerable too (Hint: real, grand gestures are good, gestures that are filmed, aimed at viral YouTube popularity or will likely embarrass the recipient are the kind of gestures to stay clear away from).

Building on this discussion, the chapter on connection looks extensively on online relationships and the rise of relationships in which communication through WhatsApp and Gchat and various social media platforms is commonplace, but real, in person communication is rare or nonexistent. For some people who have written their stories for Modern Love, the act of meeting killed their feelings and their love story. Chapter 5, the chapter on Trust, gives advice on how to avoid being conned (avoid someone too normal, or not normal at all) to say that it is impossible to protect yourself against betrayals of trust. As you continue to read, it feels like the book is telling you, there is no way to armour yourself against love, but regardless of the risks, fall in love anyway.

These reminders are important, but the book feels less than a book about love and improving love than a description of the very strange things people do in relationships. Having said that, there are some gems to be had.
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Life is Too Short for Terrible Books (On Reading “The Golden Son” by Shilpa Somaya Gowda

(Scienceworld, Vancouver BC)

I don’t like leaving books unfinished. Even when a novel isn’t going anywhere, I inch along in the hopes that at some point the novel will turn around, the plot will make sense, the characters will come alive, and the book will mean something to me after I’ve finished the read. And so, despite the effect reading this book has had on my personal wellbeing and sanity, I finished the April Seriously Planning bookclub selection, Shilpa Somaya Gowda’s book “The Golden Son” today. It took weeks to get to 20% of the novel because it was too painful to read more than a few pages at a time, but over the past couple of days I read during every spare moment and in the evenings in order to complete the read. Today I finished the book, and I never want to see or talk about this book again. It’s been a while since I’ve disliked a book so strongly.

Gowda’s first book, “Secret Daughter” is one of my favourite novels and I loved the complex characters and rich plot when I first read the book. It’s a book I’ve recommended to many many people, and so when I discovered that Gowda’s second novel “The Golden Son” was published in 2015 I suggested it for the Seriously Planning bookclub. Whatever the plot of the novel, I was sure we would enjoy our reading session because it was a Gowda novel, and I thought that meant the novel would be good.

I was wrong. The Golden Son is flat, painful, and altogether an uninteresting read.

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A Prayer of Thanks (Thoughts on “Did you Ever Have a Family” by Bill Clegg)

Roadtripping – View from a filling station (South Africa, 2015)

“Pru asked if she was okay, and June answered with a question that seemed to Pru more of a comment on June’s struggle’s with Lolly: Did you ever have a family? Pru said she sounded completely wiped out, at wit’s end. She asked June if she wanted to walk back with her to the house, but she politely declined, saying she needed to be alone a while longer.
Pru told us that night that she’d never felt so grateful. That her answer to June’s question had been yes, but not as a commiseration, or an explanation of fatigue, as it seemed to be for June, but both as an acknowledgment of great fortune and a prayer of thanks. With Mike on the line from Tacoma, and Mimi and I huddled over her iPhone on speaker in the kitchen Pru whispered to us, Thank you. (Did you Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg)

I am not a brave reader. It is rare for me to read books that are sad, that have devastating plots, that leave me imprinted with the sorrow of other people. It is rare for me to read books that make my hands clench and muscles tense because I can’t handle my anxiety over what the characters are going through. Over the past few days however, I read and completed “Did you ever have a family?” by Bill Clegg and I absolutely loved it. The book is Clegg’s first novel and was longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It is unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and I’m so glad I stumbled upon it.

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It’s not an Optional Read (Thoughts On Reading “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates)

Race is a construct with social realities (Apartheid Museum, Joburg, Feb 2016)

“But all our phrasing – race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy – serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“This is the foundation of the Dream – its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor and good works. There is some passing acknowledgement of the bad old days, which, by the way, were not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. It is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

There are some books that everyone needs to read – that have to be taught in each high school, that must be discussed and read in every family, that simply need to be read by as many people as possible. “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those books. At a 166 pages it is a short book, but a vital and essential text.

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On Reading “Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit

The blessing of public transit (October 2014, NYC High Line

“Yes people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard at times for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and being heard when they dare; that crushes young women in to silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence (Men Explain Things to Me, Chapter 1).

My lunchtime read this week has been Rebecca Solnit’s book “Men Explain Things To Me”, and I really want you to read this book. Quite simply, it is a brilliant collection of essays written in different years that all touch on different aspects of violence, and regardless of your gender, it is an important read. Rebecca Solnit defines violence as “the refusal to treat someone as a human being, and the denial of the most basic of human rights, the right to bodily integrity and self-determination”, and notes that violence comes from the premise “I have the right to control you”. From this refusal to treat women as human beings, violence manifests itself in the way women are silenced, the way women are sexually harassed and violated, the ways in which women are not heard, the ways women are abused by intimate partners, the ways in which women and their histories and genealogies are silenced and erased, the ways in which non-quantifiable epistemologies are violently rejected, the ways in which the earth is violently abused, and so much more. The list goes on and on of how violence shows up in everyday life.

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On Being Producers of Meaning (Gems from Men Explain Things to Me)

Journeying home from Tsitsikamma (November 2015)

I’ve wanted to read Rebecca Solnit’s book “Men Explain Things to Me” ever since it was published and (hurrah public libraries) I finally am reading the book now. It’s such an amazing collection of essays, and I really want to get a copy of the book for everyone I know. Proper thoughts coming soon, but for now, here is a beautiful gem from the book.

“My own task these past twenty years or so of living by words has been to try to find or make a language to describe the subleties, the incalculables, the pleasures and meanings – impossible to categorize – at the heart of things. My friend Chip Ward speaks of “the tyranny of the quantifiable.” of the way what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot: private profit over public good; speed and efficiency over enjoyment and quality; the utilitarian over the mysteries and meanings that are of greater use to our survival and to more than our survival, to lives that have some purpose and value that survive beyond us to make a civilization worth having.

The tyranny of the quantifiable is partly the failure of language and discourse to describe the more complex, subtle, and fluid phenomena, as well as the failure of those who shape opinions and make decisions to understand and value these slipperier things. It is difficult, sometimes even impossible, to value what cannot be named or described, and so the task of naming and describing is an essential one in any revolt against the status quo of capitalism and consumerism. Ultimately the destruction of the Earth is due in part, perhaps in large part, to a failure of the imagination or to its eclipse by systems of accounting that can’t count what matters. The revolt against this destruction is a revolt of the imagination, in favour of subtleties, of pleasures money can’t buy and corporations can’t command, of being producers rather than consumers of meaning, of the slow, the meandering, the digressive, the exploratory, the numinous, the uncertain.”

~Rebecca Solnit, Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Men Explain Things to Me

A Dose of Monthly Joy (Details On The April Bookclub)

(Natures Valley, South Africa, November 2015)

This weekend was the February session of the Seriously Planning bookclub, and for the first time since the club started in Joburg, I didn’t finish reading the bookclub selection before we met to discuss the book. I’m still reading our February selection “On Being Muslim” and enjoying the book thoroughly so proper thoughts about the read to come later. Despite not having completed the book our discussion filled my heart with so much light. Our monthly chats are a source of joy and help me to be better at being me, something I find is true for reading in general, but something that is amplified when I’m talking about amazing books with incredible people. Yesterday our discussion was about faith, living Islam holistically, how our lives overall support or don’t support our religious lives, self – knowledge, listening and appreciating others, the importance of self esteem and what that actually looks like, having meaningful prayer in our lives, the importance of akhlaq (good character), traditional madrassa education, and the role of the Qur’an in our lives. It was wonderful, and I can’t wait till our next session.

We met at a restaurant called “My bread and butter” near Zoo Lake, and it was perfect for the bookclub. It’s a big open airy space with lots of light and beautiful wooden tables, and the food and drinks and cakes were delicious, and the staff was super friendly and polite. And best of all, because it’s a big space it wasn’t loud at all, and we were able to talk and hear each other properly,

Our next bookclub selection is “The Golden Son” by Shilpi Somaya Gowda.
Date: April 2nd 2016
Time: 10:00 am to 12pm
Where: Nice, 37 4th Avenue, corner 14th street, Parkhurst, 2193

To RSVP: Email seriously.planning@gmail.com

About the book: “Author of the bestselling Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s The Golden Son is about a young Indian doctor who leaves his village for a residency in the US. But he grapples with the expectation that as the oldest son, he is expected to inherit the mantle of arbiter for all village disputes. And he finds himself torn between a beautiful American girl and his old childhood friend..” (Via Amazon)

Wanting to catch up on old reads? Here is what we’ve read so far:

September: Journey of Discovery by Na’eem Jeenah and Shamima Shaikh
November: Ghana Must Go By Taiye Selasi
December: Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
January: If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power
February: On Being Muslim by Farid Esack