Holiday Wishes

We at the paperhousehouse review would like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas. And for all of you that still need to do some last minute shopping, please visit your local bookshop for the perfect gift that suites every budget. After Christmas we can start counting down the days towards 2010 and the feverish book sales that are coming in January.

The paperhouse review is taking some time off to work on some great new ideas for the blog for 2010 so do come and visit us again next year when our great new features will be up and running. Happy reading until then.

Please watch the incentive below on why you should support your local bookshop this holiday season, courtesy of IndieBound

Some novel ideas from our favourite friends

It has been quiet on the blog front as the silly season with its hectic schedules has managed to consume our lives. But we at The Paperhouse Review have managed to keep sourcing some great innovative book-themed designs, courtesy of our favourite blogs and magazines. Luckily for us, they seem to appreciate book culture as much as we do, as they continue to wow us with each new, ingenious way to display our treasured reads.

Here are some of the best ideas we've seen the last few months.

Apartment Therapy


Lili Lite



Bookshelf-annotation by Lau Design



Bookrest by Lars Nilsson



October 2009 ELLE Decoration UK Edition




Slim Shelving



London Landmark Bookends by Susan Bradley Design

Mantel scoops the Booker

After months of waiting and debating, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize has been announced. From a strong shortlist of six contenders, bookies’ favourite Hilary Mantel has won the award for her novel about Thomas Cromwell titled Wolf Hall. Congratulations!

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd / ISBN: 9780007230181 / Price: R296.00

Much has been written about the Tudors and the reign of King Henry VIII, both in the realm of fiction and non-fiction, and in recent years public interest in the subject has grown overwhelmingly. Mantel, who is no stranger to literary awards, knew that, because of this, writing her account of the era would be "difficult". "I had to interest the historians, I had to amuse the jaded palate of the critical establishment and most of all I had to capture the imagination of the general reader," she said in her acceptance speech last night.

She appears to have succeeded. Chairman of the judging panel, James Naughtie, lauded the book for its "sheer bigness", which he attributed to the "boldness of its narrative" and "its scene setting". He went on to describe it as an "extraordinary piece of story-telling", an echo of the justification for last year’s winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which gives some idea of what the judges look for in a winner. Among the unsuccessful contenders for this year’s award were JM Coetzee for his novel Summertime and AS Byatt for The Children’s Book.

Possibly the chicest bookshop in Europe

I was lucky enough to spend some time in the charming city of Ghent, in Flemish Belgium, this past August. I was won over within days of my arrival by this little jewel in Europe without even having a piece of its world-famous chocolate and, after indulging in that remarkable use of cacao at last, I knew a future return to Ghent was inevitable. Unbeknownst to me, however, Ghent was harboring another ace in its pocket: a bookshop called PAARD OF TROJE (the Trojan horse).




This sanctuary of books might just be the chicest bookshop in all of Europe. Yes, I am well aware of the fact that I haven't seen all that Europe has to offer in terms of bookshops, but I couldn't help but be seduced by this incredible use of space – where function and form have a royal time battling it out, and the end result is a perfect equilibrium of excellent styling and design. Add to this a brilliant selection of titles adorning the beautifully crafted shelves and a vital dose of booklovers' atmosphere.




I was very impressed that the shop owners manage to keep their children's section light and airy, stocked with exquisitely illustrated Dutch titles, without compromising on the style and aesthetics of the shop or the selection – a pitfall into which many bookshops stumble head first. My favourite feature has to be the custom-designed ladders which have an almost forgotten art nouveau look about them and are latched onto a rail system, making navigating to the top shelves easy and exciting. This simple design utilises every corner of space, without intruding on readers' abilities to move around, and adds to unique experience that is PAARD VAN TROJE.

Sunday Times Literary Awards winners

We at The Paperhouse Review would like to congratulate the winners of this year’s Sunday Times Literary Awards: the Alan Paton Award and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Peter Harris received the Alan Paton Award for In a Different Time. The book is the true, harrowing and gripping story of the Delmas Four, as told by their attorney. The award is given each year to the author of a South African work of non-fiction, and has been running for 20 years this year.

Publisher: Umuzi / ISBN: 9781415200490 / Price: R185.00


Anne Landsman is the winner of this year’s Sunday Times Fiction Prize for The Rowing Lesson. The novel begins when pregnant Betsy Klein is summoned from New York to her father’s bedside. As she watches him, she imagines his life as a young Jewish man on the plattelande and weaves a story that traverses both their lives.

Publisher: Kwela / ISBN: 9780795702624 / Price: R175.00

The light side of books

If you are lucky enough to have cosy corner dedicated to your favourite pastime (and, you being a visitor of this site, we assume this pastime is reading) one important fixture will invariably be your reading light. We endorse the following quirky ideas:



This little fellow is from the Anglo Swiss Partnership of black+blum and will set you back £31.25 (R410).




For the more practical of readers, we spotted this on Apartment Therapy's sister site Unplggd.com. It is called the Book-Sensitive Reading Lamp and doubles as a page-holder. It was designed by French designers Jun Yasumoto, Alban Le Henry, Olivier Pigasse and Vincent Vandenbrouck. (No price available.)

The Paperhouse Review’s Top 10 Self-Help Books

As we review our favourite self-help books, we are not taking a survey of those glitzy volumes that crowd the so-called psychology sections of bookshops, with their trite philosophies and shallow epigrams, their pseudo-science and convoluted logic. Our self-help books are a selection of volumes, both fiction and non-fiction, that have taught us how to live. They are, in no particular order and without exhausting the list:

Jean-Honoré Frangonard, The Reader (Lesende Frau), oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.


1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. This is the coming-of-age story that defined all others. Holden Caulfield taught us in equal doses how to live and how not to live.
2. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Written by the sociologist as a guide to myth, it tells us plenty about the human condition.
3. the poems of Emily Dickinson. Simple and pretty, these verse whittle life away to its fundamentals.
4. Passage to India by E.M. Forster – and all the works of the Moderns for that matter. Plagued by a vague sense of existential unease, the Moderns resisted throwing out the baby with the bath water as we Post-moderns have done. The result is subtly chilling, and inspiring.
5. the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Using logic, the philosopher pulled apart the foundations of our world so that we could build it up from scratch again.
6. The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank, in her quiet way, teaches us courage and gratitude. All the tears shed on her behalf, by people of different races, religions and nationalities, testify to the need for tolerance and understanding. We are more alike than we are different, when it comes down to it, and it took this book, translated into almost every language imaginable, to show us that.
7. The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez. Although we’ve already explained why we chose to name this blog after the petite illustrated work, the quote below should seal the deal. Any true bibliophile will see themselves reflected between its pages.
8. the agreements and disagreements of Freud and Jung. Take an excerpt from The Four Archetypes, tack it to a page from Interpreting Dreams, stir it in with A Case of Hysteria and a dose of Modern Man in Search of a Soul, and you may not come out any wiser but you will certainly be more aware of the intricacies and contradictions of the human mind.
9. your high school history textbook. To appropriate a well-worn idea, you cannot know who you are without knowing where you come from.
10. and, of course, the oeuvre of Shakespeare. As many before us have pointed out, the Bard reveals a wealth about human nature and our emotions, whether through a comedy, tragedy or historical play. We could not possibly pick one as our favourite.

"I have often asked myself why I keep books that could only ever be of any use in a distant future, titles remote from my usual concerns, those that I have read once and will not open again for many years, if ever! But how could I throw away The Call of the Wind, for example, without destroying one of the building blocks of my childhood, or Zorba the Greek, which brought my adolescence to a tear-stained end... We prefer to lose a ring, a watch, our umbrella, rather than a book whose pages we will never read again, but which retains, just in the sound of its title, a remote and perhaps long-lost emotion." (The Paper House, p.12–3)

To store or to display?

Judging a book by its cover has become an ambiguous term in our day and age, where the cover design of a book as a means of branding its author (through the use of certain fonts, for instance) has become an integral part of publishing and book buying. We do not necessarily think of books as aesthetic objects, but the lines are becoming more and more blurred as books also become functional, not only because of their contents, but because of how we use them within our dwellings. It seems that they bring as much pleasure to the eyes as they do to our ever-inquiring minds. So whether you decide to store or display your treasured reads, here is some helpful inspiration via some of our favourite websites and books (of course).


This beautiful arrangement will make it difficult to get to that elusive book at the bottom, but makes for a great feature wall in this San Fransico home as seen on ApartmentTherapy.


For more ideas on how to make your living spaces come alive and how to inject a bit of your soul into a room, I strongly recommend Alan Power's Living with Books which has over the years become a neverending source of inspiration.
Publisher: Mitchell Beazley represented by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9781845331818
Publication date: April 2006
Retail Price: R230


For storage solutions with a aesthetic twist, we found this detailed bookshelf by San Francisco Architects Aiden Darling on Remodelista.



A new book that caught our eye with practical storage solutions for books and other every day items that may clutter your living space is Storage: Get organized by Terence Conran.
Publisher: Conran Octopus represented by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9781840914344
Publication date: March 2008
Retail price: R320

A blooming shame

It seems that the blurb of each new book published locally, whether fiction or non-fiction, claims to represent the state of South Africa today in stark, unprecedented honesty. And more often than not it is a country depicted either as shackled to its past or with the key to its manacles in its bloodied fingers. Black Petals by Bryan Rostron is another such novel, one which understands the past as a tangle of secrets that only recede further as one approaches, and the present as just as illusory.

Black Petals by Bryan Rostron
Publisher: Jacana / ISBN: 9781770096486 / Price: R165.00

The premise of Black Petals is an ambitious one. An archivist and former activist is working on a top-secret project when he discovers his own apartheid security files among the piles to be catalogued. Intrigued enough to abandon protocol and his own sense of self-preservation by stealing and examining first one file and then a second, Macaulay Vogel is shaken by the unfamiliar self (denoted as CCR10/32 and branded a traitor) who emerges from between the lime green folders.

Vogel’s journey through the haunted woods of identity is complicated by the agendas of an assortment of damaged, angry, shady and sincere comrades who all seem to demand the same thing from him: information. From Susan Sarkissian, his best friend’s wife, to union leader Marc Hendricks, to confidants Zecharia and Mary Xaba. And then of course there is the mysterious figure of Marda, made tangible only through the bouquets of flowers that Vogel buys in her memory.

All this soul searching is set to the score of marches and bombs, overset with the ringing the motto of "files have a life of their own". "They won’t stay buried," says Vogel ominously. "It’s like the bones, you see. One day, they’ll just work their own way to the surface." And just like Rostron’s persistent and often jarring metaphors about petals, to which everything is compared, including the weather.

Black Petals, although a sincere attempt at creating a detective novel that traverses the legacy of the past, is best summarised in this series of failed metaphors.

Our intrepid author becomes lost on his journey, never quite nearing his plotted destination. The novel is dogged by a feeling of familiarity, as it traces plots and themes extracted from other novels and short stories, yet never extends them, and confines its characters to the roles cast for them by the South African media. And in the end, existential questions so subtly raised in the promising first chapter are never answered, leaving the reader with the sense, not that we are being asked to recognise that there can be no definitive answers, but only that perhaps the author himself doesn’t know what they are.

Compared with the crop of good South African crime fiction (most of which, for some reason, is set against the slopes of Table Mountain) being released by the likes of Mike Nicol, Deon Meyer and Margie Orford, which manages to satisfy the requirements of a good thriller while still raising pertinent questions about South Africa past and present, Black Petals merely wanders listlessly through old, abandoned territory. It is, in short, a blooming shame.

If you enjoyed this book, you should read: Bryan Rostron’s first novel, My Shadow, which was commended for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa), and his non-fiction work, Till Babylon Falls.

The Hong Kong Bookshop Part II

After finding PAGEONE, I felt unsatisfied and was still searching for something less commercial. On my way to the Hong Kong Central Library, I stumbled upon a shop called, as Murphy would have it, the Commercial Press. The entrance was too timid and, if I hadn’t seen a poster of a book, I wouldn’t even have noticed that it was indeed a bookshop.

Walking up the staircase, I found what seemed to be a version of Van Schaik, an academic bookshop back home. I ruffled through the English section and came upon a wonderful series of the most beautiful covers including Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which had definitely been selected by a well-read person. They were on special: take two, get the third one free.

I was thinking that the extra suitcase I wanted to buy to accommodate my shopping is in the end going to be filled only with books, and no clothes. But, when I looked around for a chair to sit in and go through my selection, I couldn’t find one. As I was pressed for time, I made up my mind to return to purchase my threesome. A week later, I am sad to report, they are not there anymore. I doubt that they were all sold and suspect they have been hidden or returned.


Next I found the Bookbuddy, an overstocked children’s bookshop that is everything a bookshop should not be. Only the spines of books face you from wall-to-wall shelves, overwhelming you with choice and leaving you uninspired. The shop evokes no passion for books and the pleasure of reading them - it might as well have been a section of Toys’R’us, judging by the selection of Disney titles and toys.
I almost ran, in spite of my blistered feet, towards the exit of the mall, in desperate need of fresh air and a fresh perspective on books.

In the TST region of Kowloon I found Swindon Books. As I walked towards it, I could see a group of people filling the sidewalk in front of the shop and thought for a second that I had found some students or book groupies congregated in front of their favorite book spot. Unfortunately my fantasy was short-lived as they were only the construction workers from the site across the bookshop taking a break.

Swindon also has a very academic interior, but contains many more general English books then academic titles. The shop is well stocked, with a great bargain section and the best travel section I have seen yet. Although it lacks atmosphere, which could be remedied with background music, I found one elusive chair where I sat and, as I stared at a V.S. Naipul to my right, felt comfortably at home in the bustling city.

I have come to realise that, as a book lover visiting Hong Kong, you will indeed be satisfied by what is on offer. However, as a bookshop lover, I am left wanting. But during the next few months that remain of my stay here, I will be on the lookout for the best places to read, while scouting for secondhand bookshops and everything else book-related that Hong Kong has on offer.

New in the pile

There are days when being a reader seems like an overwhelming affliction – there is simply too much to read and too little time in which to do it. It’s almost enough to make me want to abandon the exercise entirely sometimes, leaving it for some other dutiful reader to tackle. Almost. Here are some of the newest releases which have made it onto the tops of our ‘To Read’ lists.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon grasped the imaginations of the authors of this blog firmly between its talons with its combination of detective mystery and literary ramble. Ruiz’s latest novel, The Angel’s Game, was released on the first of July. It sports a blue cover that, while it is consistent with the previous cover, may not grab the attentions of readers not familiar with the previous work.

Zafon says of the two novels, "if Shadow of the Wind is the nice, good girl in the family, The Angel’s Game would be the wicked gothic stepsister." Set again in Barcelona and described by some as a prequel to its predecessor, The Angel’s Game follows successful writer David Martin as he is made the offer of a lifetime: to write a book unlike any other in exchange for a handsome fortune.

But before I dip my literary toes into The Angel’s Game, I look forward to reading A.S. Byatt’s newest, The Children’s Book, which beat Ruiz to the honorary top of the pile by being released first. It has been described by those in the know as her best work since Possession (which in turn is arguably one of the best novels ever written) and ‘the most moving book I have read in thirty years’. This one is also about a writer, named Olive Wellwood, and is too a mystery of sorts.

And there is South African Alexandra Fuller’s The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, about which much has been written in the local press. Like her previous books (which have also been much praised and beg for their own readings), The Legend of Colton H. Bryant is as much an exploration of the boundaries of the genre of biography as it is the tale of a captivating young man who symbolises a nation’s greed. Fuller’s previous works are Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Scribbling the Cat.

PS: Although this one deserves an inclusion in this literary line-up, it is only due out later this year and so there is not much information available about it. Titled Her Fearful Symmetry, author Audrey Niffenegger of The Time Traveler’s Wife fame says her second novel is about two identical twins who test the boundaries of their bond. "Things get out of control, as you might imagine," she concludes.

Bookshelves and Bookends

If you are looking for a D.I.Y. project for your book collection at home, have a blank wall to spare and consider yourself handy with a piece of wood, why not take some inspiration from the Tier shelving unit by Hivemindesign, a design company from Brooklyn, New York.



For an eye catching and unusual way to keep your books upright, why not use some industrial equipment as a bookend. Or you can buy this one from Cool Material for $34 (R270).

The Hong Kong Bookshop Part I

Walking the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, I felt I was on a mission to find out what sort of book culture Hong Kong possesses. The bibliophile in me had visions of finding quaint little bookshops stocked with hand-selected titles, manned by well-read, knowledgeable staff and perhaps even laced with the smell of coffee brewing.

What I found was a city alive with vibrance and excitement about ... shopping. The malls are temples towards which those walking the overpopulated sidewalks are driven to worship. A chain of bookshops, called PAGEONE, is however only found in the bigger malls which house the likes of Gucci and Vivian Westwood. Of its three stores in Hong Kong, if I had to pick one, my favourite would be the one in Causeway Bay’s Time Square Mall. It has a clean, modernist look with fashionable white shelves and, if it’s volume you are after, you may have found heaven.

Readers are spoilt for choice with books that can only be acquired from specialty shops back home and I was particularly impressed by the shop’s well-stocked art, architecture and design sections. (PAGEONE also encompasses a publishing company of some great design books).

However, the shop is very commercial and the bestsellers at the moment are movie tie-in jackets, like The Reader, My Sister’s Keeper and Angels & Demons, and Bobbi Brown’s Makeup Manual. And, although it delivers aesthetically, it lacks atmosphere. What is needed are some chairs where readers can browse through books, take in the setting and relax.

At least there is a cup of coffee brewing in the overpriced coffee shop next door.

“Beauty is truth”

The absurdly, and therefore aptly, named The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a meandering quest for beauty as only the French could do it. Driven by the poetic ruminations of a concierge in disguise and a twelve-year-old intellectual, the novel ranks as the very thing it explores – Art.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Publisher: Europa Editions / ISBN: 9781933372600 / Price: R230.00

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty," an English poet named Keats once concluded his raptures about a Grecian urn. Yet, as even the Romantic poet knew, beauty is sometimes superficial and truth is sometimes ugly. The French, with their carefully styled Epicurean reputations, are far better placed to appreciate the subtleties of beauty, whether found in high art or in the inanities of everyday life.

The proof is in the latest prize-winning novel by Muriel Barbery. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French L’élégance du hérisson, contends that the beauty of Art is, together with love and friendship, the only thing worth living for – and truth simply doesn’t come into it.

Renée is the widowed concierge of a fine hôtel particulier who plays her role with especial care, down to the bunions on her feet and her disregard for the building’s snooty inhabitants. Paloma is a twelve-year-old girl living on the fifth floor of the hôtel, whose first revelation to us is that she intends to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday in a demonstration of the pervasiveness of her family’s materialism.

The novel is related through the alternating insights of these two characters, both of whom possess an uncommonly lucid intelligence, yet disguise it beneath their expected personas of brusque concierge and rebellious daughter. However, when Kakuro Ozu moves into the building the game is up. While Renée is revealed as the noblewoman she is, Paloma finds a place where she can fulfill her final wish to be herself.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a deceptively elegant masterpiece, one that meanders along between haphazard observations and musings but surprises with its dogged pursuit of the nature of beauty. It is, in essence and without exaggeration, that very thing it sets out to find.

If you enjoyed this book, you should read: the English translation of Muriel Babery’s first novel, Gourmet Raptures (to be published in 2009); The Mark of the Angel by Nancy Hudson; and Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier.

Meet and greet

The world of books is populated by an assortment of characters (both on the printed page and off) that is impossible to categorise. But categorise it we at The Paperhouse Review will, in a manner befitting the peculiar culture that books inspire.

The Paperhouse Review is named after an exquisite little novel by Carlos Maria Dominguez, illustrated with all the reverence it deserves by Peter Sis. In The Paper House, books assume life. They become the ordering principle in the lives of bibliophiles; libraries are treated like dinner parties attended by old friends (and arch rivals) and there is a book to accompany every significant event. Although the petite novel tells about the dangers of allowing books such influence, it in no way deters, but only fuels, the reader’s lust for the bound form.

We at The Paperhouse Review want to share the peculiar culture of being a book lover with other book lovers. To cut to the heart of the matter, we want to fire in you the same awe we felt when we first opened up Domingues’ novel and reflected on a life ordered by books. There will be reviews and recommendations, features and essays, all on books and the culture they inspire. There will be links to our favourite sites and lists of our favourite books, as well as interviews with you and people like you. Join us as we throw caution to the wind and immerse ourselves in a world of books, à la The Paperhouse Review.