Books-&-Reading on A Geek's Life

The Year in Reading -2022

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 12:58:41 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here . My previous attempts are linked here.

As has been the goal for most of the past few years, at or around two books a month for a total of twenty-four books for the year was the reading target. Unlike previous years, I was open on the subjects, more open than usual to wending my way through the year in books depending on what piqued my fancy at any given time. I’d like to think that shows in the range of subjects and authors covered by my reading this year.

The Year in Reading - 2021

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 05:23:36 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. My previous attempts are linked here.

\\\*

I have a litany of reasons to give for the paltry return of fourteen books completed this year, as big a drop as could be from the twenty-three I put way with consummate ease last year, chief of which was the welcome disruption L brought to our lives this year and all that came with it. The chief effect of that was a a significant number of unread books, all the free time I had in the latter part of the year being eighty minutes each day on the bus to and from work on work days. The vast majority were thus audiobooks, the experience of which I tried to improve by taking copious notes in Notion. Of the lot, a few stood out for various reasons. I plan on re-reading a few in hard copy in the near future, real life permitting. So here goes:

Between Theorists and Empiricists

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 13:07:51 +0000

Image Source: Caleb Jones on Unsplash

It seems to me that the central distinction in Malcolm Gladwell’s latest offering - Bomber Mafia - is that between theorists and empiricists. To boil it down to a binary choice is of course an oversimplification, but it is one that helps frame the difference between Hansell and Le May, the two figures from either camp who loom large in the book. At stake here, as it turns out, were the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who met a fiery fate in the aftermath of extensive fire bombings, topped off by the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Hansell, we have the theorist who believed against the evidence - or bad luck - that precision bombing was the way to execute a war that limited deaths. Le May on the other hand comes across as an empiricist who allowed the evidence lead him down the paths it did, albeit with disastrous outcomes for those concerned.

The Year in Reading 2020

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 02:20:00 +0000

Coming out here dominated my thoughts at the turn of the year, which was how it found me digging into Richard Templar’s The Rules of Work . True the overwhelming sense at the time was of anticipation but there was enough uncertainty around how well I would navigate bridging a credibility deficit that looking for help came to mind most readily. In my notes from that first reading, I detect a sense of holding back against what seemed like rules promoting blatant self promotion. With the benefit of hindsight, and a big dollop of reality to boot, my view of the book is a lot more considered. There are certainly gems in there, which is why I intend to return to the book in the new year.

2020 Reading #2: Going Deeper: How the Inner Child Impacts Your Sexual Addiction

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 07:08:43 +0000

Going Deeper: How the Inner Child Impacts Your Sexual Addiction by Eddie Capparucci **

The Premise: We act out sexually when our inner child, scarred and taught to cope during childhood, is activated. Acting out is subconscious to some extent. To break the cycle, we need to step in and enforce a time out so our rational thining side can assert itself. Nine inner child types are explored: the bored, the unnoticed, the un-affirmed, the emotionally voided, the controlling, the entitled, the inferior/weak, the stressed and the sexually stimulated. Each description follows a similar format, a discussion of how this type manifests in the adult, likely triggers during childhood and how it triggers uncontrolled sexual behaviour.

2020 Reading: #1 - The Practice of The Presence of God

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 13:06:50 +0000

The Practice of The Presence of God (In Modern English) by Brother Lawrence (Author) and Marshall Davis (Translator)

A classic which dates back to the late 1600s, this is a book that regularly makes it on to lists of great devotional books. This (newish) translation is by Marshall Davis, who has form for this sort of reimagining. Between this year being my year of delving deeper and plenty of time thanks to COVID-19, I finally got round to reading this! to read has ended up on my pile for years. The central characters are a French lay brother, born Nicholas Herman but better known as Brother Lawrence, and Father Joseph de Beaufort, the vicar general to the Archbishop of Paris. A perhaps unlikely friendship given their different stations in life, we have it to thank for the letters and conversations recorded here.

The Year in Reading 2019

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:10:38 +0000

It’s that time of the year again where I reflect on my reading over the course of the year. It wasn’t the most productive year of reading proper books (the web has cannibalised that for good for me I’m afraid) but a late spurt in November and December brought some redemption. For a more wide-ranging review of the year in books, check out the coverage at The Millions here. My previous attempts are linked here .

Kicking off the Christmas Silly Season and a difficult conversation of sorts

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:27:23 +0000

Over the past few weeks, temperatures have slowly crept lower and lower, dipping below zero on occasion and leaving the city centre sidewalks crunchy and slippery underfoot at times. The leaves that the trees - once leafy and full but now stark against the light of the reluctant mornings - shed haven’t helped the state of affairs, trapping moisture which turns into treacherous ice once the temperatures dip below zero. All of that, and being this side of Halloween, means that it is the beginning of the Christmas Party silly season. This year, I have just the two to attend, a far cry from the halcyon days of $100 oil. I suppose this belt-tightening regime can only be a good thing, given it underscores a more prudent, sustainability-focused outlook for the industry. Tight belts or not, there is a certain bluntness which alcohol engenders, that is one of the things I am looking forward to witnessing.

Stripping, (TV) Binges and Thinking About Thinking

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 19:53:03 +0000

By some unexpected twist of fate, I found myself heading into Central London on the hottest day of the year, a fairly tropical 37 degrees Celsius, and that for the first time since last December. The destination was the Nigeria High Commission on Northumberland Avenue, the plan to get my expired Nigerian passport renewed. To get here I had had to jump through several tortuous loops, not helped by the fact that my trips down to England are scheduled months in advance with impromptu trips being aggressively minimised due to the costs. My takeaway from my dealings with the appointment’s system was that the (re)scheduling system could be significantly improved - first, you sign up via a third party web service, pay the booking fees and then get randomly assigned a date, one you can only change to a more suitable one by emailing back and forth, no less than six in my case – which meant in addition to the heat I very much had my mind prepared for a terrible experience which could potentially take the whole day. It might have been my low expectations, but the experience was far less stressful than I expected, sans the slow pace at which things trundled along from picking a ticket to getting called for an initial review and then submitting my biometric details. If there was a silver lining, it was that the slow pace of things – and the very many other Nigerians there for similar purposes – increased the likelihood of running into people I had not seen in a long time; 20 plus years and two kids in one case. That the most unsettling thing from all of that was wondering what the scrawny lad I ended up sitting across from on the tube from Charing Cross to Waterloo was up - to whilst reading from 2nd Corinthians 1 in a huge bible - is a miracle of sorts (events at the High Commission didn’t leave me mentally drained as they have in the past) or perhaps only the symptom of my low expectations.

Dingin Doon

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 11:20:31 +0000

Photo by Thanun Buranapong on Unsplash

\\\* Bar a few days here and there it has been, as we say out here, dingin doon; read wet, cold and windy, emphasis on the wet part. That is is mid-June adds to the slight sense of gloominess that comes with it, a mood which I see replicated in the faces of the people I run into about town, in my view at least. All of that has left me with quite a lot more time on my hands than usual, which for better or for worse has ended up exploring various reddit rabbit holes, chief of which have been the Thinkpad, ChromeOS and SurfaceLinux ones. They have provided the welcome of distraction of providing the inspiration for me trying to replace Windows on my old Thinkpad Tablet 10 with either Linux or ChromeOS. Both have been qualified fails - a debloated version of windows currently serves me passably on the device -but the ultimate goal would be to replace it with something zipper and functional, à la this attempt. I suspect the search will continue, albeit at a hopefully less time intensive pace. In between all of this, I managed to fit in some time out with the guys from work, a decent enough evening the only black mark against it being the aforementioned bucket loads of rain.

My Year in Reading 2018

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 11:40:26 +0000

It is that time of the year when others - more (or better) read than I - share the highlights of their reading from the year. As with last year , I’ve commissioned myself -unbidden, besides perhaps a desire to record the key themes that drove and/or came out of my reading - to weigh in with the highlights of my own reading.So here goes.

Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury was all the rage on the airwaves at the turn of the year, which is how I ended up grabbing a copy for myself and digging in. As I plodded through it, I found the mix of fly-on-the-wall behind the scenes reporting and qualified conjecture curiously engaging, drawn by the lurid details behind public events and happenings in what at the time had been a Trump presidency that seemingly lurched from one PR disaster to the other. A few themes ran through Fire and Fury - the Trump team being surprised by the election win and thus poorly prepared to lead, the hold of Stephen Bannon and the alt-Right and infighting amongst various factions of the administration. Despite strenuous denials at the time, the events of the year - multiple firings, leaks, indictments, evidence of Russian activities and prison sentences - would seem to give credence to the viewpoint of the book, more so as the year draws to an end.

3 Day Quote Challenge - 2

Sat, 19 May 2018 18:06:58 +0000

Image Source

Not all who wander are lost

For the second day of the challenge for which Mrs T nominated me, this J. R. R. Tolkien quote comes to mind. A line in a poem in the first volume of Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings, it refers to the Rangers who although often considered vagabonds are actually protectors and bulwarks against evil in Middle Earth.

For me it speaks of hope, a reminder that despite times and seasons in which life conspires to rock my faith and unresolved questions bubble to the surface, I am not lost. Just wondering, pondering and finding my way home in the end.

The Year in Reading

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

After many years of having thoroughly enjoyed the annual parade of opinions of books over at The Millions, I decided to have a go myself this year. Far from being a celebration of a year in which I read deeply and widely, it is a light reflection on all the things I managed to read this year. Enjoy! ---

Of the myriad of things I most deeply wanted to achieve this year, two loomed large in the personal development domain; to read more and write more, which was why I entered the year clutching my copy of Patty Dann’s The Butterfly Hours close to my chest. In my head, writing more - and by extension, better - required tools for tuning my craft, which was why this book, with its promise of personal memoir married to prompts, seemed the perfect fit. It helped that all nineteen reviews on Amazon were 5*. I did enjoy the book, albeit more an an example of easy reading memoir than a collection of prompts. I suspect that had a lot more to do with me than the book. If it is any consolation, I returned to it several times over the course of the year, it along with Dinty Moore’s Crafting The Personal Essay being fine examples of the sort of creative non-fiction I would like to churn out.

The Year in Reading 2017

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 17:37:12 +0000

Nine Fridays of Summer: Of Heat Waves, Vienna and A Perfect Month of Sorts

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 19:45:40 +0000

In what can only be incontrovertible evidence of Sod’s law, the air-conditioning at work chooses the worst week possible to break down in; a week of unseasonably warm August weather. Loads of meetings to attend, lunchtime walks and endless cups of water help ensure that I don’t end up too listless; not that broken air-conditioning ranks high on the list of life-threatening things humans have to deal with, or should be an excuse for reduced productivity.

#72 - Quotable, On love and 'Rightness'...

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 08:38:00 +0000

Image Source: Challies.com

To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to loved and cared for by God the Father is greater- J.I. Packer

#Perspective

#55 - Wandering, Pondering

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 23:21:00 +0000

#Hope

#45 - On Fasting

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 23:11:18 +0000

Fasting does not change God’s hearing so much as it changes our praying

From The Donald Whitney book I’m currently reading - image by Time Challies

#Apt

#28 - Of Discipline and Direction

Sat, 30 Jan 2016 22:33:47 +0000

The only road to Christian maturity and godliness passes through the practice of the Spiritual Disciplines. I will emphasize that godliness is the goal of the disciplines, and when we remember this, the Spiritual Disciplines become a delight instead of drudgery

Donald S. Whitney: Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

#CurrentlyReading

#8 - On Marrying

Sun, 10 Jan 2016 20:09:37 +0000

Stumbled upon via the Wordpress discovery feature, The True Story of a Seven Year Marriage:

Before you can make high towers, it’s best to build a good strong base. It comes from laughter, empathy, forgiveness, accepting the other person’s struggle, and knowing yourself. But sometimes without knowing it, you build too high and too fast. Things get shaky and start to wobble. There is always a way to rebuild if you’re willing. Always new and different blocks to try, always time to take a few steps back and build the bottom stronger.

The Year in Reading 2015

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 06:39:58 +0000

Trying to get a lot more structured with reading - 25 books in total spread across 5 categories - Christian Classics, Literary Classics, Popular Fiction, Modern Christian Writing and Productivity, Personal Development & Non-fiction.

Completed:

Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
The Pioneer Detectives -Konstantin Kakaes
The Best American Essays 2014 - JJ Sullivan (ed)
The Land of Steady Habits - Ted Thompson
Sexual Detox - Tim Challies
NW - Zadie Smith
Crafting the Personal Essay - Dinty W Moore
What’s so Amazing About Grace - Phillip Yancey
How To Be Alone - Jonathan Franzen
The Best American Essays 2013 - Cheryl Strayed (ed)
The Seven Good Years - Etgar Keret
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez - Richard Rodriguez
The Children Act - Ian McEwan
The Things They Carried- Tim O’Brien
Something to Answer For - P.H. Newby

The Writer Is....

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 21:26:42 +0000

…Neither saint nor Tzadik nor prophet standing at the gate; he’s just another sinner who has somewhat sharper awareness and uses slightly more precise language to describe inconceivable reality of our world. He doesn’t invent a single feeling or thought – all of them existed long before him… He’s here, at our side, buried up to his neck in mud and filth.

The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, Etgar Keret

Human, Too

Fri, 04 Dec 2015 08:30:09 +0000

In his seminal essay Why I Blog, Andrew Sullivan reflects on the subject of blogging; it’s similarity to - and shared etymology with - a ship’s log, its rise in step with the proliferation of the web technologies which have made it possible, and the unique niche it fills in the online space. Its overarching and enduring quality, he surmises, is due in part to two things; the informal, almost instantaneous nature of blogging as a reaction to news and events, and the intense, if sometimes unforgiving, interaction between blogger and reader that blogs enable. The conclusions he reaches are from considering a specific form of a blog, the sort that lies at the intersection of personal reflection and journalism, much like his (now retired blog) Daily Dish. Overall the numbers are mind boggling. Back in 2005, Technorati estimated that a blog was born every second, with 14.2m blogs being tracked by them back then (For some context, Tumblr which didn’t exist back in 2005 was home to 261 million blogs as of the 1st of November this year). The vast majority of this blogosphere is made up of blogs that are far less serious in nature and content than the ones Sullivan’s comments concern primarily, however his conclusions apply, perhaps more-so in this personal, less formal space.

On Language, and Aspiration

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:30:00 +0000

In the opening chapter of his autobiography, Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez explores his introduction to the English language, and the strain his commitment to mastering it places on his relationship with his parents. Being Mexican immigrants to America in the 1970’s, their primary language of intimacy and engagement is Spanish, their efforts in English being halting and deeply accented, even though his mother is an excellent speller of words. The emotion most stirred in those early days - when he as the up and coming scholarship boy gets to be out and about with them - is one of embarrassment and perhaps frustration at their limitations. For him, as with most people looking to escape the limitations of a certain kind of background, aspiration is a keen motivator, one that drives him to seek to immerse himself in knowledge and books, and take up the manners, airs and graces of the class and culture he looks up to.

With Grace

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 11:30:18 +0000

I have been (re) reading Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace, the central idea of which is that the church has gone the way of the world in dealing with people who are different; with judgement and disdain rather than grace. For a book from 1997, it does not by any means feel dated, somehow remaining current not least for the issues it tackles; issued which defined the late Nineties but still continue to define our current epoch than anything else - homosexuality and the moral failings of people in leadership, temporal and spiritual.

The Longform Wrap #3

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 20:30:59 +0000

A few of the more interesting pieces I stumbled on on the web during March… Enjoy

On Spock- Gukira: Leonard Nimoy died, and amidst the outpouring of grief and the eulogies, I found I related most with this piece by Gukira who said it better than I ever could

I do not have a single Spock moment—an image or narrative that stays with me. Unlike those who know how to write about TV and movies, I cannot recall a single episode, at least not by name. When I was younger, when I first encountered Spock in Nairobi, in reruns from the 80s, I encountered him as gesture: as the arched eyebrow, as the grip that caused others to faint, as the Vulcan mind meld.

Bits, Bobs and Writing Elsewhere...

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:30:00 +0000

Firmly mired in the middle of my February read, Ted Thompson’s debut novel The Land of Steady Habits, no thanks to a gruelling schedule at work with criminal deadlines, although I did manage to complete a profile of Selma star David Oyelowo for the church newsletter I occasionally write in. What intrigued me about that in the first place was how open he has been about his faith through out his career from theatre to Hollywood. Fascinating read, if I say so myself. Other than that most of my February reading was web based longform, a few of the more interesting ones being highlighted below:

2015 Reading #1

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 20:00:32 +0000

In addition to completing Moon Walking with Einstein, The Pioneer Detectives and significantly denting my copy of The Best American Essays 2014, my 2015 reading has consisted of loads of longform, which I am curating via Pocket. Below are a few of the more interesting pieces that caught my eye this month:

1. Learning to Drive - Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker): What we learn when we learn to drive?

… Driving a car more like walking on a sidewalk, [is] full of recognitions and hand waving and early avoidance, tamping down the sudden shocks that the combustion engine is heir to…

The Year In Reading 2014

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 06:37:50 +0000

Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth - Warsan Shire
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross - James Patterson
The Map of Love - Ahdaf Soueif
Finally Free: Fighting For Purity with the Power of Grace - Heath Lambert
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How To Change - Charles Duhigg
On Writing - Steven King
Love At First Click - Laurie Davis
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Everyday is for the thief- Teju Cole
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Don’t Tell Mum I work on the Oil Rigs - Paul Carter
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
Frank Sinatra Has A Cold: And Other Essays - Gay Talese
Another Man’s War - Barnaby Phillips
A Delicate Truth - John le Carré

2014 Reading - The January Wrap

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 18:32:17 +0000

Between Albert Camus’The Outsider and Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love, my 2014 reading has gotten off to a solid, if unspectacular start, both these books seeming to occupy opposite extremes of the emotional engagement continuum.

In The Outsider, two excellent summaries of which can be found here and here, Albert Camus’ protagonist, Meursault, is defined by his (lack of) emotional reaction to the death of his mother; My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know - he says, and the subsequent problems that causes for him when he ends up getting sucked into a conflict that was never his to begin with, but which ends in murder.

The Year In Reading 2013

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 06:32:26 +0000

And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
The Sound of Things Falling - Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Fine Boys - Eghosa Imasuen
The One: A Realistic Guide to Choosing Your Soul Mate - Ben Young & Sam Adams
Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me: A Memoir of sorts - Ian Morgan Cron
Networking for people who hate networking - Devora Zack.
The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world that can’t stop talking - Susan Cain
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

5 Tests of Compatibility

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 18:00:54 +0000

From my current read, Ben Young and Dr Sam Adams’ book - The One: A Realistic Guide to Choosing Your Soul Mate.

Is there chemistry? Are you sexually/ physically attracted to your partner?
Is your relationship natural? Do things flow naturally or are you spending a lot more time resolving issues than demonstrating a natural fit?
Would this be a good friend? If the chemistry was removed, is it someone you’d want to be with, whose company you enjoy?
Can you accept his or her personality as is? Could you spend the rest of your life with the person as they are?
Would you want your kids to be like him or her? Could you envision a future in which your children turn out like him or her?

Oh and to pass the test, it must be ‘Yes’, 100%…

Small Change #2 - Get Your ZZZs

Sun, 01 Sep 2013 20:49:46 +0000

From the 52 Small Changes book:

Sleep is the best meditation

- Dalai Lama

Last week’s small change went fairly well - bar the odd day on which one coffee just didn’t sort me out. By the end of the week, I was reaching instinctively for my 600ml bottle of water to kick start my day, before anything else. The slightly harder challenge was staying off the cokes, which I did for the most part except for two days - along with a green leaf salad for Wednesday for lunch and on Friday afternoon during my monthly catch up with O. at Nandos. All told there has been noticeable improvement in the quantity of water (and green tea) I drink, which can’t be such a bad thing.

Small Change #1 - Drink Up

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 17:14:05 +0000

From the 52 Small Changes Book:

Water is the driving force of nature

- Leonardo Da Vinci

Or as Fela once famously sang, water no get enemy.

Up until a month ago, Cokes were my default drink, in all its forms - diet, regular, zero and a few non conventional forms too [mixed with all sorts of other liquids], which is why this first small chnage will need some serious getting used to.

Kicking off the3six5NG Project

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 11:00:57 +0000

Sir Farouk does a far more eloquent job than I have ever managed of explaining what we’ve been trying to do for the past six weeks with #the3six5NG project - creating a crowd sourced diary of Nigerian perspectives from 365 people for 365 days. Inspired by the Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman created the3six5, we’d set out to create our own ’local’ the3six5, for Nigeria and Nigerians.

I had the honour of kicking things off yesterday with a meditation of sorts on the interactions between birth, new beginnings and the perpetual motion machine that my life has evolved into over the last three years. Others have signed up to share a snippet of their world for all of March 2013. April is filling up.

#FabReads - How Will You Measure Your Life - Clay Christensen

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:00:56 +0000

In his 2012 book, How Will You measure Your Life, Clay M Christensen attempts to analyse three key life pursuits from the perspective of the theories he teaches to his MBA students at Harvard Business School, looking to extract ideas which when applied to life will ensure that the outcomes we get are aligned with the outcomes we say we want. The three areas he concentrates on are Career, Relationships and the very aptly captioned ‘Staying Out of Prison’. A few highlights:

J. Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:00:35 +0000

WHEN MY MOTHER was angry with me, which was often, she said, ‘The Devil led us to the wrong crib'

So begins Jeanette Winterson’s autobiography, a meditation of sorts on growing up adopted and the descent into dystopia that was her childhood; spent growing up in a Pentecostal home being groomed to be a missionary. It is a childhood that is quintessentially evangelical, replete with very regular church meetings, Biblical literalism, corporeal punishment and a feening for the apocalyptic dawn of the next world to the detriment of the enjoyment of this one. Looming large in that phase of growing up is the image of her adoptive mother, a controlling creature, intensely fundamentalist and addicted to her cigarettes, who both in her quiet moments and in her moments of rage ruled the roost,with the young Jeanette and her adoptive father as collateral damage. Being adopted, and the uncertainties this brings to family relations is a recurring motif in the book, and her successful search to find her birth mother takes us through an emotional wringer.

On Pentecostalism...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:22:06 +0000

Some of my more memorable passages in Binyavanga Wainana’s witty, somewhat self deprecating if irreverent memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place relate to his early contact with Pentecostalism whilst growing up in Kenya. In one of those he describes his mother’s desire one Sunday morning to attend a church and how they end up in one that is unmistakable Pentecostal:

The heat and light are blinding and people are jumping up and down and singing what sounds to me like voices from an accordion. It smells of sweat and goats. We sit. All hot and in Sunday sweaters and collars and vaseline under the hot iron roof, and people spit and start and this is because we are frying, not because God is here.

#16 - The Sense of an Ending

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:18:37 +0000

I finally completed Julian Barnes’ 2011 Man Booker Prize winning book - The Sense of an Ending. Considering I felt both previous Booker Prize winners I read earlier in the year - The Finkler Question and Midnight’s Children were not easy reads, I was pleasantly surprised to find I liked this one. In addition to it being ‘readable’ [and that was the subject of a furore which threatened to engulf this year’s awards] I suspect I liked it because it explored the conflation of memory and reflection, a genre of books I’ve been drawn to since I read Teju Cole’s Open City.

Arthur Ashe on God and religion

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:18:22 +0000

Arthur Ashe’s moving memoir ‘Days of Grace’ ends with a heartfelt letter to his (then) six year old daughter Camera in which he unpacks all the things he suspects his illness will deny him the opportunity of telling her in future. Covering a range of categories from the importance of family, racial discrimination, loss, marriage, money and even faith, it reads like a distillation of many years of living and learning. The section where he talks about faith and religion reads like a primer for a balanced, liberal, yet essentially Judeo-Christian worldview. Excerpts below:

What I have been reading [Sept]

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:43:07 +0000

Slightly better September again - but I have fallen a lot more behind (5 books behind the plan according to the goodreads widget). Most of my reading is currently being done off my kindle which makes it marginally easier to read too. So here goes:

Hell’s Corner - David Baldacci: Bought after stumbling on an ad on TV (the dangers of daytime TV I guess). Interesting read, especially given my long hiatus from reading spy-y books.
Paradise - Toni Morrison: My first Toni Morrison book. Loved the attention to detail - one I intend to re-read.
Another Country - James Baldwin: Bought this off the Kindle store on an impulse. It does seem like I am being drawn to the books I read in my youth all over again…

What I have been reading

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:41:53 +0000

Thanks to lulls here and there - as opposed to the fast pace at which April, May and June went by - I managed to do a bit of reading:

Salman Rushdie’s - Midnight’s Children (1981 Booker Prize winner, 1993 Booker of Bookers Winner & 2008 The Best of the Booker Winner): I read this one mainly on the go, off a hand held device which probably affected my enjoyment of the book. I did think it was a laborious read at times. It might be a thing I have for Booker winners, as I didn’t exactly enjoy my reading of The Finkler Question either earlier in the year.
Ian McEwan’s - On Chesil Beach (2007 Booker prize shortlisted): Good read, if only for its description of 1960s England, before the advent of the pill and the mainstream-ing of contraceptives.
Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz (2006 New York Times Bestseller): An engaging read on Christianity, and how it is meant to be a passionate relationship not based on stultifying rules. The section on being addicted to solitude hit too close to home too… Definitely one I should re-read at a more leisurely pace.
Haruki Murakami’s After Dark: Seven hours one Tokyo night… Part real life, part dream.

Piling up the Books..

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:40:31 +0000

The size of the reading list for 2011 is threatening to spiral out of control. And I am adding more to the list… Added two new books to the list - Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Teju Cole’s Open City. That brings to five the books on the list.. Sigh..

#2- The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives..

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:53:00 +0000

Book number two is Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. This was one of the books I’ve actually tried to buy off Amazon and failed - twice (the other one being Teju Cole’s Everyday is for the Thief). I thoroughly enjoyed this one - maybe because Baba Segi used to be a moniker I was known by. My summary:

Shoneyin takes polygamous life - the rivalry, the struggle for the bread winner’s attention, the gumption that ensures survival - and condenses it into a compelling narrative. The genius of it all is that is completely believable.

Books: The Finkler Question

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:23:14 +0000

I finally finished Howard Jacobsen’s 2010 Man Booker Prize winning offering “The Finkler question” – if plodding through the equivalent of 320 pages on a mobile device can count as reading. The ubiquity of kindle apps for almost every connected device under the sun – and Amazon’s penchant for adding tons of cardboard to shipped books - made me try the iPad + Kindle app combo for reading books this year.

In the main, reviews of the book were great - The Guardian , The Independent and The Telegraph all had high praise for the book. Although there were quite a few note worthy constructs sequestered within the text, I did however find reading it a wee bit tiring. What the book did well though, was to endlessly waffle on about the subject of being…

Opinion: Gladwell, Twitter and the Nigerian Angle...

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:51:51 +0000

In perhaps one of those quirks of timing - which make me wonder if indeed the world is ‘run’ by someone with an almost Machiavellian sense of mirth - Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on social media hit the blogosphere a few days after twitter was leading the way in breaking news of bomb blasts during Nigeria’s 50th year anniversary celebrations. True to type, the response to his article has been immediate and extensive, but largely critical. I suspect that this is to be expected - most people who would write a blog, or tweet, or use foursquare would feel personally chastised by the words that Gladwell offered.

Overdue Holidays, Reading and a Pilgrimage of sorts...

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:26:00 +0000

“If I have to see the insides of yet another heat exchanger, I just might quit”.

So said I to Annie - the intern who assists me at MO Corp - mainly in jest, but with more than just a threat of burnout hovering just beneath the surface. It has been thirty-seven straight weeks of working without a break; thirty-seven weeks of mind numbing, brain frying, geek stuff. It hasn’t helped that I have been largely unable to unburden my mind by reading; unable to let myself loose to indulge in the art of imagination as prompted by others more accomplished than myself.

.......... for Ella*

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:57:08 +0000

I walked away- with your face stolen from a crowded room……….. Now you are on my skin, in my mouth - and hair as if you were always woven in my walk…

Yusef Komunyakaa said it much better than I could ever say…

Musings: Quotes

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:58:40 +0000

When in doubt, discretize….

- Probably the most important thing I never learnt

The Grass is Always Greener...

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:49:11 +0000

Barry Schwartz, writing in The Paradox of Choice makes a compelling argument - to my mind - for cutting down the options.. One paragraph on the subject of life and partners grabbed my attention.

.. inevitably, you will find people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and ’trading up’. The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, “I’m simply not going there'

On Memories...

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:46:46 +0000

It is not what is lost that hurts the most, It is the thing that takes its place -

- Jerome Kugan (The Myth of Displacement)*

I say the things that try to take the place of what is lost - yet fail to do so, or even come close - are what hurt the most. They bring back memories…..which often are more legend than reality - the perfect bloke he never was, the doting girl she never would have been, the manipulating mofo everyone but you could see…..

Weekend Randoms...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:53:19 +0000

And I am learning to say no I let out in the night A bitter or a hopeful voice

- Montserrat Abello

I’m currently reading “Dance the Guns to Silence” a collection of one hundred poems in memory of Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni 8. So far so good, but the poem I like the most is ‘And I am Learning to Say No’ (from which the above quote comes) by Montserrat Abello - its short, simple, resigned and dare I say quietly defiant - which is how I like poems :). I found, thanks to google, some other works by her here. Perhaps I am drawn to it because in many ways toughening up, learning to say no to people, is one of the major failings I think I have had in my life.

For Dennis Brutus..... 1924 -2009

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:17:51 +0000

Dennis Brutus - anti-aparthied activist, poet, professor and family man amongst others - passed on in his sleep today…. An excerpt from the family statement:

Dennis lived his life as so many would wish to, in service to the causes of justice, peace, freedom and the protection of the planet. He remained positive about the future, believing that popular movements will achieve their aims.

Dennis’ poetry, particularly of his prison experiences on Robben Island, has been taught in schools around the world. He was modest about his work, always trying to improve on his drafts.

The Economics of Loving....

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:51:52 +0000

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, writes an intriguing blog at the Financial Times where he provides advice from an Economics standpoint on everyday issues. My current favourites are his analysis of a 32-year old American woman’s conundrum: to stay single in Italy or return to San Francisco, a man’s plea for deliverance from a Walmart hating wife, the statistics on loving and losing, the useless PA challenge and consumer choice theory applications for the good boy vs bad boy debate!

Piper on Mid-Life Crises...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:30:15 +0000

Excellent piece by John Piper on the subject of handling mid-life crises. An excerpt….

You know, God makes no mistakes. I cannot explain to you why he ordained that the first half of your life would be led in a way that looks like you wasted it. Maybe you just lived for money, and you lost your marriage, and you lost your kids. And now you’re 54 years old, and you are all alone and rich and miserable.

On Technology.... Flickering Pixels...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:07:32 +0000

I jumped at the chance to participate in BlogTourSpot’s review of Shane Hipps new book: Flickering Pixels – How Technology Shapes Your Faith for two reasons. I was at a stage where I thought the clutter of technology was squeezing sense out of my normal life, plus I’d get a copy of the book for free.

The author’s background is in advertising, which has given him a unique insight into the working of media and how it is changing how we think, which ultimately affects how we share and live out our faith. The book sets out in broad strokes the insidious dangers that the changes media brings to our lives can generate, and by sounding out a clarion call, we can be on the lookout for them and avoid them as they arise. Several key points stand out 1. All Faith is based on communication – either from God to us or between us as adherents, and the way we primarily communicate affects our interpretation of our faith. 2. Each more ‘efficient’ means of communication we pick up has a dark side – it increases the propensity to clutter rather than clarify. 3. Media is not neutral – the message we actually get from communicating is both dependent on the message and the medium. 4. Pictures & Images (such as television) hijack our imagination. Words and printed matter however encourage us to generate our own images of the concepts being discussed, as opposed to being fed an image which in reality is one man’s interpretation of the words behind the image. 5. We have slowly become a tribe of individuals – sharing experiences on an unprecedented scale (shared experiences build community, a ‘tribal’ ethos) but yet utilizing the self same tools to build an illusion of closeness whilst in reality, it is only yet another layer of interaction, another screen between the real us and the next person. 6. For Christians, we are both the medium and the message and all other forms of communication should only be to facilitate that primary, face to face communication model, not replace it.