Martin Hatchuel from Motion Magazine met with Patterson to chat about his book, his work and of course, the elusive Knysna elephant.

• Not loading? Watch on MartinhatchuelTV

Book details

• The Secret Elephants by Gareth Patterson
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143026136
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

But the activist-author is taking it in his stride, and recently returned to the US comedy show The Colbert Report – his earlier appearance on the show being the unintentional source of his deification – to make light of all the fuss. Watch Stephen Colbert speak to Raj Patel:

• Not loading? Watch here

On a more serious note, Patel has been blogging about his book, The Value of Nothing, and we’ve found a post that all can relate to. Do you really know the value of things? For example, how much would a housewife earn, were she paid for her daily work? What is the true cost of fish fingers? Patel takes a look at how much ten universally-consumed items really cost us:

#10 Bottled Water – Bottled water sounds like it should be cheaper – it’s 200 to 10,000 times more expensive than tap water. But in the US, the annual energy wasted on bottled water adds the equivalent to 100,000 cars on roads and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And the price we pay for water doesn’t begin to address the longer term issues of global shortage for something that everyone needs to survive. Make a start: stop your local government from wasting your money on bottled water, as we did in San Francisco.

#9 Cellphones – We’ve all got them. The trouble is that one of the minerals inside our high tech toys – coltan – is bought very dear indeed. With around three quarters of the world’s reserves of coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo, our demand for gadgets fuels bloody conflict and vast human suffering. The No Blood on My Cellphone campaign shows how we can stop it.

#8 Double cheeseburger – A value meal is a great way to eat if you’ve neither time nor money but this cheap food turns out to be ‘cheat food’. What if we had to pay the full environmental, labour and health costs of a burger? Some researchers think we’d end up paying over $200, and that doesn’t include the modern day slavery in our North American sandwiches.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781846272172
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Image courtesy Raote

Ringing laughter is what most guests will remember from the launch of Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them. Visiting South Africa for the Time of the Writer Festival, Akpan was able to make time for his Joburg fans at the Nelson Mandela Square Exclusive Books this week. Akpan, a Catholic priest, delighted launch guests with his self-deprecating attitude and genuine warmth.

Say You’re One of Them is, of course, the collection of short stories that caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who made it one of her Book Club selections. Akpan says the resulting attention has allowed him to travel around the world – mostly through writers’ festivals invites. He speaks of writing as a “gift” – something that he needed to appreciate by acting on. When writing his book, he was often at the mercy of Nigeria’s on again, off again electricity supply, but he persevered. He wrote mainly at night on local computers while attending to his seminary studies and parishioners during the day. Asked for advice by an aspiring author in the audience, he said, “If you want to write, write!”. He said that a writer must be “ready to sit alone in that room, tell their friends not to visit and stay in that space”. Saying he “stumbled” upon his gift, he spent many years developing it including going to a writers’ school.

During the launch he said he’d originally aspired to be a columnist, writing a package of 4 opinion pieces which he sent off to various newspapers to try his luck. Feeling down and depressed when he didn’t receive a positive response, he eventually tried fiction – asking himself, “What do I have to lose?”. He was lucky, with several publishers keen to pick up his work. As a newly developing author he shared how he balked initially at being published because he didn’t feel he was ready. Finally, a year later, his short story, “My Parents’ Bedroom”, was published.

Asked how real the stories he writes are to him he replied that first he writes, then he researches. For him, “research is not the story”. But he does spend time sending his work out for comments and feedback, particularly when it comes to checking cultural details and honouring the local dialogue or “patois”. It is clear that although not biographical, the stories and children he writes about move him greatly. “I intentionally wanted to write about things that bothered me,” he said. For the future, he would love to write a novel but that is something he will need to learn how to do.

It was clear that the crowd at this launch – which comprised people from all over the world, as it happened – were only too happy to enjoy a touch of the Oprah magic that now surrounds Father Uwem Akpan.

Facebook gallery

Book details

• Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780349120645
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Exclusive Books and Penguin Books take pleasure in inviting you to the launch of A Million Miles from Normal by Paige Nick. See you there!

About the book

Rachel Marcus has a great life and an amazing job as a top copywriter at an advertising agency in Johannesburg, or rather Rachel Marcus HAD a great life and an amazing job as a top copywriter at an advertising agency in Johannesburg – right up until she got fired …

Forced to sell everything she owns and leave Joburg in a hurry, Rachel moves to New York City where she plans to make a fabulous life for herself and prove to everyone back home that she’s not a complete disaster. Except that the only job she can find is at a crap advertising agency, with a hippie freak for a boss and an alcoholic drug addict for an art director. And the only apartment she can afford is the world’s smallest cockroach-infested rat trap. In fact, the only upside to her new life in the Big Apple is her new best friend – her frustratingly petite neighbour, Sue.

However, just when things seem to be going from bad to worse Rachel meets the oh-so delicious Jerrod Craig. And not only does Jerrod have all his own teeth but he is also Creative Group Head at one of the biggest advertising agencies in New York. Suddenly it looks like Rachel’s life might just be coming together – a handsome boyfriend with all the right connections can put a silver lining on any cloud. Now all she needs is that cup of tea…

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 25 March 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Exclusive Books Constantia Village,
  Spaanschemat Road
  Constantia
• RSVP: To Exclusive Books Constantia Village, by 19 March,
  constantia@exclusivebooks.co.za, 021 794 7800

Book Details

• A Million Miles from Normal by Paige Nick
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780143026518
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Forced to sell everything she owns and leave Joburg in a hurry, Rachel moves to New York City where she plans to make a fabulous life for herself and prove to everyone back home that she’s not a complete disaster. Except that the only job she can find is at a crap advertising agency, with a hippie freak for a boss and an alcoholic drug addict for an art director. And the only apartment she can afford is the world’s smallest cockroach-infested rat trap. In fact, the only upside to her new life in the Big Apple is her new best friend – her frustratingly petite neighbour, Sue.

However, just when things seem to be going from bad to worse Rachel meets the oh-so delicious Jerrod Craig. And not only does Jerrod have all his own teeth but he is also Creative Group Head at one of the biggest advertising agencies in New York. Suddenly it looks like Rachel’s life might just be coming together – a handsome boyfriend with all the right connections can put a silver lining on any cloud. Now all she needs is that cup of tea…

• To see a commercial for A Million Miles from Normal, click here

About the author

Paige Nick has been a copywriter in advertising for 15 years, where she has worked on brands like BMW, Nashua, Kulula.com, Levi’s Jeans and Allan Gray. A Million Miles from Normal is 99% fictional, although many of the characters are an amalgamation of the people Paige has worked with and clients she has met over the years. This is her first novel.

Book details

• A Million Miles from Normal by Paige Nick
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143026518
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

A movie crew descended on the private boarding school in the KwaZuluNatal Midlands four days ago to transform a small dormitory room into the main set of the film of Van de Ruit’s popular book.

The book tells of the experiences at boarding school in 1990 of a boy nicknamed “Spud” .

Yesterday, the excited author told The Times: “I never imagined that Spud would become this big. Watching the scene before me, I can say that it has been truthful to the book and I am very pleased with that.”

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Spud by John van de Ruit
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143024842
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Spud: The madness continues by John van de Ruit
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143025207
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Spud: Learning to Fly Limited Edition by John van Ruit
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143026259
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Image courtesy The Sky Kid

The Rainbow Experience in partnership with The Book Lounge invites you to an “On the Couch” session with author Steven Otter.

Otter will be speaking about his book, Khayelitsha: uMlungu in a Township.

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 18 March 2010
• Time: 5:00 PM for 5:30 PM
• Venue: The Rainbow Experience, Mandela Rhodes Place,
  23 Church Street, Cape Town | Map
• RSVP: The Rainbow Experience,
  manager@therainbowexperience.co.za, 021 422 1428

Book Details

• Khayelitsha: uMlungu in a Township by Steven Otter
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780143025474
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Team coaching is all the rage these days but getting the right person to bring out the best in you might be harder than you think. Coaching is a “soft” skill and regulation for the field is far from adequate. Helena Dolny, editor of Team Coaching: Artists at Work, takes a look at the questions you need to ask before hiring a coach:

My friend Oscar asked me what sounds like a simple question: “How do you choose a coach for yourself or your team?” Yet there is no easy answer to it.

Professor David Lane, a doyen in the British coach-training industry and active in setting up the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Coaches and Mentors Association of South Africa (Comensa) a few years ago. He began his talk with a description of medieval guilds.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Team Coaching: Artists at Work: South African coaches share their theory and practice edited by Helena Dolny
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143025825
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Image courtesy Julie Ford People Solutions

A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man’s search for love, and a place to call home.

“The Lover”, one of the three parts that make up In a Strange Room, has been chosen for “The O Henry Award” – the only annual award, in the United States, given to short stories of exceptional merit.

About the author

Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, The Quarry, The Good Doctor and The Impostor. The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Dublin/IMPAC Award. The Impostor won the 2008 University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing, and was shortlisted for the 2009 M-Net Literary Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the African Region. He lives in Cape Town.

Book details

• In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143026273
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!