Art lovers (and whores) were treated to a magnificent variety of books, talks, readings and performances over the last two days as the Cape Town Book Fair (CTBF) reached its half-way point.

Highlights included David Goldblatt in conversation with Marlene van Niekerk on Saturday and the book launch of Ronnie Govender's 1949 and Charles van Onselen's erudite discussion of his controversial exposure of the South African Jack the Ripper, Joseph Silver in The Fox and the Flies (a few years after Kathryn Smith's Jack in Johannesburg). As expected the award for most popular book and arguably least popular author at the Fair went to Ronald Suresh Roberts and his Fit to Govern: The Native of Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki. A fun moment was his attack on a passionate TAC activist in which he pointed out the problematic ethics of Edwin Cameron being a judge for the Sunday Times Book award when he had already lambasted one of the finalists in print (guess he knew he wasn't going to win) and calling Jackie Achmad, Zapiro and Max de Preez, amongst other things, liars and/or whores.

For us the definite winner was a talk by Huisgenoot journalist Hannelie Booysens discussing the magazine in terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

After two days of hardcore booking, Sannie Prinkle and Josephine Scarlet are off for the next bibliomanaical fix and haven't even mentioned the evil wallchart lady yet....