Quotidian

Today’s word is quotidian which is an adjective that means daily, usual or customary, ordinary.

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For the past several days I have been listening to a wonderful narration by Lisett Lecat of Alexander McCall Smith’s book, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, a bestselling novel about the daily life of an African woman from Botswana who owns the Ladies No 1 Detective Agency. This book is the ninth in this series of which there are eleven so far and was also been made into a 2008 HBO television show which I have yet to see. Last year I listened to the first two books and apparently I skipped several in-between, but it did not seem like reading the earlier novels was necessary to enjoy this novel just as much as I did the first two. In book nine, Mma Precious Ramotswe, the middle aged lady detective and lead character in the story, has recently married Mr. J. L. B. Matakoni, who owns and operates a mechanic’s garage, and, in addition, they have adopted two children from the local orphanage. Interwoven within the chapters about her busy, not so quotidian life, Mma Ramotswe and her assistant, Mma Grace Ramotswe, solve mysteries brought to them by various clients who live nearby. To me the most interesting and entertaining thing about this series is that these stories were written by a white man, from a Botswanian black woman’s point of view, with marvelously insightful discussions on broad subjects such as death and the afterlife, marriage, families, relationships, wealth, a woman’s weight and dieting.

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