Today being the 7th of March is World Book Day — I will highlight here books I have read in the past year and key summaries, may be you will pick interest in them and give it a go at reading.. — it is therapeutic to the mind they say — as is captured by Mark Twain in “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read”.
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo — Dead Aid as the name implies is a proposal for an end to Aid in Africa from Western Countries Specifically. The Aid in which Dambisa writes about is not the aid being dished out by donor agencies such as NGO’s but rather Aid which is being handed to governments in Africa that she believed makes African leaders lazy and unimaginative in finding ways to develop their countries. In essence, she argues that aid from western countries is making sure Africa stays underdeveloped.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson — No one does biographies better than Isaacson I heard, although I have only read his book on Steve Jobs, he’s done other Biographies on Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger and Einstein etc. He wrote about the early days of Steve Jobs as a child of a Syrian immigrant given birth to and adopted in America to how he created Apple along with Steve Wozniak from his fathers. garage in California. Key takeaway is Steve Jobs demand for perfection in everything he does and also wanting that perfection near as simply laid as possible hence he lived his entire life by this one mantra often attributed to Leonardo De Vinci ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’ that has found its way into all Apple products today — from the iPhone to iPad to iMacs.
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall — This is one book I would definitely read again in the future. Tim Marshall discourses global geopolitics succinctly using only TEN MAPS from around the world. Though I would have loved he had discussed more about Africa in a positive way and not as a single entity as he did, or that he deliberately avoided touching the effects of colonization on Africa. Overall it is a great book with eye opening insights into how our world today works — you finish off reading this book and can’t help but think there’s just more than meets the eye in decisions leaders across the globe take on any one decision both nationally and internationally.
Born a crime by Trevor Noah — Trevor Noah is a brilliant chap! This book will take you through all emotions — you will laugh out loud reading some parts and feel like crying when he paints the — according to him — ‘genius of apartheid’. Trevor was literally born a crime as at the time he was born to a Black Xhosa Woman (His mum) and a White Swiss-German Man (His dad), it was a crime for Blacks & Whites to marry each other in South Africa. You won’t regret this in case you need something to start with.
Edge of Chaos by Dambisa Moyo — in this book, Dambisa cites the Voting of Trump in the US to Brexit and the rise of populism in Europe and the inability of democracy to drive any meaningful economic growth in Africa in the past decades as a sign to the end of democracy. Dambisa reels out facts against democracy and believes the world needs to move away from democracy or at best adopt modify democracy or adopt a new system entirely — determined for each country by its economic standing yet treating the world as a single market place. She has 10 proposals in the book about how to fix democracy, the most radical (though not new) being that a sort of a ‘social class’ should be introduced during voting where the weight of a vote by say highly skilled person carries more weight in the vote tally than the vote of someone with a low skill.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling — I have only read half of this book before I got bored by the statistics. If anything, Hans Rosling is telling us that despite everything happening in the world today, it still is a better place than it was a 100 years ago — Bill Gates strongly agrees to this. I hope to finish reading it to get to the central theme this year though.
Eat that frog by Brian Tracy — Tracy wrote ETF for procrastinators, I am a big procrastinator and thats why I hardly get anything done. Anyway, the central theme to increasing productivity according to Tracy is PRIORITIZING — simply know the difference between what is urgent and what is important and there you have it, a cure for procrastination.
I wrote this for you by Samira Sanusi — After reading S is for Survivor by Samira some years back which is about her resilience against her battle with Sickle Cell Diseases (SCD) for which she was finally the winner and got cured of SCD. I wrote this for you is full of proses of hope! Hope and resilience — if you are an incurable optimist like me, you will love Samira’s book. Looking forward to her 3rd book soon.
Along the lines, I have started reading a lot of books than I could ever finish in a year — I think I have read the first chapter of more books than I have read the complete book itself in my entire life. Although recently I was nudged by Dr Ibrahim Waziri to pick up reading (listening) to audiobooks — its been since January 2019 and I haven’t finished listening to ‘Becoming by Michelle Obama’ — so don’t know how that is coming along yet, but in anyway, I am currently reading Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman.
Do share books you have read and enjoyed below and maybe summarize the central theme around the book. And as you can tell by now, I am not into fiction or all of that fantasy stuff — I reserve my imagination and fantasy for my Geology/Geosciences thinking. Thank you.
