This Is My Hobby - Reading

I almost didn’t take up this challenge. For a long time, I couldn’t decide what my hobby was. I don’t spend much time doing a lot of things before moving on. But then, I walked into my room , stared at the disarranged books on my bed and my reading table and it hit me – I love books and I love to read.

I accepted the term 'bookworm' a long time ago. Books are my first love. I just can’t do without them. The longest I’ve stayed without reading a book was a month and a few weeks when I lost my laptop and phones to some stupid thieves (story for another day). Growing up I used to sneak into bed with a book and a torchlight after lights out. Don’t do this. I repeat, don’t. Ask my poor eyes. Besides sneaking in with books, I also used to scatter them everywhere, even in the sitting room. My Mama got tired of whooping my arse and admitted she was like that when she was my age. The books ranged from school books to newspapers and magazine. I once used the last money I had to buy books at a workshop. It’s that bad. LOL. Now, you shouldn’t be surprised I write stories. I think they come from all the books I’ve read over the years.

I’m going to talk about some of the books I enjoyed reading, novels especially. I don’t do motivational books, don’t ask. And I haven’t really tried business books, now that I think about it. I don’t have a favourite book. It’s too difficult to choose. Novels really helped me with my written and spoken English. English wasn’t my first language. It’s a language I had to learn in school. I grew up speaking my native dialect. Novels helped shape that for me. Maybe that’s why I love them so. For writers, you don’t have a choice. You read, you write and the rest is history.

So, here they are: In no particular order.

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Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

There’s something about this book. I can’t quite put my finger on it. The prose is just too beautiful. Here’s an excerpt.

The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference between lie and lay. Lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I'd like to get laid. Though sometimes they said, I'd like to lay her. All this is pure speculation. I don't really know what men used to say. I had only their words for it.
I lie, then, inside the room, under the plaster eye in the ceiling, behind the white curtains, between the sheets, neatly as they, and step sideways out of my own time. Out of time. Though this is time, nor am I out of it.

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Next on the list is Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.

This is the first sentence you’ll see when you open the first chapter.

Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair.

With Chimamanda, you just can’t choose. It’s not only the prose now, her books have a way of loosening something inside of you. She gives life to African literature.

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Next is Nora Roberts' Three Sisters Island Trilogy.

When you think romance, think Nora Roberts. I’ve read over thirty of her books, maybe more. However, that trilogy up there is too beautiful. This is from the concluding one:

“Some people make a good life here," she said quietly. "They plant little container gardens and have picnics in the summer."

"And some people live in places and can't make a good life. It's not where, it's how. And it's who."

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Here’s John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars

I saw the movie first, the I learned it has a book and I just had to get it.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

I read a review where someone said that the author romanticised cancer. Now, that’s the person’s opinion, isn’t it

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And the last is John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief.

He drank a lot, as did most of his students, and for him the first few hours of each morning were needed for sleep, then resuscitation. Nine and ten o’clock classes were abominations. He was also popular because he was cool faded jeans, tweed jackets with well-worn elbow patches, no socks, no ties. The liberal-chic-academic look. He was forty-five, but with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses he could pass for thirty-five, not that he gave a damn how old he looked. He shaved once a week, when it started itching; and when the weather was cool, which was seldom in New Orleans, he would grow a beard. He had a history of closeness with female students.

John Grisham is all about law and the people who break and bend them. This is one book you won’t regret reading.

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That’s pretty much about that.

All images are from my ebooks gallery.

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