Blog Crawl

Yesterday, Fiction Vixen wrote a letter to Lorelei James and today, the crawl has reached us.

I had hoped to blackmail persuade Jase to write this but the bloody man is busy! Imagine having a life outside blogger and twitter and tumblr and Goodreads. It’s just not normal. I think he just can’t narrow it down to one. Trouble is, neither can I. I know everyone has said they had considered x & y prior to settling on z and I always thought, oh, yes? But now it’s my turn, it really is impossible to narrow it down to one person!

So Marie Sexton or Amy Lane? Anne McCaffrey or Joanne Harris? If Kassa had only allowed me to pick Kris, all would be resolved eons ago and I would now be holding my breath for the inevitable backlash to hit me from over the seas.

But decision made. Surprisingly not m/m. Indeed, Alexander McCall Smith it is. 

Dear Professor McCall Smith,

Over the past couple of years, it has been very rare for me to read non m/m fiction for anything outside of my Uni work. You are that exception.

I discovered Precious Ramotswe several years ago now during a pretty fractious time in my working life. Reading your gentle stories was like stepping into an oasis of calm. Their warmth and humour couldn’t fail to bring a smile to my face on my most miserable of workdays. Written Prozac. From the outset of the series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency drew me into Mma Ramotswe’s world. I could picture her, this “woman of traditional build,” driving her tiny white van around the beautiful Botswana countryside or sitting on her porch drinking bush tea and reflecting on her day.

You said in an interview once, “I don't do social realism. I don't write about problems but positive things. There are lots of people like Mma Ramotswe out there leading their lives and getting on with things.” Admittedly, very little usually happens in these stories, and the problems are mostly mundane, but your gentle tales of morality, family and community still touch on the problems that consume Africa at the moment, poverty and AIDS, for example, but they do not take on the main focus of the story. The optimism and everyday cheerfulness of people stands out.

In your tales, you show Mma Ramotswe’s integrity and wisdom and her deep love and respect for Africa shine through. Yours is an Africa of compassion. A place where people most often have very little but try their very best. I leave feeling uplifted and a little happier.

I would like to thank you for writing such sweet melancholy and for giving me respite from the real world whilst I am immersed in yours.

Yours
Juni

The next fan letter in this blogcrawl is by the ever lovely Sean Kennedy tomorrow.

It's also Day 16 of our 30 Day Song Challenge.

Day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate

Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

I loved this at first but worked at the time with a woman called Ruby and found it impossible to speak to her without this song rolling around my head. Eventually, I just wanted to scream!