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Reflections on the First Half of the Year The end of June also marks the end of the first half of the year and an assessment of progress has to be made. But a friendly one. For this activity is only a hobby and rakes in no financial benefits. However, whatever thing that is worth doing is worth doing well. That said, lets jump straight to what I set out to do from the beginning of the year and what I have achieved so far. It is good to talk about successes first and failure last. I set out to read 70 books by year-end December 31, 2013 , at an average of almost 6 books a month,  repeating what I did in the year 2012. However, when I saw the kind of books I had to read for the Year of Russian Literature  (a challenge I had set for myself), I swiftly readjusted it to 60, averaging exactly 5 books per month. So far I have read exactly 30 books and 1 Single Story, which is half of the total books to be read at half of the year. Comparatively, a year ago by this time I had read...

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 ...

June came and passed me by so suddenly that as I turned to look at its tail in the bend, I saw I had only three books behind me in addition to zero interviews. The fascinating thing about June and its departure is that it also marks the end of the first half of the journey towards December. That's, in someway, July is like January - promising a new beginning and providing a new canvass for the making of resolutions. Now back to the quick-feet June. The slough of books I left behind were:   Shadows  by Chenjerai Hove A Sense of Savannah: Tales of a Friendly Walk through Northern Ghana by Kofi Akpabli The Gods are not to Blame  by Ola Rotimi In addition to these reads, I also reviewed two books which were read in May: The Handmaid's Tale  by Margaret Atwood Every Man is a Race  by Mia Couto Though June was a lazy-drone, churning out a paltry sum of 311 pages - less than the lower boundary of a chunkster - it was the month in which this blog recorded its hig...