Chinua Achebe

[pieces o nine]

I just learned that Chinua Achebe died last Thursday, at 82. I read Things Fall Apart  one summer in elementary school; a couple years later a junior high Social Studies teacher assigned it (The Jungle  was also on his required reading list). So many kids whined that they couldn't understand it that he taped a couple of the most popular smart girls reading alternate chapters aloud and then played it in class. I thought it quite an eye-opening book, one that challenges on many levels.

If you're not familiar, here's a clip of him reading from his seminal work:
[youtube=425,350]8e1JEYsmmZY[/youtube]

[Griffin NoName]

I from the age of about 16 to 50 I read the public libraries from authors A-Z. In actual fact I never got beyond authors beginning with C as every time I moved house and hence library and had to go back and all the books with authors A-C that hadn't been in the previous libraby. I found it a fantastic method of reading books I would never have "picked" just from looking. I am sure I would never have chosen Achebe from a quick glance through. Anyway, given my method, Achebe Things Fall Apart cropped up early in my library process. I found it a difficult but rewarding read. It must have been sometime in the 1980s when I read it. another benefit of my library process was not spending fruitless hours leafing through books deciding on which to borrow. Far quicker to dash in, take the first five or six books unread starting at Aa.

I had to more or less abandon the library when I got cancer. Couldn't guarrantee to make the return date, if I did manage to get there. Also, it's not really a feasable method on Amazon! It relies on libraries having poor turn overs.

[pieces o nine]

I from the age of about 16 to 50 I read the public libraries from authors A-Z.   

I tried the same method once, but never got to the end of the first shelf of A's!     (Too many other interesting distractions in a library.) That method if how I found Kōbō Abe and his novel The Boxman.   Very weird and trippy. Favorite quote from that (the protagonist sees a beautiful woman whom he cannot approach):
"The pores of my whole body opened their mouths at the same time, and tongues dangled limply from them."

[Griffin NoName]

Wonderful quote.