#Challenge3

A Book I Love

Back to the Blogging Challenge…which I really thought would help me blog more often, alas…

I don’t know, man. Can I use NewWifeLife as an excuse for blogging even less than normal? I guess not. If you read me, I am sorry for the sporadic nature of my blogging. We outchea trying to figure out this adulting thing. I tell you, I need a Benjamin Button Break, fam! Just want to crawl back into the sandbox and have my biggest worry be whether Mr. Faafaa is going to come for lesson before the Power Rangers is over on TV.

Real talk.

Anyhoo, I can’t complain. Life is a lot at the moment, but I wouldn’t have it any other way and I’m so grateful for it. Ok, so on to the day’s matter. I am supposed to share with these mean e-streets, a book I love. This one had me torn I tell ya! I said to myself, “SELF! Should I write about Harry Potter?! I SHOULD write about that #HogwartLahf ” *Insert appropriate wizard gang signs*. Then I realized that I’d kind of over played that hand, what with writing about that here, here and here. But I never get tired of telling how amazing, how well written, how relevant the entire series is. It’s such a testament to friendship and courage! But I believe I have overflogged that horse. A tad.

Then I thought, “OOOOOOO I must tell them about Chimeka Garricks’, “Tomorrow Died Yesterday!” A poignant story of friendship and possibly one of the simplest yet most accurate depictions of the Niger-Delta ‘struggle’. An excellent book filled with quips I love and one liners I love to repeat like I originated them, but I couldn’t really bring myself to write more than a paragraph on the book. Plus I couldn’t really determine if I should share this particular book with you…or tell you readers about another excellent Nigerian book, Purple Hibiscus. (Random but Vanilla Aima legit calls it a “Hee-bee-scuhs” in her Washington accent. Never in all my days did it even occur to me that there could be a different pronunciation from HI-biscus, being Nigerian as I am. But then again, she says Books Etcedehrah and I say Books E.T.C…lol, this is a totally random aside.).

SO, Purple Hibiscus was the next conundrum in my mind because I believe Ms. Adichie’s prowess has reduced in inverse proportion to her fame. Much like Mr. West’s. Because College Drop Out? D.O.P.E. Forevuh, fam.

Anyway, I think it wasn’t really until I watched a musical adaptation of the Purple Hibiscus put on by students of the University of Port Harcourt’s theatre arts team, that I truly understood the magnitude of what Ms. Adichie had accomplished in her debut novel. She somehow made a story with a central plot on familial child abuse and the complexity of a parent’s combined love, fear and self-hate for their child, become much more than a narrative on domestic violence. I am still in awe, I just don’t know how she dealt with such paunchy subjects like domestic violence, political delinquency, the potential violation of holy catholic vows, burgeoning sexuality and much more, with such subtlety and gentleness. Literally every theme, major and minor, in the book is cauldron heavy. Yet, you read the book and even though it knocked the breath out of you in many places, you eventually closed the final page without feeling weighted. That’s powerful and that level of mastery in literary skill is uncanny.

But I still didn’t think that that was the Book I’d love to share with you. And then it hit me why I couldn’t bring myself to share any other book. Because, as much as I love all these books, I can’t call anyone of them my favourite. Sure they’re books I’ve reread countless of times and still truly enjoy rereading. But, there are a few more on my list that’d be a match for these three mentioned above…because bookworm. BUT a favourite book is different.

A favourite book is one you return to time after time because it not only offers you an escape, but it gives you comfort and brings peace. My favourite book and a book I love and really must tell you about, is the Bible. I know, it seems unreal but that’s how unreal it is to me when I realise that some people do NOT enjoy reading the bible.

I’m like:

Lol. Even though I always had the ‘appropriate’ Bibles growing up- anyone remember Teen Study Bible?!- I never got into it for myself really until I found an old, tiny New Living Translation Bible of my mum’s. I started first by just reading Old Testament stories like a book, because honestly they entertained me. I like the History channel, Discovery, Crime tv, documentary style stuff so reading the Bible just felt like I was watching a documentary with social commentary on the life of people who lived millions of years ago, and I was here for it. I didn’t initially read the Bible as a means of Christian enlightenment. I read it as a story. I got hung up on the level of detail that went into so many of the stories and wondered why the church never focused on this trait. For instance, I couldn’t believe that Noah could hear so clearly from God that he had details of the exact cubic feet of each part of the ark! Seriously, most of us are hardly certain of what God is saying (or if He is even speaking). It’s a constant battle of, “God is this you or is this just my heart desire…or is it because I saw this on tv yesterday and it’s on my mind today, or is it because Anita said something like this that I think, ok I hope, that it’s you?!?!?! Tell maaaaayyyyy!!!” Nope, Noah heard DIRECT from God with a clarity that left him certain of how to build a boat that would save him and defy every natural expectation… you see, before Noah, from my understanding, there had been no rain. So he couldn’t even have known what he was really building or the machinations behind its working. And God gave specifications that were so direct and clear, type of wood, length, how heavy etc.

That level of detail, that degree of closeness where you’re talking to this mysterious being like he is a part of you, that just blew my mind. And I saw the same pattern repeated throughout the Bible. David calling out to God in the midst of his hell, literally screaming at God when he felt abandoned, having honest, open conversations with God and eventually finding comfort. I loved the honesty in the characters: Jeremiah telling God to find someone a little older to do his work because not about that life, fam! Or Jonah JUST. NOT. BEING. HERE. FOR. IT. Lol.  Or the sons of Jacob hatching a crazy plan to pay back an entire city for raping their sister. It’s crazy, the bible for me is so real and has always provided an answer when I’ve needed comfort, or peace, or just assurance. Basically, anything I’ve needed, it has been. The same way God refers to Himself as “I AM”. He is. He is whatever we need Him to be, when we need Him.

So, that’s a book I love, the Bible.