Read a little
Greetings,
Before a television occupied a space of prominence in the home, before the VCR and DVD machines and long before social media and streaming came and monopolised our attention, I read. I was fortunate to grow up in a house full of books and between home, the school library and the National Library of Lesotho, I read abundantly. As each of these technologies came into my life, my time for reading diminished.
I have previously written about how, in 2010, I realised that my, by then, very limited reading habit was actually affecting my writing, so I bought myself a Kindle and instituted my ‘read for at least ten minutes a night’ rule. As a result, I probably read much more than I did when I was in primary and high school.
I would like to think my writing, and my life, are much better for it. I have now become the person who references books in conversations about any and everything.
Over the years, I have read and written about reading. I often promise myself I will start writing more book reviews on my blog but … yeah, life … the idea remains on my ‘things I want to do’ list.
Some of the things I have written include:
Some of the books I read in 2002 - This was to be an annual exercise
Coming across Oh Reader evoked both joy and sadness. Joy that there is a magazine “about reading, for and by readers. It looks deep into the art of reading—why we do it, how it affects us, who we are when we read, and how we’re all connected through words.” Sadness because of the costs associated with trying to subscribe to an international magazine are a step outside my budget.
That said, they do have a couple of stories from past issues on their site, the first of which that drew my attention was When Memory Fails, A Booklist Rarely Falters. While I use Goodreads, the idea of a spreadsheet with all the books I read and ratings sounds dope.
Prince is one my all time favourite artists. Purple Rain came out when I was 11 years old and, from that moment, I followed him and his music religiously. I had Purple Rain on cassette tape, CD, VHS video, DVD and record/vinyl. I loved the book The Beautiful Ones, a memoir he started writing before he died, that was completed by editor Dan Piepenbring. And it seems there is a documentary that may never see the light of day … The Prince We Never Knew
Last month, I wrote a blog post Writing For The Sake Of Writing with the intention of writing more. I feel like a broken record. All my plans to do more of the things that I would like to do tend to fall by the wayside even before I really get started.
At least the podcast continues to come out every fortnight. Since my last newsletter, I have chatted to Quintus Jansen, Sifiso Khanyile and Robin Rhode.
The podcast was also selected as part of a pilot project on South African news site IOL where episodes will be shared on their site, the first of which is on the Sifiso Khanyile episode.
I came across this post on Instagram. The caption read: “Dreams by Akira Kurosawa, 1990. Dreams can be seen as Kurosawa’s bittersweet masterpiece. Based on his own recurring dreams throughout his life, “Dreams” presents eight chapters where the realms of humans, spirits, and nature intertwine. The surrogate Kurosawa character journeys through different stages of life, from childhood to old age, eventually confronting themes of mortality.”
I was able to find the film on YouTube and have been watching it off and on for a couple of days. I suspect I will have to start again and watch right through when I am done.
I am, amongst others, busy reading the book De La Soul by Dave Heaton which was published in July 2024. I couldn’t find a physical copy so I got it on my Kindle. It is well-written and I am enjoying it.
That’s it for today. Please share, subscribe and/or comment. I’ll be back. Soon(ish).
Easy
Kojo