Final book of 2023

I managed to squeeze in one last book for 2023 between Christmas and the end of the year. That was roughly the pace that I used to read books during high school. Most of the year, I am now distracted by other things. That’s also why I didn’t complete this post until long after the new year!

Black Mamba Under My Bed (2021) by Ruth Taylor Stott

I picked this one up at a local Christmas market in Cape Town. The reason I got it was that the author also grew up in Cape Town and taught at Rustenburg Girls’ Junior School. Rustenburg is where several women, from at least two generations, of my family have been educated. It’s nice to read a book set in familiar surroundings. The book was written as a gift for her husband’s 90^th birthday because, as they only met later in life, he was not present for her first 50-odd years.

The major drawback of the book is that it is self-published and could have used an editor. Given that the author is a former teacher, it’s better than some self-published works but there are still a number of grammatical oddities and paragraphs that are split in ways that just do not make sense. Related to the issue with paragraphs is the need to organise the narrative better; the early chapters are collections of anecdotes that start and stop with few connecting thoughts. It may be that it’s just difficult to create flow between small stories but that’s where an experienced editor would have been useful.

The early chapters cover some childhood memories and Stott’s early teaching experiences in various South African schools. Later chapters, which have far more structure and flow, concern her family’s experience helping to raise a black child during apartheid as well as trips to foreign countries such as the US, Israel and Thailand. The core strength of the book is richness of all her experiences. Stott may not be a celebrity but she has lived life to the full and her autobiography is filled with inspiring stories. That said, while some experiences may make for a compelling tale, I am glad they were her experiences and not mine.