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July was as good as June was and I read all the books I proposed to read. Four books were completed and I'm on the fifth. Including the current read, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, I read a total of 1,291 pages with an average of 42 pages per day. The following books were read: The Book Thief by Zusak Markus . This book can scarcely be described as a Young Adult book though the protagonist is a young girl. The book was narrated by Death and was written in a very novel way that imitates no one. If you should read one fiction, perhaps it should be this one. Diplomatic Pounds and Other Stories  by Ama Ata Aidoo . Forget my dilemma, but if you should read only one anthology this year, read this. In this collection of twelve (12) short stories, Ama Ata Aidoo entrenches herself as a foremost writer in Africa and beyond. Her sense of style, voice and subject was superior. This story has been reviewed for a magazine. Cut off My Tongue  by Sitawa Namwalie.  I...

For far too often people have had only apocalyptic forecasts for the world using variables of the time such as food production and energy sources; however, technology and innovation have proved to be our saving grace, shattering any prophecy of doom before it could materialise. Besides, people have shown to be resilience and have bounced back from the Great Depression and the Phytophthora famine. In Matt Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist - How Prosperity Evolves (Harper Perennial 2010; 453), he challenges these popular views that has become the accepted trend since man arrived on this planet to date. Using statistics and science he shows that the world today has lower rates of all vices and higher rates of all virtues. By providing figures, he argues that trade is the major driver of economic development and prosperity and not government; according to him governments almost always stifle development. He seemingly lean towards the idea of globalisation. He challenges popula...

I've blogged about Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd in this post. In that post, I mentioned the idea of organising a reading challenge in line with Boston Bibliophile 's Europa Challenge. The basic rule in this challenge is to read any book published by Ayebia Clarke. To see the books they have click here. The following are books I've read and reviewed on this blog, which are published (or have been republished) by them: The Other Crucifix by Benjamin Kwakye The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga Underground People by Lewis Nkosi Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga You Must Set Forth at Dawn by Wole Soyinka From now on any book I read published by Ayebia Clarke will count towards the challenge. If you are interested in books by African authors, let's get it on. Note that There is no limit to the number of books: it could be one or two or more; The book could be fiction or non-fiction; It could be by an African or a non-African (usually a Caribbean...

The Dante Club  (Random House, 2003; 372) by Matthew Pearl is a literary fiction about real literary folks; consequently, it is a novel about a book or more specifically the translation of a book. The book was set in Boston, in the year 1865 - the period where most of the American literary scholars we hold in high esteem today were alive (and contemporaries). Matthew achieves something with this novel that few writers are able to do with the same level of success. He turns a literary fiction with actual literary folks into a cliffhanger whodunit, balancing perfectly the requisite attributes of both genres. In the story, literary giants Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, J. T. Fields (the publisher of Ticknor and Fields) and George Washington Greene have formed the Dante Club to help their friend and writer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to translate Dante's Divine Comedy from Italian into English. However, not everyone is in favour of Longfellow's obsession with Da...

For those of us bibliophiles in Ghana in particular and those in Sub-Saharan Africa, whatever this handed-down geographic description means, in general but excluding South Africa, the quest of getting quality books of authors within the sub-region could be as daunting as climbing Mount Everest. In fact, such books are hardly available. Sometime past, this gap was filled by the African Writers Series of the Heinemann Publishers. Through this company, books such as Achebe's Things Fall Apart , Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not Yet Born   got a huge following. And most of today's African writers we hold in high esteem were discovered or published by Heinemann. However, today, Heinemann are no longer publishing new African writers. What they seem to be doing is reprinting or republishing old stories. For instance, they have recently reprinted Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not Yet Born.  In their absence, a gap was created and a dire need for its closure arose. South ...

This year I've been slow on the book-purchasing front. Very slow. However, I've been lucky to have been gifted with some books.  The first three books have all been read and were purchased in Tanzania. My reminder of that country.  The following are books I've come to possess but which I haven't shared with you: The Black Swan - the Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb . The book is about how important some events are and how to protect yourself against them, especially Black Swan events that occur in Extremistan. I hope this will mark the beginning of my slight shift towards non-fiction.  The Rational Optimist - How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley . This book challenges the usual perception of a deteriorating world, of a world heading toward destruction. It gives hope back by figures and examples. It shows how prediction of doom have failed to materialise - beginning far before Malthus prophecy - and yet people will not stop predicting. T...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable* (Random House, 2007; 444) is a revolutionary book that spares no word to describe how nonsense the tools of probability are in forecasting the most important events in the world today like the Financial Crisis, the advent of computers and many such events which all exist in extremistan. Nassim Taleb divides the environs within which events occur into two: mediocristan and extremistan. Mediocristan is where the usual rise and fall occurs. Events that occur in the world of extremistan are somewhat predictable and so their impact has less consequences. For instance, the population of a country in the year n+1 could be pretty well predicted; however, that a plane will fall from the skies and decimate a whole village is wholly unpredictable and these events have large consequences. A simple example given by Taleb is the 2008 Financial Crisis, something he wrote about even before it occurred. None of the high...

The Lumina Foundation, in partnership with Globacom, has announced the longlist of the 2012 Edition of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. The Prize, worth US$ 20,000, was established in 2005 by The Lumina Foundation, as a Biennial Award to the best literary work produced by an African. It assess works by African authors selected within the two years preceding the award year. The prize was last won by Kopano Matlwa and Wale Okedira for their novels Coconut and Tenants of the House .  The Longlisted books are: The Beauty I Have Seen by Tanure Ojaide Bitter Chocolate by Toyin Adewale Gabriel The Other Country by Hyginus Ekuwuazi The Book of the Dead by Kgebetli Moele The Unseen Leopard by Bridget Pitt On Black Sister's Street by Chika Unigwe The African American by Dike-Ogu Chukwumerije Roses and Bullets by Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo Young Blood by Sifiso Mzobe The Colour of Power by Marie Heese Pride of the Spider Clan by Odili Ujubuonu The Lazaru...

The Bluest Eye (Plume, 1970; 216) by Toni Morrison is one great of a read, just like all of the other Morrison's novels I've read. Like the others, this story deals with the socioeconomic and political dynamics of blacks, post-Emancipation. It also deals with identity, acceptance and placement through the lives of a given family, usually with an eccentric and idiosyncratic strong female character.  The Bluest Eye  which is Morrison's first novel deals with the identity and acceptance issues. It deals with a young girl who has been praying to God to make her eyes blue and when she thought she has got it, she wondered if she had the bluest eye in the world. However, the story is more than just an eleven-year old girl's quest for 'the bluest eye of all'; it also deals with the social dynamics: the role of men in the black family, the behaviour of the larger community and their effects on families. How Pecola - the young girl in question - was raped and impr...

The Great Gatsby  (Scribner, 1925; 214) was read for the 'difficult to read' section of the Top 100 Books challenge . The story is pitiful but interesting. It tells of real human nature and how money attracts friends like flies to honey but troubles dispels them like a repellent.  In this story set in New York, the enigmatic Gatsby has moved into the neighbourhood, possibly to get closer to his childhood lover, Daisy, who is now married. He is now rich and throws several parties in the hope that Daisy, to whom Nick is related through her husband Tom, would pass through. He lives in the same neighbourhood as Nick Carraway and the Buchanans (Daisy and Tom). Tom himself loves fan and cheats on his wife with the wife of an old friend of his. Finally, Gatsby - through Nick - invited Daisy to his plush mansion. Daisy is now in between thoughts; however a series of events would lead to several deaths, including Gatsby. And there, he would be left alone. The distance b...

Admittedly, my reading has declined. It happens. And it has happened to me. Of the four books and five short stories scheduled for reading in June, only one book was read (though that wasn't the only book read); the five short stories were all read. Again, I was below the minimum 50 pages a day target; the total pages for June stood at 1347, giving a 44.9 pages per day. This statistics include cheating, since I have included the book I am currently reading (started in June). Another reason, apart from just to increase my June statistics, is to force me to read frequently and rapidly in July. I hope it does. The following books were read (one is being read): The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is the best non-fiction book I have read all time. It disproves and renders useless several of the things we are taught at graduate school especially Econometrics and Statistics and all those forecast tools we are used to. It distinguishes ...

Rotimi Babatunde has won the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing with his story Bombay Republic .  His story was my choice to win the award after I read all the five selected stories. Read my thoughts here . Rotimi used a simple ex-soldier to write a multi-thematic story that could be appreciated from different angles. According to the Chair of Judges, Bernardine Evaristo,  Bombay's Republic vividly describes the story of a Nigerian soldier fighting in the Burma campaign of World War Two. It is ambitious, darkly humorous and in soaring, scorching prose exposes the exploitative nature of the colonial project and psychology of independence. There is more to this story. In addition to exploring the psychology of independence, it further shows the causes of despotism. Read more from the Caine organisation here . This ten-thousand pound award has become a tool for unearthing new African writers. The award was criticised for been narrow in its selection of works, des...