72

Or, Multiplication by Addition

Reader,

This is going out on the penultimate day of Holy Week and the first day of what I hope will be an intense reading period (I even have a dedicated Twitter thread) and I hope you’re enjoying a break from wage work if it’s possible. Holy Week is also the title of a podcast from The Atlantic that I learnt about this week and binged. I’ve been thinking a lot about famous men who died young - Jesus, Tom Mboya, Pio Gama Pinto, Martin Luther King, Jr (I was today years old when I found out he was named Michael at birth) - and seeing the connection between some of them has been quite the experience (related: there’s a Pinto exhibit up at the Nairobi Gallery).

This week was one of those ones when the books one is reading speak to things they’re seeing. In this case, a conversation started by the inimitable Abigail Arunga about disclosing one’s sexual history and past or present experiences of STIs (this started with talk of cold sores, the herpes some of us have worn on our faces) came during a week when I was listening to The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan (read by Alex McKenna and Kaleo Griffith). Though didactic at times, it touches on the conversations folks need to have in romantic relationships. There’s no talk of sexual history/ STI history though - which I find in keeping with American media that features sex that has condoms as the height of acknowledging risk - in contrast to some stories set in some parts of Africa (as I discussed in my recent review of Call and Response: Stories by Gothataone Moeng) that, at the very least, feature HIV. I’d love to read more fiction and non-fiction that tackles the process of disclosure and how it intersects with gender and sexuality (send suggestions!) because this was the week I learnt about DoxyPrEP, listened to some interesting takes on the heterosexual condition in The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Jane Ward (read by Dara Rosenberg) and was reminded of the way Bryan Washington handles HIV in his writing. And now all this has me thinking of actualising YB’s idea to explore media representations of STIs and HIV in a video.

This has also been the week of bookish businesses closing. First up was Book Depository (acquired by Amazon in 2011) whose free global shopping helped folks in the Global South acquire books. While I’m not much of a new book buyer (see: my book haul playlist), I appreciate the upset this has caused among readers. Understandably, folks are directing their anger at Amazon and I’m curious if it will result in any changes. Suggested alternatives include Blackwell’s and Wordery but those don’t deliver to vast swathes of the world, including Africa. For folks in Nairobi, some bookshops are open to ordering books on request (I can’t speak to the experience since I’ve never done it. Please comment if you have!) so that might be the way to get books that aren’t readily available in the country. Though I never used BD, I wish I would have gotten my hands on their beautiful bookmarks.

Next was Readerly, which I enthusiastically joined last year but didn’t really use after that initial burst. That’s not been discussed as much as Book Depository (which was a site of discourse even before this event on account of people feeling conflicted about buying books from an Amazon company) but I’ve seen a few people mention it and I wonder what effect it’ll have on online bookish conversations. It particularly has me thinking about how we save our archives and if paper makes some points.

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Edelweiss has a new logo; my ARC levels are still at old logo levels 😅

• Don’s doing a walkabout of Syowia’s show tomorrow

  

• Abi says to revise for her upcoming Game of Thrones quiz night. Not sure how many pages or hours of TV a week that is but good luck to all those keen

  

• Amerie’s Book Club’s April 2023 pick is my beloved If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

• I have a new address: you can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted gifts via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya 

I have finished seven books since I last wrote, reviews forthcoming. I did a hybrid read of Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (narrated by Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook and Ainsleigh Barber), listened to You Just Need to Lose Weight: And 19 Other Myths about Fat People by Aubrey Gordon (narrated by the author), Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia (narrated by Jeed Saddy), A Sun to Be Sewn by Jean D'Amérique (translated by Thierry Kehou, narrated by Marie-Françoise Theodore), the aforementioned The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan and The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Jane Ward, and I read the ebook edition of I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood by Jessi Klein. I spoke about my reads in the week ending 24th March 2023 here and all the books I bought in February here. Subscribe to the channel if you haven’t yet!

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Enjoy the rest of the week and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!