Reading Matters (week 16) April 14 2026

Author, publisher, journalist Melinda Ferguson writes with a power and intensity that can leave you – and her – shattered, even battered. Nowhere does she do this better than in her memoirs, of which Swift (Ride or Die Press) is her fifth. I need to gulp extra oxygen to keep following the raw pain and yet also the shimmering beauty of her words, both written and spoken.

When Mat, her gorgeous psychiatrist soul mate of 10 years dies suddenly in his sleep she is devastated but typically she doesn’t succumb to her grief, she harnesses it. In just six weeks she writes a book about saving a bird, a Swift, as she simultaneously grabs hold of her grief. A tale to make the angels weep.

I chat about four children’s books, by Refiloe Moahloli, on topics ranging from holidays, to street parties and catching buses that are colourfully illustrated by Katlego Keokgale. Your children and grandchildren, will love these vibrant books, either to read or have read to them – by YOU! Published by Pan Macmillan Children’s Books.

Rule Breakers (Protea Book House) by Hermann Pretorius, strategic communicator, deals with how our 2024 election campaign changed SA forever. It saw the ANC swept from its majority, the formation of the GNU, and asks, and answers why these pivotal events occurred.

I enjoy the publisher’s comment: “whether you are interested in politics or not, politics is very interested in you.” A surprisingly easy read.

Anybody mad about books will go mad about, The Book Binder’s Secret by A.D. Bell, debut British author. Set in 1901, a woman, Lily, is apprenticed to a master bookbinder in Oxford and is given a burnt book that she carefully prises apart to find a 50-year-old love letter describing fortune and murder.

Intrigued, almost possessed, she sets out to find the other books by the same author in the hopes of discovering the woman who wrote them. She travels England, is physically attacked and falls in love as she visits libraries and bookstores. Rich, luscious language set in history and mystery. Enjoy it as much as I did.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall