WHICH BOOKS HAVE YOU READ LATELY? I was once asked this question during a job interview. It was not an academia position on offer and I bet they were not looking for a literary critic either. They were just trying to figure out if I was a dullard who had not read a book since the times of adventurous series e.g. The Famous Five, Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. It actually doesn’t injure to read a handful of influential or inspirational books in your profession, Biographies, bestselling works of fiction by world-class authors, Journals and even Newspapers. I have never understood how folks go about their life without reading a book once a month at the very least. I have tried to remain an avid reader since I was young and this has made me a better appreciator of the written word. I read the Holy Bible, Joel Osteen books, comic series (just to savour the satire, sarcasm or wit of its characters) and even elitist and esoteric magazines. Back then, Sidney Sheldon span a bigger yarn on me with novels like ‘Rage of Angels’, ‘Master of the Game’, ‘If Tomorrow comes’ etc. But with time I acquired a taste of works that touch on power and politics. The likes of Robert Green’s ‘The 48 Laws of Power’, Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’, Niccollo Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ and even Chinua Achebe’s ‘There was a country; A personal History of Biafra’ were enlisted on my TO-DO list. And these are just a small fraction of astute writers who have bristling prose that can paint vivid pictures with words. We actually have gurus out there whose literature literally gets up and stroll out of pages. I have just read Frederick Forsyth’s novel ‘The Dogs of War’ featuring cliques of African and European mercenaries hired by a British Industrialist to depose the government of a fictional African state. And without intending to pre-empt how it pans out, one should sample its content on professional killers who are ruthless and heroic, only in the loose sense of the word. You will love its anecdotes, sentence structures and how the author plays with phrase. Books arouse a weird and everlasting impact in us. They cast a spell and elicit a feeling of commitment in you that even forces us to read them through the night when spirits are roaming on our planet. They leave us with an overwhelming feeling that compels most of us to re-read underlined sentences, paragraphs, verses or chapters meticulously to squeeze out any remaining proverb, maxim, saying, idiom, adage, aphorism or –ism. *CONFESSION! It’s at this point that many of us steal analogies, quotes or lines for future use and I plead guilty of plagiarism as charged. Hey! The street vendors and the internet have quashed the excuse that costs in bookshops are high. A second-hand book or a blogger’s link is now available and affordable making them the biggest conveyor belt of civilisation that ensures liberating knowledge is shared. And the mere fact that they’re constantly in business proves the basic-economic-principle of supply and demand is being realised. I would rather we tweet about the value of a leading book than specialize in reading 140 characters on social media. (Written by Sam)
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 09:00:00 +0000
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