book review – blog 4 sports 2011 by Conrad A Brand

Self published in 2012

 

This is a lovely little booklet written by a South African author who now lives in the UK.

The title is taken from the Afrikaans ‘boc for sports’ which is a reference to finding something amusing.  Boc was changed to blog and for was changed to4 because this book is a collection of the best blog posts from Conrad’s blog in 2011.

It contains 6 stories/memoirs, 3 are in English and 3 are in Afrikaans.  I cannot read Afrikaans so cannot comment on those 3 stories but the 3 English stories were very good.

The first, ‘float like a butterfly, sting lie a bee’ is a story about a wasp, this is short and sweet and quite funny.

The second, ‘the BMI machine’ is an anecdote about himself when he decided to go on a diet in an effort to support his wife, it details the very funny episode when he first went to get weighed on a public weighing machine.

The final English story is about a poignant visit to the vets.

All these 3 stories have some fundamental elements in common, they are all funny and they are all very easy to read.  Conrad has a style of writing which sucks you in straight away, it is very conversational and you can almost feel him standing in front of you telling the tale with a big grin on his face.  The only downside to 3 stories being written in Afrikaans is that you will really want to read them to see if they are as good as the other 3.

Conrad Brand is planning an e-book version of this little book which will be all in English and he is planning a translation of the 3 Afrikaans stories. He is also writing his first novel which will hopefully be ready at the end of the year.

If his novel is written in this same style it will be very funny and easy to read, I look forward to it.

Star rating 4/5 I really liked it.

~ by adelesymonds on July 4, 2012.