Brown paper packages

Even when they are not tied up with string, they are still amongst my favourite things. There is nothing like coming home after yet another 10 hour working day to find one of these little gems waiting for you, especially if they contain one of my other favourite things: books. Although most of the time I prefer getting lost between the shelves of my local Waterstones, occasionally I allow myself to get lost between virtual bookshelves instead. Study books and books that are hard to come by tend to appear on my doorstep in those beige wrappings.

I had just started reading Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh when my parcel arrived. This is a book that I picked up at the Spui book market before I even moved to London but which has been sitting on my shelf ever since. I have been a bit wary about it as I have read Rushdie before to mixed effect. Midnight's children I still found somewhat enjoyable although very difficult but Fury put me off Rushdie for a very long time. The only reason I finished it was sheer determination not to be defeated by a book! Then last year, amidst raving reviews, I decided to give Rushdie one last shot with Shalimar the Clown. I don't know if Rushdie is like an expensive whiskey that you only learn to appreciate over time or if my own grasp of literature has improved but I absolutely loved this book. Rushdie uses language not merely as a tool for telling a story but uses words and sentences like a painter uses colour. It is not the individual images that matter but the painting as a whole. What before had seemed like endless digressions and pointless ramblings suddenly all connected. Enough reason to give Rushdie another chance. But now he has been temporarily suspended by the arrival of my brown paper package.

One of my new acquisitions is Nina Siegal's A little trouble with the facts which I read cover to cover in a single day. It's a wonderfully witty story about once high-flying Style reporter Valerie Vane who tries to redeem herself as a serious journalist by investigating the murder of a well-known graffiti artist. You will probably not have heard of Nina Siegal yet as this is her debut novel. I didn't just stumble upon her book either. Nina moved to Amsterdam around the same time I moved away from there and nearly ended up living in my apartment. She is still living in Amsterdam, working on her second novel. If she manages to capture Amsterdam in the same way she did the world of journalism she has definitely got a new fan.

Two other of my more recent reads that deserve mention come in the direct aftermath of my Ghana trip. My trip to Elmina prompted several of you to recommend Arthur Japin's De zwarte met het witte hart. I have just finished it and wish I had read it before going to Ghana. It's a poignant tale, based on a true story, about two Ashanti princes uprooted from their familiar world to be educated in the Netherlands. The two boys respond very differently to this new and often unwelcoming environment. Reading it made me feel much the same way as I did walking around Elmina castle. Embarrassed about a past that isn't quite mine yet somehow also is.

The other book is Giles Bolton's Poor Story. Working for the same organisation that was the reason for my own trip, Bolton explores why Africa keeps getting shortchanged in the global economy and why our aid money is not being used in the most effective way. The latter issue is particularly interesting to me as it reverberates with one of the projects I am currently working on. In the mean time, the one bookcase that occupies my shoe box has become so full that even double parking my books is no longer a solution. I better go easy on those brown paper packages for a while.