Books: aviation romance and crime
Wednesday, 19 June 2024 14:07Some books I've been reading lately.
Rosalie Fox
I stumbled across author Rosalie Fox on social media. She's a writer who lives and works on her farm in the Free State, near Vredefort. She writes aviation romance books, and sent me one so I went and got it off Amazon anyway. Rosalie is quite the aviation enthusiast; she has been posting lost of fantastic pictures from the last airshow up here.
A Tale of Wild Geese is set in WW2 Britain, during the Battle of Britain, and features a woman, Eleanor, who meets Danny, an American pilot flying for the RAF, as well as her Irish cousin Johnny. It ends up on a farm in South Africa's Eastern Cape. I really enjoyed the book; the character were lovely, there were happy and tragic parts, and it was so well described you could just imagine yourself in the English village or on the farm Soetfontein.
A Place to Land is a sequel, this one featuring Johnny and his girlfriend Louise, and set in the Eastern Cape and South West Africa. Again, beautifully written.
I'm really looking forward to Rosalie's next book. In the meantime, I enjoy her pictures of farm sunrises and of her cute goats (yes, goats feature in the books). Her editor is also a writer, and is blind; she's also apparently an excellent horse rider.
Benjamin Bennett
When I was much younger, I devoured most of the books in the house. Among them were a collection of 10 or 15 true crime books written by Benjamin Bennett, who was for decades a crime and aviation reporter for various South African newspapers. My dad still had all the books - which are considered quite rare - and I appropriated them from him when I was down at the coast. I've been re-reading them, and they're quite fascinating. Bennett started his career in the early 1920s, so there are cases from back then, set in South Africa and in other parts of Africa (like Kenya). The current book I'm reading was published in 1956, so the crimes from then were interesting. He has also had chapters on other parts of his career; for example, he tried to write a biography of heart surgeon Chris Barnard (extremely difficult to work with), he wrote a book with the second recipient of a heart transplant, and he talks about some of the aviation pioneering he reported on. Most of what I've read so far is not as racist as one would expect, given the times, apart from one chapter on superstition and muti murders, which was filled with racial stereotypes. Generally it's a nostalgic journey for me, re-reading about some of the South African crimes from 70+ years ago.
While reading those, I've also started reading the Dragonlance books again, and that's also a trip through D&D nostalgia-land for me.
Rosalie Fox
I stumbled across author Rosalie Fox on social media. She's a writer who lives and works on her farm in the Free State, near Vredefort. She writes aviation romance books, and sent me one so I went and got it off Amazon anyway. Rosalie is quite the aviation enthusiast; she has been posting lost of fantastic pictures from the last airshow up here.
A Tale of Wild Geese is set in WW2 Britain, during the Battle of Britain, and features a woman, Eleanor, who meets Danny, an American pilot flying for the RAF, as well as her Irish cousin Johnny. It ends up on a farm in South Africa's Eastern Cape. I really enjoyed the book; the character were lovely, there were happy and tragic parts, and it was so well described you could just imagine yourself in the English village or on the farm Soetfontein.
A Place to Land is a sequel, this one featuring Johnny and his girlfriend Louise, and set in the Eastern Cape and South West Africa. Again, beautifully written.
I'm really looking forward to Rosalie's next book. In the meantime, I enjoy her pictures of farm sunrises and of her cute goats (yes, goats feature in the books). Her editor is also a writer, and is blind; she's also apparently an excellent horse rider.
Benjamin Bennett
When I was much younger, I devoured most of the books in the house. Among them were a collection of 10 or 15 true crime books written by Benjamin Bennett, who was for decades a crime and aviation reporter for various South African newspapers. My dad still had all the books - which are considered quite rare - and I appropriated them from him when I was down at the coast. I've been re-reading them, and they're quite fascinating. Bennett started his career in the early 1920s, so there are cases from back then, set in South Africa and in other parts of Africa (like Kenya). The current book I'm reading was published in 1956, so the crimes from then were interesting. He has also had chapters on other parts of his career; for example, he tried to write a biography of heart surgeon Chris Barnard (extremely difficult to work with), he wrote a book with the second recipient of a heart transplant, and he talks about some of the aviation pioneering he reported on. Most of what I've read so far is not as racist as one would expect, given the times, apart from one chapter on superstition and muti murders, which was filled with racial stereotypes. Generally it's a nostalgic journey for me, re-reading about some of the South African crimes from 70+ years ago.
While reading those, I've also started reading the Dragonlance books again, and that's also a trip through D&D nostalgia-land for me.