This is Jerm Warfare! (Jeremy Nell)

- A collection of cartoons by Jeremy Nell; supplied by Penguin Books

I loved this book so much I read it twice. 

And it now lives on my coffee table.

It’s not a coffee table book. Not even close. But I like paging through it. I like watching my toddler engage with it. And I like the kudos it gives me. 

Bottom line? It’s just clever, clever, clever. Jerm, its author, is clever, clever, clever.

Okay, so what’s This is Jerm Warfare?

It’s a collection of (largely political and mostly satirical) cartoons by the award-winning Jerm – described by Rico of Madam & Eve fame as “A refugee from a punk boy band who’s taken up cartooning instead.” (I was surprised to read that because this guy’s so talented it's like he was born to be a cartoonist.)

I even love Jerm’s hand-writing, which is big, loopy weirdly flowery and totally unlike the very uniform block letters that are usually used in cartoon speech bubbles.

He puns. He rhymes. He makes clever connections between topical events and iconic imagery. He includes revealing notes on the history of some of the cartoons. He’s funny – very funny. And he knows his shit politically. 

He has also created some of the most memorable representations of Mandela, Zuma, Mugabe, Zille, Obama and Malema I have ever seen in print or online.

I’ve followed Jeremy Nell (@mynameisjerm) on Twitter for ages, so I was delighted when this book was launched and proud to be asked to review it. In case you haven’t worked it out from my fulsome praise, I’m a fan. Buy this book for someone smart, and look out for these highlights:

1. Africa 2.0
2. Steve Jobs and iQuit
3. 10 Years of Reflection
4. Saudi Women
5. Pre-Tolls; Post-Tolls
6. Anene Booysen
7. The State of the Nation
8. Mandela and the Super-Moon (my favourite; I blogged about it)
9. Satire for Dummies
10. Tweet & Re-Tweet (and oldie, but what a goodie!)

Enjoy!

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Two books about unusual women

Five days of holiday. Three separate car trips of four hours each. Four provinces. Four cities. Insufficient reading time. And two books. One: among the top five pieces of trashy, self-serving, barely literate piles of drivel I've read in my lifetime. The other: so brilliant I can't stop thinking about it.

The first is Loui Fish's Walking in my Choos. It's hogwash. Fascinating, sensationalist, poorly translated hogwash. It is peppered with typos, missing a few critical editorial items (like attribution for the foreword) and profoundly lacking in class... but I read it twice. And loved every minute of it.

I knew little or nothing about Loui Fish a week ago, other than that she's the ex-wife of local footballer and (supposed) hunk Mark Fish. I've spotted her in Heat, draped over this or that young buck and showing lots of booby, and I thought she was pretty. If you like that sort of thing. But I had no real idea of the shenanigans - the drugs, affairs, criminals, drama, mutually assured destruction and other chaos - that accompany celeb living.

And if I had the inside track, as Loui does, I'd be too skaam to tell anyone.

Her ex must want to murder her. He, fellow sportsman James Small, and a cast of other local bigwigs come off looking like a bunch of coke-addled miscreants, and the laughingly recited tale of how little Luke Fish tried to loosen his dad's girlfriend's tires is terrifying in the least. Oy. Those poor kids.

So if, like me, you love reading trash and you get off on knowing who's done what to whom and for what bizarre reasons, and you particularly enjoy stories about people you may spot in Tasha's, this book is divine holiday reading. But wrap the cover in brown paper, for God's sake, because I'd be more embarrassed to be caught reading this than I would 50 Shades of Grey, or even Twilight. Yeesh.

Number 2 Holiday Book is Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, and it's possible I am the last bookworm on earth to have discovered it. Those in the know have been raving for ages, and I've been ignoring them. The blurb simply doesn't do this novel justice. That's my defense.

Anyway, here's my take on it:

The story is genius. The writing is magnificent. The characters are utterly believable. The twists and turns are many. The dialogue and internal dialogue are insightful.

In short, it's a winner - reminding me a lot of a book I adored about ten years back: The Drowning People, by (I think) Richard Mason. There's also a lot of Wally Lamb, Lionel Shriver and Joanne Harris in Flynn's style, and I really like all three.

Here's what some others have said:

Gone Girl is one of the best—and most frightening—portraits of psychopathy I've ever read. Nick and Amy manipulate each other—with savage, merciless and often darkly witty dexterity. This is a wonderful and terrifying book about how the happy surface normality and the underlying darkness can become too closely interwoven to separate. - Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Faithful Place and Into the Woods 

Gone Girl builds on the extraordinary achievements of Gillian Flynn's first two books and delivers the reader into the claustrophobic world of a failing marriage. We all know the story, right? Beautiful wife disappears; husband doesn't seem as distraught as he should be under the circumstances. But Flynn takes this sturdy trope of the 24-hour news cycle and turns it inside out, providing a devastating portrait of a marriage and a timely, cautionary tale about an age in which everyone's dreams seem to be imploding - Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Thing and I’d Know You Anywhere

Gillian Flynn's first two books, Sharp Edges and Dark Places, are already on my Kindle. Yay!

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

How to Get Quoted in the Media (Damaria Senne)

I seldom agree to review e-books. 

First, I’m skeptical of writers who opt not to publish ‘real’ books.

Second, they’re so often the province of people who aren’t experts and should not have published anything at all, except maybe a long-ish blog post.

But I am pleased that I ignored my own biases and read this little gem. And by little, I mean little. It’s an easy, quick, interesting read, at 38 pages.

Here’s more:

1.     This topic is ideal for e-publishing. In fact, I’d be less skeptical about e-publishing in general if more e-books were like this: short, clear, inexpensive and accessible to those outside of the industry.

2.     How to get quoted in the media does what the title suggests: it gives businesses, brands and organisations insights into how to get, and then maintain, media coverage.

3.     It’s intelligently structured, with short sections that speak to specific issues, like preparing for interviews in person and on TV, radio, email, etc.

4.     It covers some critical and often-overlooked ground, like ensuring that you have, or can present, a ‘So What?’, i.e. a real benefit to the market, the population, the industry, etc. (If you can’t, don’t send the release. It’ll annoy the editor, who’ll mark your email address as Junk for next time.)

5.     I appreciate the emphasis that there should always be various versions of a release, differently slanted for different audiences and journalists.

6.     About half-way through, I was getting itchy at the absence of a mention of free media monitoring services, like Google Alerts, and…there it was!

I have only two (small) reservations about How to get quoted in the media:

1.     I’d have liked to see a short section on when to out-source press release and communique writing to the relevant professionals, and when doing so is unnecessary.

2.     There are a few typos in the text, and a couple of formatting inconsistencies. Now, in a print book, this would be unacceptable, but in an e-book (especially one in its early iterations) it’s easily fixable. Having said that, I’d have liked to see a more gimlet editorial eye from authors who themselves are communicators.

My closing advice? Get a copy. It’s a must-read for anyone with a business, brand or cause that requires media exposure.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za