Bertha’s Books

~it’s all about the books~

Bertha’s Books is a YouTube and podcast channel.
Looking for your next best read? Curious about reading, writing and everything in between?
This channel discusses books and their writing styles and how fiction tells us something about the world around us.
It is presented in the independent spirit of Bertha: independent, quirky, iconoclastic, anti-consumerist and anti-marketing. At least that is my hope!
The range of books extends from the classics to modern, commercial sub-genres.

You will notice that Bertha’s name features prominently in a lot of my engagements like this channel, BlueSky and my newsletter.
If you wish to know why, check out the FAQs.

I am very grateful to Hekma Press for the sponsorship.

SEASON 2

Episode 4 What is Madame Bovary really about?
Episode 2 Three books…Three worlds. The Savage Garden, The Prague Cemetery and The Vegetarian.
Episode 1 For readers: The Old Man And The Sea. For writers: writing techniques

SEASON 1
Interviews with authors, creative writing students and publishers

Episode 14 Stuart Tudor. Stuart is an English/South African writer of horror.
Episode 13 Marianna Pieterse. Marianna is a writer of young adult fiction. Learn more about her writing journey and independent publishing.
Episode 12 Etienne Lombard. Etienne is a writer of magical realism and speculative fiction. Hear about his new books.
Episode 11 Imogen Poulter. Imogen begins her MFA in creative writing at Leeds University in 2026. Listen to what she says about studying creative writing and her preferred writing genre of cyberpunk.
Episode 10 Mark Potterton. Mark is a writer for Daily Maverick, semi-retired school principal and director of https://three2six.co.za an education initiative for refugee children. We discuss all this and his new book release as editor of Reflections on the War in Gaza by Jacana Media Staging Post.
Episode 9: Lisha and Pierre. Over the Xmas holidays Lisha kindly suggested an interview with me to offer my opinions and ideas on creative writing, as well as future projects.
Episode 8 Meet Nate Gillick, author and co-founder of Laterpress self-publishing platform. Nate is the author of the Planar Gates series of fantasy fiction. He is also the co-founder of LaterPress, a self-publishing platform with a very different publishing model that is very much author and reader centric.
Episode 7 Discussion with Aimee Armstrong from Staging post / Jacana media publishers.
Episode 6 Meet author Sue Robertson Danells. Sue has published several books, her latest being The Pledge (2025). I talk to her about her writing journey, her books and future plans.
Episode 5 Meet author Andrew Robert Wilson. Andrew published his first novel The Fourth Boy in 2025. I talk to him about his background in journalism and scriptwriting and the lead up to writing a fiction book.
Episode 4 The hunter. Bertha is near the Chyulu Hills in southern Kenya. She has learnt about the planned trophy hunting of a tusker. The life of Bertha has become a lot more serious and unpredictable (even more so than before!) What will she do?
Episode 3 Bertha in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A much more sinister episode, Bertha is working in a circus-cum-theatre near Goma on Lake Kivu in the DRC. This episode recounts her plot to free Alceste (a chimpanzee) and escape from the menacing Mathieu.
Episode 2 How did Bertha get the money?! A comical episode, you will hear how Bertha got the money to do all the things she did. She has travelled to the western cape in South Africa and in a bid to rescue trafficked animals becomes entangled with the gangster Jerome (aka Spares). See how she spontaneously swindled the swindlers! And hear about some of the unique characteristics of the region like it’s language and peoples.
Episode 1 About Bertha. Hear about Bertha’s remarkable life as she travels around Africa, hatching plans to free the animals she encounters, forming profound friendships, and contending with dangerous characters. Her story was almost undiscovered until I came across it in the late 2010s and was inspired to write my first fiction book Bertha’s Law.