Reading habits were hit hard given the loss of my commute during the lockdown but still hit my target of 20 books!
20. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
“we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully-entitled human beings”
Summary: This book is essentially a single story told from the perspective of 12 different women, it is split into four chapters with each containing three closely linked women. The fact the author manages to pull this off alone is incredible but when you add the depth, breadth and color of each of the stories, it is easy to see why it got so many plaudits. Easily my favourite fiction this year. It’s a primarily book about feminism and the lives of women but it touches on so man facets, after all feminism is intersectional. The stories cover immigrants experiences, navigating predominantly white spaces, education in neglected communities, LGBT issues, activism, inter-racial relationships, relationship with family members and so much more. Each character, all from different spectrums, brings a new perspective and seeing multiple sides of the same story makes the whole book even better. Got no complaints about this one 10/10
Fun Fact: Like 4 people in a row recommended it to me in Novemeber
19. BANKING ON IT: How I Disrupted an Industry by Anne Boden
“There is never a triumphant denouement, where you know for sure you’ve succeeded. There is always, always something else to do. You can’t stand still and benignly watch your products bask in all the glory. The moment any entrepreneur does that, their dream is over. There will always be others looking at a way to make a better version of what you’ve already done, and eventually someone, somewhere will succeed.”
Summary: In this book, Anne Boden describes her entrepreneurial journey of creating Starling Bank. The fact her background is not typical of finance, tech and startup world which tend to be dominated by (young) men makes it even more interesting. There are so many interesting bits, why starting a bank from scratch and steps involved: regulations, raising funds, hiring and partnering. I could easily see the story as a movie (à la Social Network).The sacrifices and the drama: the coup that almost forced her out and indirectly led to Monzo and how she bounced back to turn it all around. There’s a bit of a victory lap but she admits the job will never be done as there’s always room for improvement. It’s filled with tidbits of advice for digital entrepreneurs and you don’t need to be an expert on tech or finance to follow. Easy and nice read.
Fun Fact: I’m actually more of a Monzo person. Even invested in their crowdfunding but after reading this, feels like I may have backed the wrong horse haha
18. Love In Colour by Bolu Babalola
“Time and love are intertwined, they are both measures of life, they are the two clocks. And, for love to operate as it should, it is imperative that the timing should be right”
Summary: This book is a collection of short stories about love. Apparently they are retellings of folk tales and love stories and the writer does a good job of retelling them because even when you are familiar with the original stories, she tells the stories in such a relatable context and fresh settings. The stories center the women in them and emphasises their agency as they make choices in the story. While love is the main theme in all the stories, they touch on some other aspects like self-love, friendship, bullying, violence against women, traditional expectations and so much more. I enjoyed reading the stories and they were all very easy reads
Fun Fact: Read this because the author kept popping up on my TL
17. Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
“On my team . . . Information is actively sought. Messengers are not punished when they deliver news of failures or other bad news. Responsibilities are shared. Cross-functional collaboration is encouraged and rewarded. Failure causes inquiry. New ideas are welcomed. Failures are treated primarily as opportunities to improve the system.”
Summary: This is one was a weird one for me, first of its kind for me. It’s a book about building a culture that enables high performing technology teams/organisation. It talks about how software performance drives organizational performance. It details four measures of software delivery performance: delivery lead time, deployment frequency, time to restore service, and change fail rate. For me reading this book was a good way to see how favourably my current team, which I think highly of, compares to a high performing team as described by the book. It also showed me a few things up Lean Software and CI/CD. While this book is primarly aimed at software engineering teams, DevOps in particular, some of the lessons learnt can be applied to other organizations. The book also did a great job of explain the data, methodology and statistics used in the research and its findings.
Fun Fact: Read this because someone in my team read it and recommended
16. Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide by Elnathan John
“One way to die is to ensure that in life, you did something worth remembering. This action need not be good or exemplary. In Nigeria no one cares if you were good or evil when you die. The only crime is dying without having done anything worthy of note. Like dying so poor no one knows your name”
Summary: This is very light and easy satire about Nigeria in general. It touches a number of aspects of being Nigerian and the Nigerian society in general such as religion, politics, class, law and so much more. I enjoyed reading this and the way it uses humour, to shine a light on some of the peculiarities of modern Nigerian culture
Fun Fact: Bought the book because of the cover haha
15. Lagos Noir
“But what’s the point of getting angry in a city like Lagos, where everything tries to drive you up the wall? You will just kill yourself for nothing, as my boss likes to say”
Summary: This is a collection of 13 “noir” fictional stories all set in Lagos. Prior to picking up this book I didn’t know about “noir” as genre, which Cambridge dictionary deescribes as “a type of movie, usually filmed in a city, that shows the world as an unhappy, violent place in which many unpleasant people live, or a film of this type”. Though it is fiction the bleakness and fatalism in all the stories are all too real. The book is split into three parts broadly covering justice, family and travel. The individual stories cover so many relevant themes in Lagos and the writing style of the stories are so different, there is bound to be something for everybody. I really enjoyed it, and perhaps the fact that I grew up in Lagos — and so understood the references — helped. In any case I will probably buy a similar book for another city, London maybe.
Fun Fact: Nicked it from my brother
14. Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala
“There is something about that age — about the combination of puberty and all its sexual confusion and competition, about being old enough to start noticing how fucked up the world is and how many holes there are in your shoes, with the dawning of the reality that your dreams will not come true, that you will most likely be just as unhappy as your parents and that fifty years of dead-end work awaits you — that kills most working-class kids’ confidence”
Summary: Akala’s interviews are always great because he has a nice way for explainin things in an accessible manner. His book is the same, in each chapter takes us through a different facet of the impact of UK’s imperialism, classism and racism. From the discrimination in education, to slavery and apartheid. He uses historical events and personal anecdotes to give very real examples to back up the statistics he mentions, like growing up with a single white mother, impact of both his Scottish and Jamaican heritage. For me the part where he talks about his relationship with police and peers in teenage years was really an eye opener to what black kids raised in the UK go through. He also tackles broader themes like difference between UK and American race relations, diaspora tensions and the effect of changing demographics and economics will have on all of this. It’s a political book no doubt but also a personal one. Would definitely recommend!
Fun Fact: This is the first book I read after 2 months lool, don’t know what happen, don’t ask me. Didn’t realise he released it like 2 years ago, thought it was new haha.
13. Do You Think You Are Clever by John Fardon
“Cleverness can be captivating, both for those who dole it out and those who witness it. Sometimes a dazzling display of erudition and wit can be as entertaining and uplifting as a great piece of music”
Summary: The book has a simple premise of answering questions apparently asked during Cambridge and Oxford college interviews. The twist is the author tries to answer them in a clever way. This is one of those books that is probably not best read in one setting like I did, more like what I would call a toilet-read: super-short, entertaining and easy to read chapters. The questions come from a range of courses from engineering and medicine to philosophy and I found the questions on areas I wasn’t well-versed in more entertaining. While the history and the breadth of the author’s knowledge is impressive, I didn’t also agree with his answers and that’s the joy of the book, there are no right answers. I should say that this book is probably not one to use if it’s for the explicit use of preparing for an Oxbridge interview. Anyways just thankful the questions during my own interview were more straightforward. Fun book!
Fun Fact: Picked this up because I saw it in a box of books and DVDs in front of a house down the road with the a sign asking people to take some.