Books We Read: 11 Readers on Reading in 2016 —Tolase Ajibola
www.read.i.ngTolase Ajibola
Most of the books I read were recommended by friends and close associates so it can be said that I was not in company of bad books. I read moving books—Wave and The Light of the World moved me close to tears. Some poems moved me that far too—Gbenga Adesina’s Painter of Water. Some books improved my person, Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan taught me not to gamble. 2016 has been wonderful.
Notable Reads
Home is short. This book tries to take out the idea of a locked position in my thought of home. Frank Money, a war veteran who went to war with two other friends—who died at war—is going home. He received a letter that informed him of his sister’s deteriorating health, only then did his sister become the home he was to return to.
The Double by Jose Saramago (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)
The Double is full of surprises. A depressed history teacher slips a recommended movie—by his colleague—into the VCR to discover an actor—playing a minor role—who looks the way he did some years back, that was the beginning of surprises. The narrative technique employed allowed me to interfere in the decisions of Tertuliano, which movies should he rent—the recent ones or older ones by the same production company, what to tell his girlfriend when she asked about the movies, why he shouldn’t wear a false beard when meeting his double. The double was so graphic I thought it was from my memory.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Black Swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was… so began The Black Swan.
Why do—or don’t—you gamble? If one engages a gambler in a conversation, the logic of gambling will seem simple, that is, predicting or forecasting the future from past occurrences. Not only gamblers work with forecasts, brokers too, this means that their job is to predict market behaviour based on it past behaviours. It is plausible, isn’t it? Now, here is a black swan: The past tells us nothing about the future. So are brokers fraud? An example of a black swan event is 9/11, what previous event could has predicted the occurrence?
What motivated me to read Wave was an essay in Teju Cole’s Known and Strange Things, A Better Quality of Agony. When I read the essay, I thought of how impossible it was for someone to acquire most of the grief the world can give in one day or how else does one describe the loss of all that one has come to know as love. Sonali in her memoir writes about the Tsunami that claimed the life of her father, mother, husband and two sons in a way that one comes to own her grief too. I think that no circle has more warmth or offers more love than family. Wave tells of what it means to lose family. The story is in two part: one is of loss, how a woman lost all that she has treasured in a tsunami in Sri Lanka. How her world shrunk and the other is her path to rediscovery.
Sonali was raised in Sri Lanka, educated in England where she met Stephen who she later got married to and had her two sons with. Sonali and her family lived in London. Her parents lived in Sri Lanka and thus they visit often, what would later be a solo voyage. In December 2004, during their holiday in Sri Lanka, their resort was hit by a tsunami. After the event she was found naked, the event had ripped her off all she held dear. The event was so grave she couldn’t ask people to assist in her search for the fear that things might get real. What followed was her path towards healing, how she couldn’t live in their London home or tell her children’s classmates they died and her suicidal thoughts. How she relives the memory they made, and how remembering healed when she finally moved back into their London home.
The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
"In which Ficre died" is a title I would have suggested. The light of the world is a voyage around an immigrant from Eritrea, Ficre Ghebereyesus, an artist, he takes wine, he takes aspirin three times a week—“baby aspirin are supposed to prevent heart attack”—but Ficre died from an attack. Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir puts us in the company of Ficre—her husband—his Eritrean recipe and his paintings. One could feel the radiating love of Ficre until the moment he was found dead by a running treadmill.
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
Teju writes of the things he knows, literature and photography, in which we come into the knowledge of creative processes. Known and Strange Things have three sections apart from the epilogue – Reading Things, Seeing Things and Being there. In Reading Things where his opinion about the writings of others and his conversations with other writers are voiced, his writing can be said to have been from keen observation.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The book opens with an introduction to two systems, System1 which operates quickly with little or no effort or no sense of voluntary effort operates automatically and While System2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities, an example is solving complex mathematical problems. An example of System1 operation is identifying a person’s mood from their facial expression. Usually, System1 is automatic and thus humans make decisions without thorough thinking which could lead to erroneous decisions.
Thinking Fast and Slow has influenced my decision making process. Often I delay System1 response while System2 works, that way I get to compare the decisions of both systems although there are times System1 just jumps in.
Painter of Water by Gbenga Adesina
Painter of Water is a journey through Gbenga’s lenses to Africa, a water painted with blood and tears. Gbenga Adesina’s control of language helped to create images that will remain in my head for a long time. With Gbenga I went to places, landmarks, where history is made—Christmas in Chibok, Borno where the painter is. These journeys are anachronistic though, but I felt like I was there with the daughters of widows in their science schools where they were abducted, 200 of them.
The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward
I am convinced Jesmyn Ward's The Fire This Time will be a focal point of discussion around race. Amazingly, it is 2016 and we are still talking about racism, will we ever stop? Jesmyn Ward’s anthology addresses issues around race in a time when black bodies get shot at because their identity is mistaken—if it is right to say mistaken—for violence. The book reminds me of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and it can be said that there is just a little difference between the two non-fiction texts. The book addresses the issues of racial equality in a manner that has the semblance of Baldwin. It is not a book of unforgivings, rather just grievances, that in 2016 our geography still has the semblance of Baldwin’s—not much has changed.
The New Testament by Jericho Brown
Read my review here.
Books I'm looking forward to Read in 2017.
• The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah
• No Map Could Show Them by Helen Mort
• What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated from Korean by Deborah Smith)
• Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
Tolase Ajibola lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.
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This is the tenth of eleven pieces on Readers on Reading in 2016.