Great African Reads discussion

This year we are going to keep things a little simple and use two lists to guide us.

50 Books By African Men Everyone Should Read Part 1

50 Books By African Men Everyone Should Read Part 2

50 Books By African Women Everyone Should Read Part 1

50 Books By African Women Everyone Should Read Part 2

I'm still not sure how to organize this project, however. Should we alternate so that we have six group reads by men and six by women? should we have two per month?

How many of these books have you all already read?

I'm doing atrociously on these lists. I've read The Shining Girls. Cry, the Beloved Country is on my shelf. I suppose I can only improve on that and at least it has increased my TBR list by 99 books.

If anybody is interested, July's People is a February group read here https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Some of these titles are so familiar to me that i'm not sure without checking if i have actually read them, or just have planned to! lol

LOL Marieke Im with you on this one!

Laura wrote: "LOL Marieke Im with you on this one!"

ha! i'm so glad i'm not the only one with a scrambled reading brain!

I looked at all four lists again, and realized that I have read a fair number of the books written by women (I think 26), but many fewer of those written by men (18, I think). It seemed also that there were quite a few older books in the men's lists compared with the women authors, but maybe that was just my impression.

I have read 21 from the women's list and 10 from the men's list.

Yes, I agree that the men's list has older titles compared to the women's list.

I want to be nerdy and make a spreadsheet for myself.

Marieke wrote: "I want to be nerdy and make a spreadsheet for myself."

Sounds logical :)

Beverly wrote: "Marieke wrote: "I want to be nerdy and make a spreadsheet for myself."

Sounds logical :)"

Doesn't everybody have spreadsheets with reading lists?! I'd be lost without Excel I have to admit.

Beverly wrote: "Marieke wrote: "I want to be nerdy and make a spreadsheet for myself."

Sounds logical :)"

Definitely a good idea, especially with erratic internet!

Im still using the old memory trick. works for me!

I just can't trust mine anymore ;)

Not sure where to put this, but some of you might be interested in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's recent short story, "Olikoye" https://medium.com/matter/olikoye-b02...

I recently read Half a Yellow Sun, and when I was finished couldn't get into another novel for weeks, so I plan to read all her books.

Half of a Yellow Sun / Americanah / Purple Hibiscus: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Three-Book Collection

I do want to add that no African book list, IMO, is complete without Doris Lessing,The Doris Lessing Reader Nobel prize winner, recently deceased, and one of the best writers of our generation. She was born and raised in Zimbabwe when it was Southern Rhodesia, and was banned for several years from returning because of her biting fiction on white colonizers.

Nina wrote: "Not sure where to put this, but some of you might be interested in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's recent short story, "Olikoye" https://medium.com/matter/olikoye-b02..."

Thanks for sharing - a wonderful story.

Look up local NPR schedules, the show is To the Best of Our Knowledge:
Next Broadcast:
New African Voices
Welcome to the next generation of African writers. They're young, multi-lingual and breaking out of all the old literary boxes. The show looks into why Africa has one of the most exciting literary scenes on the planet.

I was greatly disappointed in the abovementioned NPR show New African Voices. It was all genre fiction, which I almost never read, which the host kept calling "fun", as opposed to the "old" "political" work of African writers. I don't need my books to be political; but I do want them to be literary. I see what's coming out of Africa now as exciting literature, and I thought they'd talk about that. And TBOOK usually does great programs. Very disappointing.

Marcy wrote: "I was greatly disappointed in the abovementioned NPR show New African Voices. It was all genre fiction, which I almost never read, which the host kept calling "fun", as opposed to the "old" "politi..."

aww, thats too bad Marcy. i still plan to listen!

Marcy wrote: "I was greatly disappointed in the abovementioned NPR show New African Voices. It was all genre fiction, which I almost never read, which the host kept calling "fun", as opposed to the "old" "politi..."

Thanks for sharing the information.
I finally had the time to listen.

I too am a big literary fiction reader though I do read other genres.
I saw this series or tidbits more of a continuation from last year there was a lot of buzz around the literary authors from Africa and so media seems to be expanding their interest in literature from Africa.

I actually thought the first segment - on the anthology Africa 39 was "literary" in a way as a lot of the authors in the collection were "literary" authors and while I do not read anthologies straight through it does give names to keep my eye on as their books get published.

I am excited about the SF being published this year.

i hope to get to this podcast soon!

btw, and i'm so sorry it's taken me so long to start pulling this together, but i think what i'll do is poll for a female and male author each month (don't feel pressured to read them both!); i'll take them in chunks of five. if we like using these lists as a resource, we can keep going next year and beyond until we've worked through them all.
but we can decide that later!

Here are the polls:

Women:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Men:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Is The Quiet Violence of Dreams out of print in the US?

We have our first selections! The winners are Half of a Yellow Sun and Every Day is for the Thief.

As with other group reading projects, side reads are always welcome. In fact, I have already read Yellow Sun and am thinking about reading Americanah in March instead.

Marieke wrote: "We have our first selections! The winners are Half of a Yellow Sun and Every Day is for the Thief.

As with other group reading projects, side reads are always welcome. ..."

Thanks for setting up the poll.
I have read all of Adichie's work and highly recommend all of them.

I will be reading Every Day is for the Thief - and this will also help in keeping with the Nigeria project.

Yes, when I saw the results I thought it was a nice overlap!

I'm not sure if we should have polls every month, but i set these up for April...maybe they should be for May?

written by a woman:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

written by a man:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

In fact, I already edited them to reflect the polls are for May.

i just extended the poll for our May selections. you can vote until March 20. Please do vote (and participate in the discussions!) :D

Our May reads will be In the Country of Men and Everything Good Will Come. I have read both and enjoyed both. I'm looking forward to the discussions!

Tomorrow I will be setting up new threads for our May reads, but in the meantime, here is an interesting piece and video about African literature:

http://africasacountry.com/binyavanga...

do you guys agree with him? a lot? a little? somewhat?

I scanned this piece...this is not a phenomenon unique to Africa, that the majority of the population want Nollywood or soap opera or whatever. As for me, I hope literary writers will continue to write wonderful books so I can learn about Africa in the form which I prefer. Yes, we readers of literature may be in the minority, but we are a sizeable minority.

Hi all, tomorrow I will post a poll for the June selection, but I've decided to alternate between women and men writers. June's book will be by a woman and July will be by a man, etc.

here is the June poll!

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

We Need New Names will be our June selection!

Hey guys I kind of dropped the ball for getting our July selection. I decided to do a "moderator's choice" only to discover that the links for Part 1 of each list no longer work. The site has changed and I haven't found the lists on the new site (yet?)

Anyway, we will work from Part 2 for the rest of the year and I will select a book for July right now.

Okay...i selected five contemporary novels from the list and used the random list generator to make a selection. We will be reading Fine Boys for July.

Sorry about this way of doing things! I will post a poll for August's selection this upcoming week.

I actually have an August poll up!
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

I have a poll up for October. Apologies it's so tardy. The choices look good, though!

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...