My Year in Books | Incessant Scribble 2017

If one meme could sum up my life in 2017 it would be the Kylie Jenner one where she talks about a year of realizing stuff. I literally realized so much stuff in the year 2017. Some of it was good and some of it was bad. I moved out of my parents house permanently in January to a city five hours away so I could work full time. It has been a lot of work but I'm really grateful for every experience and every blessing that came my way in 2017.

I had always imagined that after I'm done with grad school I would have a lot of time to read all the books I've ever wanted to read. My resolution for 2017 was to review at least two books every month and at the time I felt it was a very achievable goal. However, I only reviewed nine books on this platform even though I read fourteen books in all. That's roughly one book a month so I did achieve my minimum expectations for myself which is great considering the kind of year 2017 was for me. One of the reasons my book count is low this year is because I abandoned a good number of books midway! Let me use lists to explain.

Books I READ in 2017
1) Voice of America by E. C. Osondu
2) Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo
3) The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
4) The Mothers by Brit Bennett
5) Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn
6) Ruby by Cynthia Bond
7) What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
8) Eyo by Abidemi Sanusi
9) Yellow-Yellow by Kaine Agary [Didn't review]
10) The Day Ends Like Any Day by Timothy Ogene [Didn't review]
11) How to Make Lemonade by Beyonce Knowles-Carter [Didn't Review]
12) Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire (Poetry) [Didn't review]
13) Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman [Didn't review]
14) The Caine Prize for African Writing 2017 Anthology

Books I ABANDONED Midread in 2017
1) Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
2) When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola
3) Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
4) The Famished Road by Ben Okri
5) Stock Investing for Dummies by Paul Mladjenovic
5) How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
6) Gratitude in Low Voices by Dawit Gebremichael Habte
7) Resemblance by Afolabi Opanubi
8) Unstoppable: Challenge Accepted Volume 1 by Tariku Bogale

Here are a few words on the five books I was unable to review earlier this year:

Yellow-Yellow by Kaine Agary is about a girl called Yellow-Yellow, the only child of a single mother. Her mother has dreams of her going to school and rising out of poverty and does everything in her power to make sure her daughter has an education. Does Yellow-Yellow want those same things? The last forty pages gave me anxiety. This girl who had grown up in squalor and had been handed great opportunities seemed like she was about to squander them because of fleshly desires. After I read the last page I just stared at it for a few minutes and then I shut the book and sat in silence. I like this novel. I hate, hate, hate the book cover art on my copy published by "Dtalkshop" in Lagos, Nigeria. It's so ugly! Whoever approved it for publishing should be suspended. That person and "CLAM" who's credited with "designing" the cover.

The Day Ends Like Any Day by Timothy Ogene was a good read but somehow I couldn't find the words to review it and I really, really wanted to. Ogene writes with tremendous skill and I savored his words. The novel is about a young boy who's from a poor background and never quite seems destined to lift himself from all of that. He's also harboring same sex attractions deep inside. He goes to college and meets a boy but... I was impressed with Ogene at the beginning but then the novel became foggy with big words and big thoughts. Maybe it's just me. Get yourself a copy.

How to Make Lemonade by Beyonce Knowles-Carter is a beautiful work of art that chronicles the Lemonade album in its entirety. It's a coffee table book with lots of photos interlaced with lyrics and poetry. Its foreword, written by the amazing Michael Eric Dyson, is a gift in itself, a delightful read wholly befitting for a work of this calibre and magnitude. While I waited for my copy to arrive this unboxing video by Kalen Allen had me laughing out loud. My copy is No. 2254. How to Make Lemonade is a treasure.

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire is beautiful. Beau. tiful. This is the first book of poetry that I've ever bought and it's worth it. I discovered Warsan Shire through Beyonce's monumental visual album, LEMONADE. Warsan's poetry is airy and pretty at times but also really dark and deep. I love it a lot. You should read this collection of poetry. It's really tiny collection too about the size of a pamphlet.

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman is my pick for BEST BOOK I READ IN 2017! It's so deep and humourous and sexual and well written and poetic and generous. It's a tale about a seventeen years old boy whose dad hosts graduates every summer. Elio is deeply, deeply infatuated with their newest guest, Oliver, and he spends a lot of the novel pinning for him then... You should read this.

That Ladies and Gentlemen was my year in books! I'm currently reading Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward and it's so good. So good. I'm on page 47 as at the time of this post. I want to read it greedily but I also want to take my time with it. I just discovered last night that it was one of Barack Obama's Best Books of 2017! Obama and I have similar tastes in books LOL :P

New Year Resolutions for 2018
1) Return back to reading diversely - For quite a while I've been focused on blogging about books by African authors and then I expanded to African-American authors. Henceforth I'm going to go back to reading the way I read before all of this extra stuff. I'll read everything and anything I find interesting :)

2) I'll drop a book if I don't find it interesting - I'm done struggling through bad prose just so I can say I've read a certain author or to increase my count of the number of African countries I've read from or to increase my book review count in general. If I buy a book and I start reading it and it's difficult to get through I'll drop it like it's hot and move on to the next book on my shelf. There are way too many novels out there to waste time on one. It makes me sad to imagine all the books I'll never ever read.

Have a WONDER-FULL, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! May 2018 be everything you hope it will be! 

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn | Book Review

Margot works as a front desk clerk at the Palm Star Resort in Jamaica. During the day she answers the phones, welcomes guests, oversees the hotel staff and sees to it that guests are comfortable and well taken care of. At night Margot heads to the rooms of guests who earlier in the day put in orders for sex using code words like "sundae" and "ackee". She has dreams of rising past her current job post and she's doing her best to show her boss that she deserves a promotion.

Delores is Margot's mother and while Margot hustles night and day at the hotel, Delores labors under the scorching Jamaican sun selling souvenirs to tourists. She heads out to her market stall every day with her wares, lures tourists over and then exploits them. It's hard work. The Jamaican sun burns and the heat suffocates but her second daughter is the light at the end of the tunnel. She dreams of the day Thandi will become a medical doctor and rescue her from misery and penury.

Thandi is Margot's sister and Delores second daughter. She's the one who's being aggressively set up to succeed. She's the one expected to rise high and fly far. She's the basket into which Delores and Margot have put their precious eggs. Thandi is book smart and going to the best school in the area through a scholarship Margot wangled from Alphonso Wellington her boss at Palm Resort Hotel. Margot and Delores have drilled into Thandi that a good education and good grades is her only escape. It's the only thing that can elevate Thandi above this mess of a life and take her far far away from their shack. The dollars Margot and Delores stash away is used to make Thandi comfortable and see that she lacks nothing that she needs. They even let her skip household chores just so she can concentrate on getting the best grades possible to guarantee entrance into medical school. Thandi does as she's asked but she's not interested in being a doctor. She wants to be an artist and the little encouragement given to her by a schoolteacher sows a seed that threatens to undo all the effort that has been put into Thandi.

Here Comes the Sun is my 3rd book selection for Black History Month here on Incessant Scribble. I discovered this novel and my 2nd book selection, The Mothers by Brit Bennett, in the article My Year of Reading Books by Black Women written by Alisha Acquaye for Elle Magazine. Here Comes the Sun is a great book selection especially for Black History Month for many reasons one of which is that it deals with uncomfortable topics in black communities such as rape, homosexuality and colorism. It pushes the reader to confront these topics and to notice how they affect all our lives directly or indirectly. I think that makes this material more powerful and many times more arresting.

I need to discuss Delores and Margot but I'll try not to give much away. I think it's easier to tag Delores a monster and file her character away than to pay attention to everything that we know about her and acknowledge that she's the way she is because of the cards life has dealt her. She's just like the rest of us. So even though she's cold and unloving and even though she tears down her daughter's dreams and tears down their confidence. Even though she has fed her daughter to ravenous wolves on numerous occasions she's still a human being with her own demons and insecurities. Honestly there were a couple of times when I wanted someone to hug her and somehow heal her emotional wounds.

Margot is very ambitious. She may not be as book smart as her little sister, she may not have the

Formation World Tour, Houston, TX 5/7/16

education and exposure she needs to get the job she wants, and she may not have had a gentle, loving childhood but she doesn't let those things hold her back from her goals. She's ruthless in her pursuit of them tossing morals aside, sacrificing lives, breaking hearts, burning bridges and shattering homes. On page 196 she does something so savage that my eyes widened in disbelief and I put down the novel. It was already past midnight and I was still trying to recover from the shock and pain of watching Beyonce, just hours before, lose the Grammy for Album of the Year for her groundbreaking album LEMONADE, which she more than deserved. It was all just too much for one night so I went to bed. At first Margot seems better than her mother but in the end I'm not sure where to put her so to speak. She has mined the darkness of her childhood, adolescence and adulthood and used all of that to fuel her way forward. So at the end of the novel, however volatile her situation may seem to some readers, however pyrrhic her victory may seem to some readers, it's important to note that she survived. It's important to applaud that she held her head above water and went for every single thing she ever wanted. And anyone, anyone who has ever come from nothing. Anyone who grew up in poverty and lived in "shacks", and has forever known deep, deep, deep thirst for the better and nicer things in life will relate to Margot in some measure. I love this novel. I love it. I love it. I love it. You need to read it.

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READ My Other Black History Month Selections!!!
Book #1: The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis | Book Review
Book #2: The Mothers by Brit Bennett | Book Review

Dear Beyonce

I was on a bus ride to Nsukka in Enugu State, Nigeria, and on sudden inspiration, used the song titles and lyrics of my favourite songs by Beyonce Knowles (with and without the members of Destiny's Child) to compose a "crush letter" (relative to the renowned "love letter"). What resulted was truly creative. The song titles are the words that are highlighted. Enjoy:

Dear Beyonce,

There’s probably nothing I will write in this letter to you, that you haven’t already heard, so I will be brief. To say I’m crazy in love with you would be an understatement; to say I’m dangerously in love with you would teeter on the truth. Every time I watch you my emotions surge, so I have decided to stand up and say what I feel deep within. Please Listen.

I’m wishing on a star that our paths would cross one sunny day maybe in Hollywood and I would stare into your brown eyes even if it's for a second. You inspire me to be better at what I do, challenge me to reach out for the impossible, that’s why I write this love letter. Such passion, such beauty, such talent! Oh! Beyonce, Beyonce. You are my enigma, my center. I find release in your art, I can’t find no substitute. B, I’m no beautiful liar, I’m no kitty kat. I’m a survivor. I'm a soldier, I’m your soldier. When I watch you on my screen doing your thing, it’s no longer me, myself and I; I’m your baby boy and you are my naughty girl.

Without emasculating myself, I’d never think I’m irreplaceable. I might not be able to upgrade you but I would never degrade you. Girl, I want to cater to you. If you give me the greenlight, I would love you flaws & all.


Lots and lots of love and admiration,

Osondu Nnamdi Awaraka