Five books to reset your year: Half year selections

It is not always that we fail to meet our goals, sometimes we surpass them and sometimes we meet them mid-way. All successful people know that you return to the drawing board about this time. If you have been successful at attaining your goals you plan how to sustain them or surpass yourself. If not, […]

It is not always that we fail to meet our goals, sometimes we surpass them and sometimes we meet them mid-way. All successful people know that you return to the drawing board about this time. If you have been successful at attaining your goals you plan how to sustain them or surpass yourself. If not, you plan new strategies to overcome your obstacles. If you have done averagely well, you look for how to run full speed ahead to achieve your aim.

This is why this week I am sharing books that energise us mid-year to look ahead and still look back in order to become people who aspire to great things rather than dwell in mediocrity, people who embrace peace rather than altercations, people who set examples as role models rather than how  much we can spend. Books to make us thinkers, innovators, inventors and visioners. Leaders wherever we find ourselves and robust flag bearers of our nation. I hope the books carefully selected here inspire you. Enjoy.

1)  Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a phenomenal book. A well-researched, non-fiction collection of elegantly written essays. It dwells on a number of different themes including the 10,000 hours rule for people who succeed in life like Bill Gates and what cultural factors led to persistent plane crashes by South Korean airliners at a certain time in their history. It’s an absolute must read. I have read most of Gladwell’s  books  and each one is a gem. A copy of Outliers will change your perception of success forever.

2) Helon Habila’s  first book, Waiting for an Angel never ceases to amaze me. It’s a cleverly written book in an unusual style that tells the story of a journalist in Nigeria during a dictatorial regime, all interwoven. Success in writing is beyond content. It’s also about style and thinking out of the box. When I read it, I understood why it won the Caine prize in 2001. Helon’s life beyond that book is an inspiration. A deeply contemplative person, he is working on literature and Africa quietly. Helon’s first book is an example of how to jump start your career after you have worked hard on a project you want to showcase. How he entered the excerpt of his work for the Caine prize is an amazing story .For someone who started work as a Nigerian journalist with Hints and Vanguard, Helon is a poster man for a hardworking Nigerian.

3) The confessions of St Augustine is the classic autobiography of the Bishop of Hippo (Present day Algeria) This is his intellectual engagement with self, man and God.  A little difficult to read because of the time it was written (AD 397) and the translation in old English, but a very rewarding book. Today there is hardly any course on philosophy, theology, classics and creative writing that does not have The Confessions of St Augustine as required reading all over the world. It is in this book that sins are confessed, the importance of sexual morality is discussed, faith is challenged, tested and triumphs. Nobody could have written this book better than St Augustine who lived recklessly until he found God and converted to Christianity.  An amazing book.

4) Maya Angelou, Halleluya! The welcome Table. I  find this an utterly  delicious book. It is always good to slow down, look around you and enjoy the setting sun, the rising sun and the mildew .Maya is over 80, poet, novelist and auto biographer par excellence but she picked up  her pen and wrote a cookery book. This book gives us Maya’s delicious recipes but also gives us vignettes to go with each one. A story, a happenstance connected to the recipe.

5) The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis are two of my favourite Soyinka writings apart from his poetry of course. Written in simple language, these plays show us how deceitful people can be and how gullible others are. Using the symbol of a fraudulent pastor and a gullible worshipper, Wole Soyinka exposes the underbelly of a nation on its way to corruption nirvana. A must read at a time like this. Very funny.

BONUS BOOKS:

Song of Ocol and Song of Lawino are poetry collections written by the phenomenal Ugandan poet and culturalist, Okot p’bitek. Find it, read it, fall in love with it.

Dennis Brutus’s, Letters to Martha. A beautiful evocative collection about apartheid in South Africa. I read it as an undergraduate in A.B.U Zaria. It made me grateful for my life.

Any short stories by Alice Munroe and Jackie Kay. Writings so lucid, you want to cry.

The writings of Nadine Gordimer. Her short story collection about life in the South African  ghetto,Some Monday for Sure, made me want to be a short story writer.

All the writings of Flora Nwapa and Ama Ata Aidoo. Women who gave all African women back their voices.

Re-energise with Ngugi w thiong’o’s The Wizard of Crow and dip into the incredible allure of Abubakar Gimba’s multi-genre trove.

Award winning journalist Philip Gourevitch’s book, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families, brings us the gripping aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, the background and the lessons for any nation willing to learn. A must read.

Chinua Achebe’s short story, Sugar Baby, from his short story collection Girls at War on the sadness of war and the hilarity of being without sugar. One of the finest short stories I have ever read.

Its mid-year, read, grow, re-strategize and be inspired.