What I Learned from Reading Books
There are books I picked up with year but haven't finished. Happens a lot and I have learned to stop feeling bad about it. Sometimes like movies or series, they don't get you at the time when you relate with them. Or like an audience of a speech you can’t get what the speaker is trying to convey, or sometimes you find the idea has already been conveyed in the first pages and there’s nothing new in the next pages other than the first idea. I pick them from my shelf from time to time, but it’s not like life depend on them. There are other alternative sources of entertainment, education and experiences.
12. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives — Lola Shoneyin
Baba Segi has 3 wives. And Drama begins when he brings home a fourth wife. Well, that's where the story begins. It could have already been a house of drama.
Unlike the others, the fourth wife is educated. She is the only graduate in Baba Segi’s House. This book is about the secrets the 3 wives have kept: one that is shared among the 3, and others that each has in their bags. What lets out the common secret, is the hatred the 3 wives have for the new wife, and this makes them hide the first big secret: How children are born in Baba Segi’s house.
I like Nigerian novels because their expressions are full of drama. This one got me laughing page after page with humor. I have marked some of the lines lust in case I need to visit for a dose of laughter. I love Lola’s description of things, how she sets up the scenes in the book.
There are many themes and realities that surface in the book that reflect the clash between generations in African Society: Sexuality, abortion, education, child sex abuse and reproductive health.
This is definitely an entertainer and a page turner. I remember I was sad it ended too soon. Or maybe the ending was rushed. But no doubt I wanted more of the scenes and drama.
Totally loved it.
#2020reads
11. The Magic of Reality — Richard Dawkins
I picked this book because of the paradox in the title and the two things that have puzzled me up recently, magic and reality. I picked this book to feed some curiosity, but I continued reading it for entertainment.
This books brings the science to how things exist. How the universe exists, and how life exists. It is not some boring scientific stuff for nerds. Stephen explains these stuff using ancient stories and myths, his analogies are so relatable. I kept thinking, if I had read read this book in my teenage years, I would have aced chemistry. But it's never late.
It's so exciting to learn about atoms, elements, matter, sound and electronic waves. One thing I learnt is that every object/body has its own gravitational force. You and I standing together will have a force towards each other. We just don’t feel it because our mass is not significant to force us to attract like a magnet.
Is there life outside our galaxy? Probably yes. But it will not be something familiar to us because the conditions of our earth are different from other planets outside our orbit: the gravitational pull, the amount of light and the atmospheric conditions.
It is not what I learnt from this book that makes it exciting. It is the explanation towards each of the conclusions in the chapters that makes the book a page turner.
#2020 reads
10: Hunger: A Memoir of (My) body — Roxane Gay
As I read this book life around me just felt sad! In this book Roxane narrates how her childhood was stolen from her through a gang rape. And this led to how she sought safety through food and adding weight. I had a sad feeling not only because it is about an unfortunate event, but mostly because she is a good writer and she sucks you in. She is so poetic, her writing the most amazing pattern of all that I’ve come across.
Roxane starts with a disclaimer that this story does not have lessons, but I got a lot from it.
I learned a lot about advising a friend through a problem that seems obvious but they haven’t shared. How the society needs to stop volunteering solutions for peoples’ problems.
#2020Reads
9. Total Focus — Brandon Webb and John Mann
I have read a lot of self help and motivational books, but this one got me making my bed immediately I jump out of it — plus other things of course.
In this book, Brandon and John parallel the lessons they learnt in military to business and to everyday life. They bring out very helpful insights:
- Excellence matters in everything you do, not only in fitness, but in everything. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, the shows and films you watch, the words and sentences you speak. It is the standard you set for yourself when no one is looking. It’s just how you do things. It’s pride in how you do things.
- Whats your number? Picture your perfect life, where you want to be, and do a budget costing everything you would have in a year and per month. Then work yourself to match that value.
- Culture is a company’s lifeblood. Treat your employers like family, and they will treat the business as if it were their own. If you, the founder, were hit by a bus tomorrow, would your company culture continue without you, or would the mice come out and play?
- Violence of action. Once you do your checks and make a decision, act without hesitation.
Generally the book is good. However the authors seem to be all over the place. I wasn’t keen on who wrote which part, but as I read on I noticed the change of voice and change of focus in the message. Towards the end,the flow of the message changes to give business 101. At the start, it gives insights on critical thinking that can apply in multiple environments. I really enjoyed the first half.
8. A Game of Thrones — George R. R. Martin
I fell in love with the show: the fiction, the themes, the history, culture and the role of women in the realm. The drama! Its a series of emotional roller coasters. Game of thrones has a way of preparing characters for slaughter. A character develops in the show, you get to like then, then boom! They’re out in the most dramatic ways.
The book was definitely a quick read as I had already watched the show. It gives more details about the characters.
Martin’s first books in the series of Game of thrones starts with Deanery's, the mother of Dragons. I dint like it that much, its a journey about Danny from the first page to the last, while the stark ladies of Winterfel have been my most favorite characters. Of course I can’t wait to binge on A Song of Ice and Fire.
7. Me Before You — Jojo Moyes
The best romantic story I have come across so far.
Louisa Clark, a cheerful, naive, 26 year old woman finds a job in the castle, to take care of a quadriplegic. She is satisfied with what she has and has never dreamed of traveling outside her small town. On the other hand, Will’s life before the tragic accident was full of explorations, travels, and adventures. He’s now in a wheelchair, he can’t go back to his exploration life, and wishes to undergo euthanasia. He gives his mother 6 months. And she hires Louisa to cheer him up and prevent him from another suicide attempt.
I loved everything about the book, apart from the disturbing ending. I fell in love with all the characters. But mostly the two main. That’s why I cant read the next series without Will in it.
6. The Art of the good life — by Rolf Dobelli
I felt like I was having a conversation with a much older friend. I had a lot of ‘aha’ moments. Rolf Dobelli has an exquisite art of explanation.
Here’s how this book changed my thinking:
- Time, money and focus are of the most valuable resources we have. Focus is little understood, though it is the most important of the three. In this information age, we are bombarded with all kinds of information: ads, emails, movies, whatsapp etc. They are all debits. So we have to choose well where we take our focus in the 24hrs we have.
- Once you have money to take care of your needs and have saved up some for your freedom, your need for more money will be relative to the people and situations around you. Simply put, above the poverty line, money doesn’t add to happiness.
I haven’t finished reading this one. It is one of my 2019 books that I randomly pick from time to time to go through a chapter.
5. Patterns for College Writing — Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandel
This book made me fall in love with writing. It offers simple and practical guides to writing, including tech tips. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to develop a writing habit. I keep it as a reference book. When I feel like reading it, I pick it to read a chapter about a subject of interest.
One of my many take-aways: The authors assert that revising your article is not only an exercise of checking grammar. It also involves checking your writing patterns and your flow of ideas with the aim of getting the reader to get the level of understanding that you had intended.
4.Edge of Eternity — by Ken Follet
This book puts one family tree of four generations, at the peak of three historic world events: The soviet nuclear bombs, America’s Civic Rights and the Berlin Wall. It gives a mix of romance, drama, and politics in the period of 1960s–1980s. If you are interested in global politics, this would be a recommended read because the present world politics is deeply tied to what happened during that period.
For those working to make the world a better place, you will learn something about the intrinsic relationship between policy and politics. Policy influence heavily relies on relationships with the policy community, the policy makers and the technocrats. This builds over time with continuous interactions.
Although the book portrays President Kenedy’s unstringed concerns about black civil rights, I still think it was a strategy for him to expand his voter base. In politics, something has to give.
3. Doa — by Kithaka wa Mberia
Kithaka wa Mberia’s latest release ‘Doa’ is a collection of Swahili poems that speak about political, social and economic injustices that happen in everyday Kenya. It recalibrates our views and perception of human dignity in a way that prompts us to demand more from our government. In this collection, I navigated through different themes and different accounts of injustices; from the fight for multiparty to the tensions during elections; from rural and cultural injustices, to modern forms of injustice like child pornography. Kithaka wa Mberia’s poems are the ones that hit you to stop at a certain event and look back.
I’m one of the people who struggle with Swahili sanifu. But Doa is able to balance deep Swahili to the level that I am able to comprehend without a Kamusi.
2. The Four Bind Mice — By James Patterson
This book got me real hooked. I even woke up hours past midnight to continue reading it, and it took me 24 hours to finish. The hook of the story is a loathsome scene in the first two pages. His description is epic to get your emotions up, and to keep you reading for justice. Just like Game of Thrones hooked many of us to see justice for the Starks.
As the story plateaus, it gives other themes that interested me as the reader. I like his use of history in the fiction, and his well arranged short chapters that tactfully moves the reader from one scene to another. I read like I was watching the blacklist.
Downside — His descriptions are so intense such that it gets so inhuman when a scene is about human butchery.
1. The Hairdresser of Harare — by Tendai Huchu
I knew what disturbed Dumi already by a few pages into the book, but I kept going because I wanted to prove myself right. The book is about an almost intimate relationship between two hairdressers, one of whom is a homosexual. Tendai is of the view that sexual preferences and gender range on a continuum. I’m imagining too masculine and too feminine as the extremes. Something I still ponder about.
I like the way he throws in Shona expressions and does not apologize by translating the texts — something that most African writers do. I enjoyed struggling with the contextual meaning of the words. Let people use google translate!
