My reading nook

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it only came through them, and what came through them was longing…

For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not read, news from a country we have never visited.” C.S. Lewis

I love words and how a great writer uses them.

I love that I can enjoy these words through books.

Reading is one of my favourite things, since, well…since I can remember. My memories of all the books I have read is like a golden thread throughout my life, tying different phases of my life together. A specific book will, together with memories of that book, also contain memories of external and internal happenings that form part of my life as I was reading that specific book. I have memories of reading until the early hours of the morning on a school night and of the books throughout University. From when I met my husband, the early years of practising law and of the books I read in hospital with each of our kids’ births.

I grew up In Bloemfontein and we moved to Randburg when I was thirteen years old. Bloemfontein is also where I went to University and where I met my husband.

My earliest memories here were of my mother taking my older sister, younger brother and I to the library. I remember a majestic sandstone building, a 'wonder world' of books.

I once read a quote: “Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination.” – it is a perfect description! My favourite childhood book was “Ferdinand” and I can still remember the drawings on each page and the feelings I had when paging through that book. All three of us siblings are fervent readers. Holidays were spent in each other’s’ company, each with a book on their lap.

Sometimes I think that one of the reasons that I decided to study law was because of the thick law reports that promised hours of reading ;-) My grandfather was an Appellate Judge and I am very proud of his collection of law reports, now filling the bookshelves of our living room.

It's no surprise that I took our eldest daughter, Katelyn, to library outings from eighteen months old. Later Isabelle came too. The best memories of their toddler-years were our library-and-wakaberry-Wednesdays. Bedtime stories are a sure thing in our home and there was a time when I set a rule to limit the stories to three per night. I cannot remember if that rule was set because the girls asked for more stories, or if I set that rule to limit myself ;-) When the girls were small, we encouraged them to page through books when they woke early in the morning – it meant more sleep for mommy and it helped establish a routine where they were content to entertain themselves in the early morning.

According to the Longevity magazine, research in Australia claims that cognitive skills in children are not affected by family background or home environment, but are the direct result of how frequently children are read to prior to starting school. The results indicate direct causal effect of reading to children at a young age and their future schooling outcomes, regardless of educational level.

However busy and full of challenges our day are, reading before bed time is full of quiet and listening and routine.

Katelyn, has just started to read and write. I think the world just became a lot more colourful to her. She’s got a little pocket book, where she writes all kinds of things down that we are doing – I think that it's her version of a diary. We went to the children’s theatre during the Easter holidays, and she opened her book before the play and wrote “kinderteater” and “Aspoestertjie” (Cinderella). That day is marked in her little book forever.

It is inevitable that I have a list (actually lists and lists) of my favourite books. I will share some from time to time.

To start :

1. The Little Price, Antoine de Saint-Exupery - One of the best books, with so much wisdom! “To me, you are still just a little boy like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. To you, I am just a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we shall need one another.

To me, you will be unique. And I shall be unique to you.”

2. One Tousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp – “Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.”

3. The Puppet Boy of Warsaw, Eva Weaver – “So, whenever you see an ordinary coat, think about what may linger in its folds, what memories might be hidden in its pockets. It might whisper to you at night. There are many more stories sewn into its sleeves and many treasures harboured in its seams.”

4. All the Light we Cannot see, Anthony Doerr – “When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and I live my live. Don’t you do the same?”

5. The Garden of Burning Sand, Corban Addison – “Life is a broken thing. It’s what we do with the pieces that defines us.”

6. A House Without Windows, Nadia Hashimi - “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out if you are crazy or if it is the world around you that’s insane. Sometimes if you don’t lose your mind a little bit, there’s no way to survive. You’re not broken my daughter, that’s what you have to remember.”

7. The “Pontenilo-trilogie” (Anderkant Ponetilo, Persomi, Kronkelpad), Irma Joubert - “War is a dumb game thought out by men when they become too old to play cowboys and crooks.”

8. Dance with a Poor Man’s Daughter, Pamela Jooste – “My name is Lily Daniels and I live in The Valley, in an old house at the top of a hill with a loquat tree in the garden. We are all women in our house. My grandmother, my Aunt Stella with her hopalong leg, and me. The men in our family are not worth much. They are the cross we have to bear. Some of us, like my mother, don’t live here anymore. People say that she went on the Kimberley train to try for white and I mustn’t blame her because she could get away with it even if we didn’t believe she would.”

9. The Masterpiece, Francine Rivers – “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10)

10. Any book written by Karen Kingsbury.

Happy reading!