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Primo Levi's The Periodic Table  (Penguin Books, 1975 (First Publication); 195), translated from Italian by Raymond Rosenthal, is largely a complex potpourri of autobiographical events, with two chapters of fiction. It details the life of the Chemist, Primo Levi, as he transitions from one period to another; from when race was unimportant to when one's name could get him to the gas chamber; from a mere boy with interest in chemistry to a graduate student in chemistry; from working as a chemist to fighting against the fascist government. Divided into twenty-one different chapters, each chapter of the Periodic Table is titled after the name of an element of the periodic table. The book opens with Argon, a noble or inert gas common in the atmosphere and ends with Carbon, a common element found throughout the universe, the element we are made up of and what we become upon death. Primo uses these elements to narrate, sombrely, the story of his life, chronologically. Arrested

The Life of Pi (Harcourt, 2001; 326) by Yann Martel won the Man Booker Prize in 2001. It is about the story of faith, struggle and belief in oneself and in the supernatural. It's also about man's relationship with animals and provides some excellent justification for the creation of zoos. It's also an allegory, perhaps, of the journey towards manhood; with the shipwreck and the struggle to survive at sea representative of the adolescent stage. Eleven-year old Piscine Molitor Patel is travelling with his parents as they relocate to Canada. They ship they were travelling in sank and through a series of incidences, some of them not directly observed by Piscince (or Pi), he found himself with a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orang-utan, and a Bengal tiger on his lifeboat. What ensued was a series of carnivorous expressions and after a few days floating at sea, it was left with Pi and his Bengal tiger. The mission was on how to 'tame' the 450-pound monstrosi

Source 70 Books Reading Challenge * In 2012, I participated in several challenges and succeeded in completing them all . In fact, they were the reason I read the largest haul of books since I started blogging in 2009 and I began tracking my reading habits and statistics. It is therefore amazing that I have not as yet stated, at least not openly, challenges I'm participating in, in 2013. Whilst I'm yet to create my own challenges - at least apart from the one I'm 'covertly' participating in - I've also not joined any external challenge, yet. The only challenge I have in mind, and which I've been working towards, is to sustain my reading intensity by challenging myself to 70 books, just like I did in 2012. This would mean that I embark on heavy book purchases this year as I'm gradually running-out of unread books.  Minor Challengers, subject to book availability Non-Fiction:  There are however books I would love to read this year. To bridg

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival. [120] I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reasons comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakeni

Initially, I appended this to the Year in Review post; however, upon further thought I've decided to make it a whole post on its own. It made the other post too long and detracted from it. I have already shared what some friends of mine think were their favourite books of 2012 . This year saw me read some famous books like  Great Gatsby ,  Bluest Ey es ,  July's People ,  A Farewell to Arms ,  and many others. My favourite reads of 2012 are: Non-African Books The Book Thief   by   Mark Zusak .  Mark Zusak in this book brings out how infernal the human mind could be and the frailty of friendship. The book's protagonist was Death and how he empathised with humanity has he was forced to pick destroyed souls from one suburb to the other. The book was also written from the point-of-view of a young girl, Liesel Meminger. Bluest Eye  by  Toni Morrison . This book shows the psychological effects of slavery and segregation in America and all over the world. When one's

January The Life of Pi  by Yann Martel Periodic Table by Primo Levi The Best of Simple by Langston Hughes Speeches that Changed the World by Emma Beare (Editor) Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing by Jack Mapanji (Editor) Oedipus Rex by Sophocles The Ghost of Sani Abacha by Chuma Nwokolo February Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o Definition of a Miracle by Farida N. Bedwei Fathers & Daughters - An Anthology of Exploration by Ato Quayson (Editor) Dead Aid - Why Aid Makes things Worse and How there is another Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo Interventions - A Life in War and Peace by Kofi Annan (with Nader Mousavizadeh) March War and Peace  ( Volume I ,  Volume II ,  Volume III , &  Volume IV )   by Leo Tolstoy Smouldering Charcoal by Tiyambe Zeleza Breaking Silence - A Poetic Lifeline from Slavery to Love by James Robert Myers (Editor) The Lump in her Throat (SS) by Aba Amissah Asibon April Antifragile - Things that G

Last year I shared my friends' favourite books of 2011 . Favourite books were collected from friends on Twitter, Facebook, and the Google Plus platforms. The objective is to encourage people to read more books and for other readers to know that there's a community of readers out there. It also serve as a pool for other readers to select books they would want to read. I've already shared ImageNations' favourite books of 2012 . Here are the favourite books of friends:   Nartekuor  is a twitter friend. She's from Ghana and considers herself as 'doing the most outrageous things and chalking it up to life's topsy turvies'. Nartekuor chose John Grisham's  The Appeal ; Ms. Komassi  describes herself as a '"work in progress", a friend, law graduate, blawgger, writer, God's girl, vintage fan...'. She blogs here . Ms. Komassi's favourite books include The Suns of Independence ; Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals ; and Alla