The Christmas collection
1) The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This is a classic Christmas tale which features the main protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge, a tight fisted and rude man who refuses to be part of the Christmas spirit. As the story progresses, his dead partner Marley visits him and tells him three spirits will visit him. The ghost […]
1) The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This is a classic Christmas tale which features the main protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge, a tight fisted and rude man who refuses to be part of the Christmas spirit. As the story progresses, his dead partner Marley visits him and tells him three spirits will visit him. The ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas yet to come. The last spirit shows Scrooge his employees stealing things from his dead corpse. An incredible tale which makes Scrooge a better person. A Christmas Carol is for all those who do not believe in the spirit of giving, sharing and forgiving which all combine to form a special lesson for us all.
2) Granny’s Special Cookery Book. Nigerian and Brazilian Dishes by Virginia Akerele. Because Christmas is a time where we all get ourselves occupied with cooking and moderate eating, it is a time to explore as many recipes as possible. This is when I fall into the impossible addiction of buying cookery books because I want to try new recipes for my family, to cook huge meals and just learn new things or even teach it. I enjoy putting everyone through new recipes I have created, getting everyone to try it and seeing the approval on their faces gives me great joy. I particularly enjoyed Granny’s Special Cookery Book by Virginia Akerele because it’s such a good and handy cooking book for the young and old and the recipes are easy to understand. The ingredients are also readily available. The book itself is very cute and the illustrations are as engaging as they are appetizing. At Christmas time, this is when to pick up your cooking skills, help in chopping the carrots for the salad and cook that beans soup you have been dreaming of.
3) As the year comes to an end with Christmas heralding it. It’s a good time to make peace with yourself and hope for glory with the birth of Jesus Christ. One of my favourite books of all times is by Charles Spurgeon. Finding Peace in Life’s Storms. The blurb pretty much defines it. “Charles Spurgeon unwraps God’s gift of hope as he presents us with strong encouragement and a powerful tool for surviving daily struggles and temptations”. “No case is too desperate for God”, it continues. It’s a really beautiful book for weathering difficult personal storms, experience God’s secure protection, receive daily strength and encouragement, replace fear and doubt with peace and know that Jesus will never let you go. “Now the God of hope fill you with Joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the holy ghost” Romans 15:13. With all the challenges experienced through 2015, may Christmas bring us a well-deserved peaceful year end Amen.
Happy holidays.
4 Uwem Akpan’s award winning book Say You are One of Them is a collection of short stories that brings forth the plight of children wherever they are on the continent in perilous conditions. This collection of short stories reminds us how grateful we ought to be for the health of our children, for their ability to go to school. Uwem Akpan in the most elegant and haunting language presents the stories of African children in distress, from the 12 year old trafficked in Fattening for Gabon, to the killing of their parents told through the eyes of a child “In My Parents’ Bedroom”. In addition the story of a young prostitute who feeds her family from plying her trade in “An Ex-mas Feast” grabs at your tail coat and never leaves your head. This collection of short stories allows us to be thankful this season for where our children are and makes us sad and grateful at the same time. The Chicago tribune describes the collection better in the blurb. “An important literary debut…juxtaposed against the clarity and revelation in Akpan’s prose-as translucent a style as I’ve read in a long while- we find subjects that nearly render the mind helpless and throw the heart into a hopeless erratic rhythm out of fear, out of pity, out of the shame of being only a few degrees of separation removed from these monstrous modern circumstances…The reader discovers that no hiding place is good enough with these stories battering at your mind and heart.”
5) At Christmas, read something funny, something touching and something delicious. Tony Parson’s Man and Boy qualifies. This is an exceptional holiday book. The blurb gives the details “Harry Silver has it all: a beautiful wife, a wonderful son, a great job in the media-but in one night he throws it all away. Then Harry must start to learn what life and love are really all about” and the Irish Times adds it up by describing it as “A finely constructed novel that says more about human relationships than a library of psychology manuals, hitting the funny bone and the emotional jugular at one and the same time”. It is indeed a fine book. Highly recommended for this season.