books

finally I put down the "State of Africa", a giant 700 pages, consumed me in total 2 month and a few days to complete. It tells the history of Africa continent since independence, and it is not boring at all (some of us presumed books about history dull). It is almost my favorite type of read - fiction with a historical story at the background. Only that there is no fiction in it, all the horror and sorrow were just a while ago. Actually when I was reading the last few chapters of the book where it commented on 20 century, I can very well flipped open the newspaper of the present day and continue the story almost non disrupted - stories or rather news from Susan, from Somali, from Congo... It was the best read on history I every enjoyed! There were times that I had to put aside the book and stood up to breath and swallow cold water, just to remind myself that the history has passed; there were also times that i could not close the book despite late hours in the night for i was so fascinated of how little i knew, how fractional my information was from those so called news report on the TV. I'd like to read more on this topic and welcome recommendation.

i need some small delicacy between big meals for digestion sake, I guess. So I went to the book store called "bookstop" here in Nairobi although I still had a whole piles of big books that I intended to finish before going back to Europe (by now i am sure that i was too ambitious so Achim will actually need to include some of them in his large luggage allowance). The owner without doubt Asian descendant as a lot of business here are ran by them. He's kind and he has good eyes on the customers. Before I left the store, he showed me a corner where there are a whole shelf of African topic 2nd hand book. "I saw you standing in front of the African section (brand new) for long, thought you might be interested to these as well", he said. I thanked him for his kindness but explained to him though I am more than happy to read more but my journey home is in 2 months so I could not possibly buy more of those before finishing the ones i posted oversea from Germany (with expansive postage charge!). In the end i settled with buying the 2nd-hand "No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency" whose name I have seen so often in most of the African reading list. It staged in Botswana and the story is lovely. I am done reading in 3 days (I think if you sit still you can done reading in a few hours but that is not really me) and I want to read more from this writer. The story is still African, still has dark side of fate, but it is soothed perfectly with the author's descriptive but not over-done writing. It has a good ending and full of emotion for the country and the African land - it is just adorable. It is my lemon ice cream on a hard working day.