Reading Matters (week 020) 13 May 2025

Author Ted Botha, whose Daisy de Melker was such a success, has written another surefire hit, Hollywood on the Veld (Jonathan Ball Publishers.) You read right… back in the early 1920s a young American, IW Schlesinger, pitched up in the racy, bustling, goldmining town of Johannesburg.  The miners had money and wanted entertainment and soon the always immaculately turned-out IW was buying up theatres in SA.

Not satisfied with them he soon turned his brilliant, creative mind to developing a SA Hollywood where Killarney stands today. He shot massive spectacular movies and was so successful he began buying up half of downtown Joburg as well as massive shops and offices in London and New York.  If you are remotely interested in movies and entrepreneurs this book is for you,

Melinda French Gates in The Next Day (Macmillan) poignantly writes about the birth of her first baby and subsequent divorce from Bill Gates.

Beautiful Ugly (Macmillan) is a thriller by Alice Feeney that will shock you to the last page.  Riveting read.

Remember it’s Franschhoek Literary Festival this coming weekend, followed by Kingsmead Book Fair the next.  Both unmissable!

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall