Random Thoughts of a Girl in Nairobi

1. You instantly become best friends with someone who has the same taste in books as you. I have made several friends this way. 2. So many books. ..so little time . Life often gets in the way of your reading. 3.  The agony of waiting.  When you read a book that's part of a series and it ends in a cliffhanger but the next book in the series isn't due to be published for at least a year. It's a struggle between valuing the author's creativity and needing your next great book fix. 4. You take it personally when the movie adaptation is a total flop. We have long accepted that movie adaptations will never be perfect but we still have standards. 5. Finding a book that surprises you.  After a while this becomes the challenge. You've read so many volumes that you can spot a clichè storyline a mile  away 6. Walking into a bookshop while broke. Absolute torture. And even when you do have money,  it's never enough...

   The other day I was in a Matatu headed to town, my nose deep in a book. This gentleman sat down next to me while having a lengthy phone conversation. At some point during the ride he finished his conversation, disconnected the phone and turned to me. Our conversation went something like this: Him:      How are you? Me:         * pretends not to hear *                 ( Because this is Nairobi and I’m not particularly in the habit of talking to random strangers. Also, he might be trying to hit on me. There was something about the way he said that statement; how are you? ) Him:      * A bit louder *                 How are you? Me:        * sighs inwardly, replies tersely *    ...

   I've always been fascinated by stories like these. Stories about women who really went through stuff that would break anyone and still survived against all odds. Stories set in parts of the world I'd only heard about. Sure, Google images helps but nothing beats a narration of first hand experience. Stories like Arthur Golden's ' Memoirs of a geisha ' which I read as a teenager. This book firmly falls into this category.    La Prissonniere caught my attention because of the title.  It's the way I'm drawn to all things French. The book details the imprisonment of Malika Oufkir, her five siblings and their mother in the Moroccan desert for 20 years because her father staged a failed coup attempt against the then Moroccan king.  The oldest was 18 years while the youngest was just 3 years old.  Talk  about sins of the father! All this despite the fact that she had practically been raised as a princess in the king's household. The descripti...

   I was reading an post by one of my favourite bloggers about how to keep loving God even after people in the church have hurt you . She says that bad people make bad choices but God is still good. And I felt it resonating with so many of the things I've been thinking about this past year and some of the things I'd seen people around me go through. We canonize individuals and raise them onto this pedestal of religious perfection while conveniently forgetting that they are human beings. Human beings fail...human beings are not good. They sure do try to be but the only person who is infallibly good despite all variables is God. People will dissapoint. Maybe not today, not tommorrow but someday. Maybe in a big way or a little way, but somehow. Because people are human, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So when all is said and done and they dissapoint we take it really hard because in our minds they were supposed to be be perfect.    So the thing ...