SA politics unspun by Stephen Grootes

SA politics unspun by Stephen Grootes is the sort of book I have been hoping to find for a long time; a concise guide to contemporary South African politics.

It is a lovely, easy read. I say easy because it is so well-written, with a light humour and no airs about the subject that I couldn't help but enjoy it. It also helped me make sense of a lot of the seemingly nonsensical reports in the news about all kinds of issues I felt obliged to know about without really understanding how they fit into the bigger scheme of things. 

Grootes explains governing structures, political parties and political controversies and explains them all one by one, leader by leader as well as why they are important. He also has lovely timelines, explanation sidebars, graphs and pictures in the book which I enjoyed.

It really is a lovely book. 

Nelspruit Book Traders

In Nelspruit, on the R40 road on the way to Barberton there is a second hand bookshop called Nelspruit Book Traders. It has some nice books though I do wish their Africana section was richer. It is my favourite section but there is something colonial about that 'Africana' word that kind of disturbs me.

I like that it has a foreign language section, I like to have a few french books because I will read it one day and I'd rather have them around.

It also has a lovely classic section, English classics, of course, from which I got Henry James' The Europeans for R10 and The Way of the World by William Congreve which I am quite curious to read.