Snapshot March 2015
Slightly later than it should be but this is my snapshot of what I was up to on the 1st of March.
Reading
I finally got to open Things Fall Apart by the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It’s been on my shelf for about four years and I kept promising myself I would get to read it one day. Thanks to my involvement in the TBR Challenge run by Roof Beam Reader, I shall at last get around to it.
In case you don’t know about this book it follows the life of Okonkwo, a leader and wrestling champion in a fictional Nigerian village. It’s a slim book which so far has been about his family and the customs of his village.
Listening
My daily encounter with Charles Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop is coming to an end. It’s not going to be one of my favourite Dickens but still highly enjoyable.
Watching
Having been told that the series The Wire was riveting, we bought a box set. Unfortunately it didn’t come with simultaneous translation so a lot of the dialogue is proving ultra challenging. I’ve seen two episodes and am completely confused. Does it get any clearer??
Things Fall Apart is such a great,great book.I thought it would be heavy and unappealing,but I was wrong.Achebe’s language is very simple and not hard to digest,yet the story is extremely poignant;in the first part the plot might not seem to go anywhere,but in the second part,where contrast is the main theme,you realise that everything so far described holds its importance.Eventually it all boils down to one thing: how people who have values and norms in a well defined society are regarded as savages just because they cannot be understood.
Although I said in the first part,things might not go anywhere,it was still a delight to read,as it revealed to us the many peculiarities of the Ibo people’s lives.Honestly,I had to refrain myself from finishing that book too quickly.
I hope you’ll love it and learn from it – just as I did! 🙂
The Wire is definitely worth persisting with. It’s brilliant. I watched it without subtitles and sort of got my ear tuned in after a while. I had to relax into not understanding every word and once I did that it was fine. Do, do keep watching.
I hear The Wire doesnt get any better in understandability – put the subtitles on! (I used to do the same for the West Wing, purely because they went so quick!)
It did take a while to tune into west wing. I still don’t know what CJ says at the end of her briefings. Is it ” that’s a full lid” or ” that’s a full it”. Neither make much sense so maybe there is a third that is more understandable.
Things Fall Apart is one of those books that was required reading in high school and it ruined it for me. I’m sure it’s incredibly beautiful, but all I can remember is the damn yams!
The main food seems to be fou fou which apparently is a grounded form of yam. doesn’t sound all that delicious.
I am curious to know what you think of Things Fall Apart. I went into it expecting a different sort of novel, but it turned out to be more complex than I expected.
I think my expectations were set too high. I was expecting something more challenging but I haven’t got to the end yet, and I have a feeling that the early chapters about customs in the village etc was a preamble to a momentous change.