Read them? Of course we can read them!
So?
Did you know you can cook them – although you shouldn’t! This is not a recipe for book soup or book stew or even book bobotie, but a cautionary advisor not to follow in the footsteps of many a bookkeeper or accountant who has dishonestly altered facts or figures in order to illegally enrich themselves. Their nefarious activities often end up in newspaper reports, leaving me gasping at how they must have explained their legally unexplainable wealth to family and friends.
It is not only individuals who do this, but some companies may employ such accounting sleight-of-hand tricks to make their financial results look better than they really are and so fraudulently encourage more investors. In December 2017, for example, a local headline read Cooked Books Leave A Bad Smell At Steinhoff, referring to allegations that Steinhoff had made false statements about its earnings and invented bogus sales in order to hide major losses inside the company.
Interestingly enough, you can bring someone to book by calling them to account for their misdemeanours or punishing them appropriately for the offence they have committed. In this country millions of Rand and years have been spent getting various people in high places to explain their corrupt dealings … so far to little avail.
Ah, but we can also throw a book at someone. This isn’t recommended literally if you care about your books and prefer to keep them and their covers intact. Restrain yourself should you feel a desire rising to toss the book you are reading at someone who has annoyed you.
On a different level, many South Africans are waiting for the day when a judge finally throws a book at some of the people mentioned earlier. Leniency has not helped the country, any more than turning a blind eye to certain goings-on has. Instead, we would love to see public miscreants being punished as severely as possible. In this case the book would contain the required laws or rules.
On a much brighter side, you can always take a leaf out of someone’s book. Careful here: if it is flat and dry it may be in the book for sentimental purposes and you may find yourself in trouble. If it is juicy and green … well, you may be thanked. No, we’re talking about books here and because we are readers we know that the pages of books are also called leaves. To be precise, a single page is a page but the sheet of paper that makes up two pages is called a leaf [all to do with printing and binding and none of it convenient for our purposes]. Warning: never literally tear a leaf (page) from anyone’s printed book! Our brighter purpose would be that if we wish to try out a new idea or improve on what we are already doing we can emulate someone else who seems to have been successful at it – thereby taking a leaf out of their book [copying their experience].
Something Over Tea 