Even more excellent, little-known books

EVEN MORE EXCELLENT, LITTLE-KNOWN BOOKS

Kate McCallum, reader, traveller and publisher; Finuala Dowling, poet and novelist

Monday 23–Wednesday 25 January

1.00 pm

COURSE FEES R330

Following their series in 2018, 2019 and 2021, Kate McCallum and Finuala Dowling give their personal recommendations for even more excellent books that may not be well known to a well-read South African audience. Along the way there’ll be enthusiastic recommendations of other books by the same author and other authors.

Lecture titles

1. A miscellany of pleasure from 2021 Kate McCallum

2. Unconventional lives Kate McCallum

3. The dubious delights of ageing Finuala Dowling

BOOK HERE

Kate McCallum is first and foremost a reader. She reads as she breathes – fiction, non-fiction, biography and autobiography, travel and exploration, history, letters, food, writing, crime, politics, medicine, children’s books, anything in print. (“Stuck at Everest Base Camp in Tibet for five days with illness, I ran out of reading material, and was reduced to reading the care labels on my equipment.”) Her career has been in the South African publishing industry, where she was Managing Director of Oxford University Press Southern Africa for 12 years, unfortunately not always publishing the sort of books she wanted to read. Since 2004 she has run her own business as an international publishing consultant and trainer in publishing.

A traveller and mountaineer, she has walked in the most of the European countries, and been on mountaineering expeditions to Krygystan, Western China, Peru, Tibet and Siberia. She has also organized and led hiking trips to Bhutan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and reading the history and literature of these countries as she goes.