Reading Matters (week 040) 30 Sept 2025

Fancy living on Mars? SA physicist, Dr Adriana Marais did, and was one of 100 international astronaut candidates selected for Mars One before it ran out of money. Now she has written, Out of this World and into the Next (Profile Books/ Jonathan Ball) as part of her preparing us for settling on other planets.

She describes a day in the life of someone living on Mars, in an extraordinary (and easy to read book) as she asks how we got here on earth and where we are going next. Obviously I asked her why she advocates extra-planetary life. You’ll get the answer to that in my interview with her!

Jane Griffith’s name is a by-word in the world of organic gardening. In her new book, Natural Solutions for Pests and Diseases (Sunbird Publishers) she shows us how to identify common SA pests using natural treatments that won’t poison us, the eaters.

Griffiths has been growing and eating organic foods for 30 years and it shows – she radiates health. The almost coffee-table book with glossy pages, is lushly illustrated with colour pictures of pests (yuk!) and lovely veggies, herbs, grains, fruits and nuts.

I have squeezed in a few words about an amazing book, The Last Lions (Struik Nature) by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell. I’ll be interviewing them about it and some of the most exquisite pictures of wild animals in their African bush that I’ve yet seen.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall