bill_schubert | Every once in a while I get a book (Reply)

I'm usually reading two books. One on Kindle, one in audio usually on Overdrive. Many of them are forgettable. I tend towards the mystery and space genre. Since finding the Literature Map link I've rediscovered a couple of authors and have just decided to read their entire output or at least the series that interest me.

One of the ways I know a lot about the world (other than having travelled it quite a bit) is through the eyes of the local authors when they are writing about other things. Deon Meyer has written a lot of books all of which are set in South Africa or adjoining countries. He writes in Afrikaans and so obviously I read the second hand translations. Rather I listen to them. This is something much better in audio.

The reader is a guy by the name of Simon Vance and he brings them alive. Just finished with Thirteen Hours (the second in a series surrounding a detective Benny Griesel but it stands alone). Written in 2008 it is a freight train of a book that combines the energy of multiple story lines begun and ended in a single 13 hour period (the audio book actually reads in 11.5) with many of the complex socio/political events in South Africa after apartheid.

This is the best of his books, at least the ones I've read so far, and one of the best of its genres I've ever read. It is so wonderful to hear a linguist pronounce the various Africaans, Zulu, Corsar, Dutch and German names and words. And the story is riveting.

Ok, just thought you should know that.