Books.

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This is a very short post. It’s not the kind of thing I write about and so I think it is necessary that I let you know why I am writing this. I am doing this for two reasons.

1. One of my most admired Kenyan bloggers and creative nonfiction writers Bikozulu wrote a post on his blog (bikozulu.co.ke) about books and there, he talked about the books he was reading and the ones he had read. So Bikozulu wants us to drop the books we are reading in the Comments section but I feel like doing more. So this post is about the books I’m reading right now. And it is inspired by Bikozulu Jackson.
2. Last year, I posted frequently on my Facebook wall on how my reading was going: the books I was reading, what I was learning, the joy, the disappointment, the silent beauty of some books, the noisy ugliness of others. But due to he fact that I have not been very active on Facebook this year, I have not really said much about the books I’m reading. So this post is to fill the space.
   I’m reading three books currently. 

A. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. Here is how I fell in love with this romantic vampire novel. One Saturday morning earlier this year, I went to the school market to get some ingredients I needed for my cooking. Because it was Saturday and because I went very early, I met an almost empty market. So I decided to take a stroll around the market. I had not gone far when my eyes fell on something: a shop filled with treasures that can never perish -books! Without thinking, I walked into this bookstore and started looking through. The first book that caught my attention was Breaking Dawn, the last book in the Twilight series.  It was the cover that got me. There was this elegant chess piece standing tall like a proud tree on a chess board and I was like, I gotta read this book. And then I realized that it is the last book in the series and so I started from the first book. I’m reading the second right now; New Moon.

If you are a lover of fantasy, read this book. If your own fantasy is the witch-wizard-wand or Ice and Fire fantasy, read this book to get a different type of fantasy.

Here’s a quote from the first book, Twilight:

“Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew – knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest – was how love gave someone the power to break you” 

B. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

This is one very beautiful and wonderful book. Some of you must have read Lewis’s children fantasy books and so you know he was a great writer while he walked the planet. Thing is, this is the first book written by this man that I’m gonna be reading. And I’m in love already. 

In their book, Lewis , an atheist turn Christian, talks about the existence of God from a very logical and physical perspective. If you picked up this book somewhere and you didn’t know who C.S. Lewis was, you’d think the book was written by some ignorant atheist who doesn’t even know where to get a Bible. Why? Because there is no single Bible verse in this book. 

And so you begin to  wonder, is that still a Christian book? Is it the same God you and I are talking about here? It is, brother. Pick up this book when next you see it and you will begin to see what logical reasoning means. 

Here’s a quote: 

“As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not. A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble—because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.”
C. A Dance With Dragons.

For the lovers of the HBO TV series, Game of Thrones, I guess you know how important it is to get the GoT story from the writer himself. Last year, I watched the six seasons of Game of Thrones and I knew all I wanted to do next was read the books. So I started with the first book, A Clash of Kings sometimes in November. And this is April, I’m halfway through with the fifth book in the series. Dear GoT fans, let’s keep praying for George R. R. Martin. It’s like he needs an invisible creature to sit him down, put the pen between his fingers and order him to write. We’ve been waiting for the next book in the series for like how many years now, five? It sucks. And I’m pretty sure it sucks on he other side too. Readers are trying hard to wait. The writer is alone  somewhere trying desperately to meet up with expectations. 

Anyways, read this book if you love fantasy. If you’ve read Harry Potter and other beautiful fantasy novels, pick this up and see where wit and magic meet to perform wonders.

Quote: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” 

That’s a very beautiful quote. Read fellas. Read and read and keep reading and don’t ever stop reading. The power books can have on us is unimaginable. A reader lives a thousand lives. Life is too long to live just one life, to do just one thing. So read, shut your eyes and wake up in the skin of some other man, say Augustus Waters, Tyrion Lannister, Severus Snape, James Bond, Ugwu, Emma, Jane Eyre, or any other beautiful character out there. Live their lives. Nothing can be more beautiful!

So when next you walk by a bookstore, don’t go without getting something for yourself. Books are treasures that never grow old. Read.

Tell us about your reading life. What are you reading that you would love us to read?