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What are you reading today?

Started by Muhsin, December 06, 2007, 10:57:20 AM

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ummutameem

lol, i thought i made it clear dat i read everything, h..l, im even thinking of reading soyinka for goodness sake.

jackie collins writes about hollywood, n hollywood is all those things u mentioned and more, u watch movies dont u? same difference my brother, sometimes u have to broaden ur horizon to know wats happening around u, believe me her books are a lot cleaner than most movies, u dont consider watching those movies scandalous?

Muhsin

Salam,

Ummutameem,

What I read in books stay longer in my memory than what I just watched in movies. And more-over, being the language she uses so filthy affects my usage of English, which is mostly academic; I sub-consciously include slang, so informal and offensive terms in my day-to-day use of the English language. That necessitates me to quit reading her books and others like them. Get my point?

BTW, it's good to be a voracious reader; you'll certainly learn greatly.
Get to know [and remember] Allah in prosperity & He will know  [and remember] you in adversity.

ummutameem

nah, dont get u at all but its ok, to each his own.

Muhsin

How you don't get me?  ???

I said: the kind of the English language Jackie Collins uses in her novels, which is mostly slang and very informal affects my personal usage of the English language. To paraphrase that more: I end up "acquiring" and learning an adulterated language (used in her novels), while reading. Ni kuma I use English in mostly academic setting where that kind of English is not wanted at all. Subsequently I prefer others to hers.

What am I reading today?

I am reading anything within grab about Niyi Osundare, especially his famous poem, "Text Worship".
Get to know [and remember] Allah in prosperity & He will know  [and remember] you in adversity.

ummutameem

muhsin kenan, u really want me to talk about this dont you? so hear goes. . .

if u read the woman's book daily n u say its affecting ur english, fine, but how many of ha books do u read in a week, a month? and believe me simply reading a book can not change the way u speak, i mean uve been speaking english before u knew jackie collins, so how can she affect the way u speak now? so just because u read a book that says d f word, u wake up d next morning n u start saying d f word to anyone u see, or just because d hero uses cocaine, u start looking for it to snort, get real pls!

u dont like her because shes vulgar, fine, accepted, we all have our preferences. that is y such things have age restriction, if u r above 18, it is presumed u can handle such things, if it so happens that u are over 18 n u still can not handle them, no shaking, we all have our limitations! there!

Muhsin

Get to know [and remember] Allah in prosperity & He will know  [and remember] you in adversity.

ummutameem

right back at yah.

reading nora roberts' public secrets, very interesting. ive read some btw d last time i posted n now, but i can remember em, needless to say they were not that good or i would hav remembered.

ive registered for a course, so my reading these days is mostly geared towards my materials, but whenever i read smthing interesting ll pop in n share.

GoodFella

Hello,

What'z up, guyz? Been away for awhile don't know know what'z cooking in up here!

Hope u are all kuul!

Been reading tons of books these days...
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if he or she were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
— Og Mandino (Motivational Author & Speaker)

ummutameem

@goodfella, share wit us wat uve been reading pls, tanx

Muhsin

Hey, Goodfella

Long time no see. What's up to you, too? Fine, I hope.


What I am reading today?

My school books and news, yeah news.  :)
Get to know [and remember] Allah in prosperity & He will know  [and remember] you in adversity.

maxsiollun

No self promotion here, but another review of the book was very kindly written by Kaye Whiteman, whom many of you will recognise as the former Editor of the esteemed magazine 'West Africa'. He is one of the leading writers on West Africa and has also written for the UK's Guardian newspaper.

Unpacking the Past

As we approach the great stock-taking of the fiftieth anniversary of Nigerian independence (which is going to be continuing all year), there is going to be a growing consideration of the history of these past fifty years. This is bound to include a re-examination of the coups and civil war of the 1960s.  If this decade brought to a head the post-independence trauma of national identity, as a shakedown of the British-engineered independence settlement, it made a profound mark on subsequent decades.

There are so many aspects of Nigeria's recent history that cannot be studied without reference to the 1960s – for example, the onset and collapse of the idea of military rule; or the effect on society, economy and political culture of the 'curse of oil', a central factor in the war for Nigerian unity.  There was the phenomenon of the creation of states, initiated with the first twelve states of May 1967, mainstay of fiscal federalism, and the campaign for local resource control. Behind lay the scourge of corruption, and the electoral fraud whose worst manifestation in the Western Region led to the January 15 coup of 1966.

These thoughts arise from a book titled Oil Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture (1966-76) by Max Siollun (published in New York this year by Algora publishing). For those interested in a detailed and objective study of these particularly sensitive moments, I cannot commend this book too highly.

For an old-timer like myself, who was partly around at the time, this book is a revelation. For this is a period which, for understandable reasons, has all too often been buried. After the books written by journalists at the time, and Professor Tamuno's official history published in the 1980s, it has not been a subject that has been much written about, other than in a series of memoirs, or lately in novels such as Half of a Yellow Sun. This shows that the interest is there in unpacking the hidden legacy.

Siollun's is not a full history of the crisis and the war, however. He restricts himself very much to the military, and although you cannot escape the politics, his self-imposed framework is sometimes a limitation. July 29 has to be seen in the context of the massacres in the North which lasted from May to October. Again, the important neutrality of Major General Welby-Everard in the 1964 federal elections (who now recalls that there was still a Brit commanding the Nigerian army at that time?) perhaps benefits from being seen in a more fully described political setting.

The author's military priority does permit him, however, to go into his subject matter with a great depth of detail. He is also able to mobilise a spectacular range of sources, some of which your columnist was not aware of, and would love to have in his own collection of Nigeriana. There are tables of which officer was where and when, and many potted biographies, although only of members of the armed forces. Space does not permit exploring further subjects such as the "classmate syndrome" or the theory that January 15 was an "UPGA coup", and there are odd little details from exceptional sources, like Welby-Everard's eulogistic commendation of Brigadier Ogundipe.

In such an amazing mastery of detail,
it is not surprising that there are the occasional minor errors – for example he says there was but one Igbo among the civil servants that took part in the July 29-31 negotiations in Ikeja barracks, but from his own list there are three. It may be that those that participated personally in these events will find more to quibble with – just as he already pinpoints some of the controversies that have been raised in the memoirs of the period that have emerged.

There are also mysteries that not surprisingly he is unable to solve, and myths that he cannot penetrate, although I would have liked him to have examined more thoroughly the legend that it was Captain Dickson (who does get a brief reference) who led the Middle Belt rank-and-file objection to Murtala as leader of the coup, and ended up as the self-styled airport commandant, carrying on for months before his final removal. Was it Dickson who indicated that power must go to Gowon, or else...?  This is tantalising, because the author does describe the absolutely historic moment when Murtala abandoned his ambitions and suddenly says to Gowon "you are the senior, go ahead", and is most instructive on the extent of secessionist sentiment among the far-northerners (although the raising of the flag of the north at Ikeja was Biafran myth-making).

ummutameem

@max, thats interesting, how do i get ahold of d book? i hear its good, db sent me a summary. id really love to read it, especially now, im so backwords in history, i feel i should get d gen. picture of wat really went down all those yrs ago.

maxsiollun

Thanks for your interest in my book. You can buy it in Nigeria in several ways:

1) if you have a credit or debit card, you can buy the book online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble and have it delivered to any address in Nigeria of your choice.

2) If you do NOT have a credit/debit card, do you know anyone that does? If so, they can simply pay for the book on your behalf and ask for it to be delivered to you at an address of your choice in Nigeria.

3) If you are worried about delivery, perhaps have it sent to an (your?) office address or to an office address of someone you know or trust. Alternatively if you have friends overseas, you could ask Amazon or Barnes & Noble to deliver it to your friend\'s overseas address and they can bring the book for you when they visit you in Nigeria.

http://www.amazon.com/Oil-Politics-Violence-Nigerias-1966-1976/dp/0875867081/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279075485&sr=8-1

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Oil-Politics-and-Violence/Max-Siollun/e/9780875867083/?itm=1&USRI=siollun

Quote from: ummutameem on July 17, 2010, 03:10:50 PM
@max, thats interesting, how do i get ahold of d book? i hear its good, db sent me a summary. id really love to read it, especially now, im so backwords in history, i feel i should get d gen. picture of wat really went down all those yrs ago.

ummutameem


Muhsin

Get to know [and remember] Allah in prosperity & He will know  [and remember] you in adversity.