Book: Geldwolf, Carel van der Merwe

Initially I thought the author had confused the names of the main character's wife and mistress, then I realised that it was his writing style. I do enjoy good Afrikaans writing, and it was a good read for the long weekend. 

Book: The Talking Parcel, Gerald Durrell

I remember first reading this book in Std 5 (grade 7) and it was absolutely magical. It was the first time I had ever come across the name Penelope and the idea of a phoenix. I had been looking for it in all the second-hand bookstores to no avail, and could also not find it on Takealot. After a recent visit to the local Hout Bay library, I found it! It was such fun to reread it. 

Book: SynchroDestiny, Deepak Chopra

It was quite a read to get into the first few chapters, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading more on meditation, sutras and mantras, which are discussed in the second part of the book. For some time I have been wanting to learn how to meditate better, so it's rather apt that this book came into my possession. It is a book that I will refer to often as there are fantastic daily mantras.

Book: Botswana Time, Will Randall

What a wonderful African adventure Will takes the reader on. He has a marvellous writing style and sense of humour. I will definitely look at getting my hands on his other books too. 

Book: The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom ~ Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying, Suze Orman

I started reading this book years ago, then lost interest when I reached a chapter about planning for retirement; not that I don't think it is important, it was just that Suze makes a lot of reference to American regulations. The other day I saw the book on my bookshelf, and it irks me to have a half-read book 'staring' at me.  What I should have done initially was just to skip over that chapter, which I did this time around. 

There are three key lessons for me from this book: the first part of the book helped me to understand my relationship and thinking about money. She takes you through an exercise that digs down quite deeply to help you understand this relationship. 

The next lesson is the importance of respecting money; this really resonated with me, as 'respect' is one of our core values at Reputation Matters.  This links to Suze's second law of financial freedom: Respect attracts money ~ disrespect repels money. 

The third lesson is trusting yourself with your money. I've had a financial advisor for years, recently I started feeling that I have been taken for a ride; I only hear from him once a year when my investments need to be renewed/reviewed and he obviously gets a commission from it. He does not listen to a word I say, and I am doubtful that after 15 years he actually knows what it is we do. Suze encourages people to listen to their gut feeling, and I think that is the reason this book has crossed my path again, giving me that 'virtual' nod that you need to listen to that inner voice especially when it comes to investments and financial planning. 

Book: Amelia Earhart, her last flight, Oliver Knaggs

Yip, every now and again I do have a blonde moment...when I saw this book, I thought it was a documentation by Amelia of her last flight. I did realise soon enough that this would never have been possible as her plane had disappeared; Amelia, her navigator Fred Noonan, and the aeroplane have never been recovered. The hypothesis is that the plane that they were using to fly around the world got into trouble and landed (crashed) somewhere around the Marshall Islands. She and Noonan were imprisoned because they were believed to be American spies. He was executed and she died of starvation in a prison (how incredibly sad!). The book was written by a South African, how cool is that? I enjoyed his writing style and the journey he took us on to do research for the book. 

Book: True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, Margaret Hilda Roberts and Susan Lilian Townsend, Sue Townsend

I am on a mission to work through the Adrian Mole series. They are such fun, easy to read books. I really raced through the first two, unfortunately, the same can't be said for this one; I did not enjoy it as much an had considerably less guffawed moments. I prefer the diary entry style of the previous two and wasn't too sure why the new characters were introduced. Hopefully, the next one will be back to the winning formula that worked for the first two.