Books I hope you read!

This will not run as a book review but I hope at the end of the day, you will pick up the following books and read them

My first recommendation is ‘Ake’ by Wole Soyinka; I cannot tell you how many times I have read the book. It is one of my favorite books. It is an autobiography of his early years and you can tell that he was no ordinary child. His childhood experiences remind me very much of my own though many differences exist. For one I did not grow up in that exciting era of the egba women riots or experience the exhilaration of having an aunt who was the first to ride a car in the country. But I could relate to his fears while walking through the school yard on his way home and his attraction to the stories of gnomes and feasts meant for unseen creatures as I grew up with older cousins who made it a point of duty to scare us out of our skin everyday. His love for school was certainly more than mine and his exploits with his friend barely escaping a beheading and planning a birthday party for himself without his mother’s knowledge will surely leave you in stitches. My favorite stories are of ‘Lemo’ and ‘Nyu you mean mayself’! I can only say this is one book that must be read!
Rating- 5 stars

Another favorite of mine is ‘The good earth’ by Pearl S. Buck. I have only read it once but it stirred such deep feeling within me that its one book I will not forget in a hurry. It is the story of a young Chinese farmer and his family who depended on the earth to provide a living. It tells of his quest for a wife and his relationship with his father. One follows the changes he goes through to make the earth yield a good fruit, his quest for more wealth, the toiling of his wife who is no doubt responsible for his riches when they come. It tells of the strained relations between the farmer and his uncle and cousin who lay claim his riches by blackmailing him. It is a tale of how wealth affects every man irrespective of how poor he started off in the first place. It is a good book.
Rating- 4 stars

Another book I dearly love is ‘Don’t let the goats eat the loquat leaves’ by Thomas Hale M.D. It is one book I can say was partly responsible for a change in career paths for me. The book is about his immersion into the culture of rural Nepal. And it is another book I read a countless number of times before I lost it after giving it out to a friend to read. It tells the stories of his triumphs, disasters and journey as a surgeon in rural Nepal. It is a book that will make your rock side to side with laughter as Thomas Hale weaves a mean story of his escapade after almost killing a sacred cow with a rock thrown in anger when it almost destroyed his wife’s vegetable patch garden. He takes us through the changes and major adjustments himself and his family and also the community where he served had to make. I love the fact that he tells the truth of the challenges they faced and how they go ahead to serve the people in the midst of difficulties. I love the tales of the differences in the culture between the US and their new home- how the idea of a typical day at their home in Nepal is so very different from what it was back home. If you want to go out as a missionary or serve in short term missions its one book I recommend and even if you have no push to the mission field it is a good book to read.
Rating- 5 stars

Other books I will recommend in no particular order are:
• The call of the wild by Jack London
• The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
• The old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Say you are one of them by Uwem Akpan
• A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
and the Anne of Green Gables series or any other books by Laud M. Montgomery