“Mine is a story of craving; an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered.”

Meet Dolores Price, quick-witted and vulnerable, whose life we follow through till she is forty years of age. When we first meet Dolores in 1956, she is four years old, innocently unaware that the delivery of a free television set will initiate her turbulent coming-of-age odyssey.

She spends the next few years, beached like a whale in front of her television, bingeing on junk food of all sorts, from potato chips to Pepsi. Dolores eats in an attempt to understand the many faces of love and betrayal: her father, driven by lust and longing to leave his family; her mother, an emotionally fragile woman who descends into mental illness; her grandmother, aching with unspoken feelings; and Jack Speight, the handsome neighbour who lives upstairs and whose ultimate betrayal will throw Dolores’ life nearly permanently off-course.

When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is neither emotionally nor physically strong. Nevertheless, her determination to rise above and conquer the situation shines through.

Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with an intriguing, heartbreakingly comical heroine who will keep your fingers glued to the pages, yearning for more. Dolores is as agonisingly real as our own imperfections.

She’s Come Undone makes us giggle and cringe and reminds us that despite the pain we endure and cause, we must find the courage to love again.

Teri Glass

“Dad, what does that sign say?”

That was me, pointing at a roadsign that was (as I was soon to learn) for restricting the speed on that road to 60km/h. I was about four or five years old when I asked that, and I couldn’t read yet. But I knew that “big people” could, and I wanted to know more. So I was a compulsive reader even before I knew my ABCs!

Or maybe I was just compulsively curious. I think a big part of the love of words is a natural curiosity as to “what’s out there that I don’t know yet?”. My parents instilled this love of words in me from an early age, by reading all manner of books to my brother and I.

As I’ve grown up I’ve always been most content and most easily entertained when there has been reading material within reach. Detergent bottles, cereal boxes, medication package inserts… And it doesn’t even matter if it’s the same bottle or box or insert I’ve read a hundred times before, as long as my eyes are drinking in their daily dose of letters, words and life.

As load shedding reached a lower-than-low point a few weeks ago, I was determined not to get sucked into the negativity and frustration that seemed to be frothing over the edges. So over drinks one night with friends we started brainstorming the good things about being in the dark. You can’t control or change the situation, so why waste time getting all worked up about it?

One thing is certain, South Africans are a resilient bunch with a great sense of humour that challenges even the British. So here’s a few reasons that might make you smile.

1. Woman get to unwind and indulge in candle lit baths
2. Great excuse to make every meal is a braai
3. You have a valid reason to get the little ones to bed earlier, so that…
4. There’s more time to get naughty under the sheets
5. You save thousands because shopping is impossible
6. Telkom doesn’t seem so bad in comparison
7. Newspaper cartoons are getting funny again
8. Conversation has shifted away from Zuma for a change
9. Change only happens when the majority get discontent, and the whole country is suffering this together.
10. You can finally see the stars from the middle of the city

I came across the following classic examples of load shedding humour on the site “South Africa, Unplugged – Thoughts an meanderings from the heart of the power vacuum”:  

Eskom calls on bloggers to stop using up all the nation’s electricity.

In the clearest signal yet that the electricity crisis in South Africa is reaching crisis proportions, Eskom has called on Internet bloggers to cut down drastically on the amount of electricity they are using to blog about the electricity crisis in South Africa.
Citing new research that shows that up to 95 percent of all “hot” and “new” posts on South African blogs are about power outages, Government incompetence, and load-shedding, with the remaining five percent not being able to be posted because of power outages, Government incompetence, and load-shedding, Eskom has accused bloggers of draining the nation’s energy reserves by using power that could be diverted for other strategic purposes, such as mining the coal needed to generate enough electricity to build a bunch of new power stations.
While acknowledging that computers use significantly less energy than, say, a dishwasher or flat-panel television screen, an Eskom spokesman claimed that the sheer scale of blogging in the last two to three weeks has pushed demand to unprecedented levels.
Even bloggers who use battery-operated laptops have been accused of contributing to the problem, since their laptop batteries could be better deployed by Eskom executives who need to go online to check their bank accounts and order themselves a new dishwasher or flat-panel television screen.
Warning that strict rationing of computer time may soon be on the cards, Eskom’s spokesman appealed to bloggers to restrict their blogging to matters of national urgency, such as posting an English comment on Steve Hofmeyer’s blog, obsessively checking their amatomu.com rankings, or uploading a cellphone photograph showing what they had for breakfast this morning.

http://saunplugged.blogspot.com/2008/02/eskom-calls-on-bloggers-to-stop-using.html

10 Good Reasons why we’re going to get through this stupid crisis

Okay. Seriously, now. If negative energy was electricity, we wouldn’t be having an electricity crisis. We’d be powering our homes and offices on all the bitching and moaning and whining, with enough left over to electrify a small developing nation to the north of us.
Honestly, if I hear just one more person saying that we’re becoming another Zimbabwe, or that the World Cup should go to the Aussies, or that at least the lights worked when PW Botha was in charge, I swear I’m going to sit right down and draw up a list of Ten Good Reasons Why We’re Probably Going to Get Through This Stupid Crisis. Okay, you asked for it:
1) People are sitting around boardroom tables right now, swigging glasses of Klipdrift and figuring out ways to get us out of of this mess. It worked in 1994, so why shouldn’t it work now?
2) This country was built by people who didn’t have electricity. Following which, hundreds of years later, this country was liberated by people who didn’t have electricity. (Look, if we ever run out of charcoal briquettes and firelighters, that’s when you really need to start worrying.)
3) Even while parts of the country are in darkness, other parts of the country are ablaze with light. That means something must be working, even if it’s only the computer that governs the load-shedding.
4) Nothing brings South Africans together like a common hatred of their elected officials. If we do manage to get through this, it’ll be in spite of the politicians, not because of them.
5) Practically speaking, South Africa has as much chance of becoming another Zimbabwe, as Zimbabwe has of becoming another South Africa. And if that does happen, we can always just move to Zimbabwe.
6) The 2010 FIFA World Cup is a big dazzling beacon of light that reminds us how much is at stake and why we need to get things working again. Just wait and see – it’s going to be the best damn thing to happen to South Africa since, well, the Rugby World Cup, and if you don’t believe that, you’re probably an Australian.
7) ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan. But a Boer and a Darkie working together – man, that’s what makes the plan work.
8)Alles sal regkom.
9) Failing which, Allesverloren. Their 1996 Shiraz is a particularly impressive vintage, and you don’t need a working refrigerator to enjoy a good bottle of red.
10) The vast majority of South Africans are good and decent people who live in hope. But you know something else? They work there, too.
Okay, that’s enough positive energy for one day. I’m going to bed, so I can get up nice and early to continue my whining.
http://saunplugged.blogspot.com/2008/02/ten-good-reasons-why-were-probably.html