Quick Reviews: Ndumiso Ngcobo

Some of my best friends are white (Ndumiso Ngcobo)
Inexplicably, my mother gave this book to me for Christmas a year or two ago. And what a great surprise it was! It is incredibly funny, I recommend it to anyone. Full of anecdotes and reflections on life and race in contemporary South Africa. Fantastic. After reading his book I became a Ndumiso Ngcobo fan and started following his blog, which I think is one of the funniest things on the internet.

It is coz I'm black? (Ndumiso Ngcobo)
This is Ngcobo's second book, it only arrived on shelves a few months ago. I bought it enthusiastically and read it on a long bus trip to Cape Town. I'm sad to say that I was diasppointed. His first book was incredilbly funny and insightful and a little bit crass. And the funnyness totally made up for the crassness. His second book is very crass, reasonably funny, and rather try-hard. Unfortunately the funnyness just doesnt make up for the crassness this time. Not to my eyes anyway. Try-hard is a term I coined from my brothers high school days and means just what it sounds like it means. You felt like he was told to write another funny book and was trying very hard to write another funny book. Which ended up trying to be funny more than it actually was funny. Which is a pity, because he really does have a natural flair for being hysterical (his blog and first book testify to that.) I later read on his blog that "The racist publishers have reared their ugly heads again and dangled money in his face to pen yet another collection of hallucinations entitled 'Is It Coz 'm Black'." So there you go! Not his best unfortunately. Hoping for better next time. I've hear that second book pressure is intense, so maybe he will be on form again for his third.