The Lordlings of Worship and their Catastrophic Mindrides

18 Dec 2012 18:29 Africa/Lagos

The Lordlings of Worship and their Catastrophic Mindrides

Author Cameron Leigh's suspense novel spanning four millennia reveals The Creation Code, the tragic legacy of deliberate misinterpretations of the Bible, conspiracies between rulers and triumphalist global religions, and the approaching confessor state in the age of online surveillance

NEW YORK, Dec. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Lordlings of Worship and their Catastrophic Mindrides is the first book of an epic trilogy that spans four thousand years to our present time.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121218/NE31623 )

Texan World War II veteran Brix Brighton has spent his lifetime studying the ancient quest for control lurking underneath the surface of the dominant global religions. From ancient times, their conflicts with the Bible have been catastrophic to mankind.

Along with his son and grandson, Brighton teams up with Alan Taveler, a researcher who has returned from captivity in Pakistan to his home in Boston. During his life changing experience, Alan Taveler turned to the Bible and came to understand that he is endowed with a gift—a unique predesignated comprehension of the Bible that leads him to decipher a fragment of the concealed Creation Code. He was genetically programmed to disturb the past to give Texan Pastor Brix Brighton a chance to save the future.

Brix Brighton has formed the Completionists to fight for individual rights and liberties and to defy the supreme masters of the global empires of religion who are determined to concentrate their power by controlling the mind and directing the will of all mankind. Brighton and Taveler discover that they have been targeted for electronic surveillance and assassination by an ancient faceless and unpredictable organization.

At the birth of the 21st century, skirmishes and wars ignited and fanned by religion, greed and ambition for political domination have already broken out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Chechnya, Syria, across Africa, including oil rich Nigeria and Sudan, and also to destroy Israel and to weaken the United States. Throughout Europe, leaders are rushing to appease religious indignation preached by clerics working to embroil their cities in sectarianism. These clerics have no use for the right of free speech and do not respect the right to worship in accordance with individual conscience. Religious supremacists of the dominant global religions have never concerned themselves with the loss of human life and now in the digital age with its ample electronic spy technology in place to create the new confessor state, the tide has turned back in favor of ambitious men who want to expel the Creator from the universe. The Bible had warned all who cared to read it that life is a thriller and we are all in it.

Written for readers who are intensely interested in knowing the origins of our turmoil at the beginning of the twenty-first century and about the forces that have perpetrated the greatest cover-up in the history of mankind to keep the world in perpetual upheaval, The Lordlings of Worship and their Catastrophic Mindrides is a captivating narrative of the battle of evil vs. good. History is taught to mask the role of triumphalist world religions in motivating wars and oppression.

This gripping and well-researched historical and contemporary suspense novel reveals to readers a fragment of the secret key to the mysteries of the Creation Code.

The author Cameron Leigh brings this first book of a trilogy to spur readers to think deeply about the most important questions concerning their lives, those of their ancestors, and of their future generations.

For more information on this book, please visit www.lordlingsofworship.com

Title: The Lordlings of Worship and their Catastrophic Mindrides

Author: Cameron Leigh

Category: Fiction: Historical/Suspense/Bible Code/Contemporary Conspiracy Fiction/Cyber-surveillance/ Judeo-Christian/Libertarian/ Religious Fiction/ First Amendment/Political Religion/Texas/The Alphabet

ISBN-13: 978-1-938690-32-7

Publication Date: December 2012

Type: Hardcover

Pages: 590

Price: (U.S.) $35.00

Publisher: Two Harbors Press, www.TwoHarborsPress.com

Retailers: To purchase copies of this book for resale contact Ingram, Baker & Taylor or Itasca Books.

Readers: To purchase copies of this book, visit www.lordlingsofworship.com , your favorite bookstore, Amazon, or BN.com.

Contact: Emily Brackett, 1-207-761-4230, ebrackett@visiblelogic.com

SOURCE Cameron Leigh



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The Prophet Lied

Source: Uploaded by user via Re-Branding Nigeria on Pinterest

Because the prophet lied
Thousands have died
And thousand more will follow
Because of the lies of this strange fellow.

~ Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima

THE PROPHET LIED is a kaleidoscopic time capsule in poetry. From the first poem to the last one, Chima’s eclecticism runs like blood through the veins as he addresses all the issues of life on earth from the classic temporal to the spiritual in all existential circumstances with provocative thoughts and evocative figures of speech.



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Happy 82 Birthday Chinua Achebe

Prof. Chinua Achebe (born 16 November 1930 as Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe) is the famous author of one of the greatest novels of all time, the classic Things Fall Apart (1958) and other books and the second most celebrated Nigerian writer after the Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka.

We wish you a beautiful happy 82nd Birthday and many wonderful returns of the day as we join all your well wishers all over the world to celebrate the awesome day our Almighty Father JEHOVAH brought you into the world to be a blessing to humankind.

Top Bestselling Books of Chinua Achebe

There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Things Fall Apart

Arrow of God  

The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)  

A Man of the People

Chike and the River

Anthills of the Savannah

Home and Exile

No Longer at Ease (Macmillan Readers)

The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays 
   
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Chika Unigwe Wins $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature

Chika Unigwe.

Chika Unigwe has won the highly coveted Nigeria Prize for Literature for her novel On Black Sisters' Street.

Her novel competed against Only A Canvas by Olusola Olugbesan and Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Ngozi Achebe. The announcement was made by Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo, Chairman of the Advisory Board who commended the prize winner's novel as “a work of outstanding merit”, while Professor Abiola Irele, Chair of Judges said: “What is striking about Chika Unigwe's novel is the compassion that informs it.”

Unigwe said when she saw the news on Twitter, she started crying.
Unigwe was born in Nigeria, but now lives in Belgium.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature is fully sponsored by the Nigeria LNG Limited.

Click here to read Toni Kan's interview with Chika Unigwe as she received the good news after the announcement on Thursday November 1, 2012.

Despite the horrors it depicts, “On Black Sisters' Street” is also boiling with a sly, generous humor. Unigwe is as adept at conveying the cacophony of a Nigerian bus as she is at suggesting the larger historical events that propel her characters. “On Black Sisters Street” marks the arrival of a latter-day Thackeray, an Afro-Belgian writer who probes with passion, grace and comic verve the underbelly of our globalized new world economy.

~ By Fernanda Eberstadt, Sunday Book Review of The New York Times, April 29, 2011.

Raw, vivid, unforgettable, and inspired by a powerful oral storytelling tradition, this novel illuminates the dream of the West—and that dream’s illusion and annihilation—as seen through African eyes. It is a story of courage, unity, and hope, of women’s friendships and of bonds that, once forged, cannot be broken.
~ Amazon.

On Black Sisters' Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe—and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives.

Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true—if only for half an hour. Pledged to the fierce Madam and a mysterious pimp named Dele, the girls share an apartment but little else—they keep their heads down, knowing that one step out of line could cost them a week’s wages. They open their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home or save up for her own future.

Then, suddenly, a murder shatters the still surface of their lives. Drawn together by tragedy and the loss of one of their own, the women realize that they must choose between their secrets and their safety. As they begin to tell their stories, their confessions reveal the face in Efe’s hidden photograph, Ama’s lifelong search for a father, Joyce’s true name, and Sisi’s deepest secrets—-and all their tales of fear, displacement, and love, concluding in a chance meeting with a handsome, sinister stranger.

On Black Sisters' Street marks the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors.

Praise for On Black Sisters Street 


“Chika Unigwe writes with moral urgency nourished by a nuanced understanding of the human condition and prose that is elegantly calibrated. And for all the dark turns her work takes, On Black Sisters' Street is suffused with warmth, hard-won wisdom, and a deep compassion.” 
 —Chris Abani, author of Becoming Abigail and Song for Night
 “ [‘On Black Sisters Street’ is] boiling with a sly, generous humor. Unigwe is as adept at conveying the cacophony of a Nigerian bus as she is at suggesting the larger historical events that propel her characters. ‘On Black Sisters' Street’ marks the arrival of a latter-day Thackeray, an Afro-Belgian writer who probes with passion, grace and comic verve the underbelly of our globalized new world economy.”
--The New York Times Book Review  (*an Editors Choice selection in the 5/10 NYTBR)
 
“Powerful....The author's raw voice, unflinching eye for detail, facility for creating a complex narrative, and affection for her characters make this a must read.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Gripping....As Unigwe tells her characters’ stories in interweaving narratives and time lines, the women embody depths of fear and displacement, as well as the will to survive and prosper."
--Booklist

“A novel of desperation, sexual exploitation, and, ultimately, sisterhood. … Unigwe has a talent for capturing the dashed dreams of young women who are stronger than they imagine. … The women’s personal stories are wrenchingly memorable.”
—Library Journal

“In her English-language debut, the Nigerian-born Unigwe convincingly exposes an unfamiliar world without sentimentality. Capable drama that puts a human face on the scourge of human trafficking.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Spellbinding…combines a storyteller’s narrative flair with a reporter’s eye for grim, gritty details about the sex industry. … Nigerian-born Unigwe crafts her characters’ voices with crystalline prose and compassion, in a revelatory work as tough, humane and unsentimental as its heroines.”
—MORE Magazine
“Chika Unigwe’s ON BLACK SISTERS STREET is a grand and compassionate and moving work of art. The best fiction succeeds when it allows a reader to open a door, step into a different world, look about and say, finally, I feel and know this place and these people as if I have visited many times before. Ms. Unigwe has done that for us with all the men and women of her new novel. We owe her much praise and much gratitude.”
—Edward P. Jones, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Powerfully and gently, Unigwe gives voice to African women who walk the streets of their nightmares and dreams."
--Sefi Atta, author of Everything Good Will Come

“Chika Unigwe brings an ethnographic eye and masterful storytelling to bear on this complex portrait of African sex workers in Antwerp.  Her startlingly physical prose offers a fresh look at lives made and unmade between Europe and Africa.”
--Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, University of Buffalo

“Chika Unigwe has evoked a chilling, brutal, and terrifying world with warmth, compassion, and courage. The voices of degraded African women are clearly heard, their bodies vividly rendered, their sorrows deeply understood, and their humanity ultimately realized. On Black Sisters Street is a dark tale luminously told, a stunningly moving book.”
—Lee Siegel, author of Love in a Dead Language

“A probing and unsettling exploration of the many factors that lead African women into prostitution in Europe . . . an important and accomplished novel that leaves a strong aftertaste. Unigwe gives voice to those who are voiceless . . . and bestows dignity on those who are stripped of it.”
—The Independent




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10 Books Every Child Should Own

• A Wrinkle in Time. SPECIAL 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. (Macmillan)
• Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (Simon & Schuster)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Abrams)
• Eating the Alphabet (Houghton Mifflin)
• Green Eggs and Ham (Random House)
• Guess How Much I Love You (Candlewick Press)
• Martin's Big Words (Disney Publishing Worldwide)
• The Snowy Day SPECIAL 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. (Puffin)
• To Kill a Mockingbird. SPECIAL 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. (Hachette)

• Where the Wild Things Are. (HarperCollins)
•  

31 Oct 2012 15:04 Africa/Lagos

Ten Books Every Child Should Own
Public Invited to Choose Which Iconic Children's Book Should Be Given to Kids in Need Through First Book

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- First Book, a nonprofit that provides new, high-quality books to children from low-income families, is asking the public to choose which iconic children's title they will give away as their 100 millionth book in November.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101214/DC17316LOGO-b)

"In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the country there is only one book available for every 300 children, unlike more affluent neighborhoods where every child has a dozen or more books of their own," said Kyle Zimmer, president and CEO of First Book. "This disparity is intolerable."

"We've chosen ten great books we think every child should own," Zimmer said. "Kids need books like these to turn them into strong readers and help them become success stories – in school and in life."

First Book works with a growing network of over 40,000 local schools and community programs across the United States and Canada, as well as the publishing industry, to provide free and low-cost books to children in need – almost 100 million brand-new books since its founding in 1992.

To choose the 100 millionth book, they've asked supporters and members of the public to vote online.

Voters can choose their favorite from ten well-known and beloved children's books.

The top ten books represent some of the all-time best-selling titles available on the First Book Marketplace, a website available exclusively to educators and program leaders that work with kids in need.

A Wrinkle in Time (Macmillan)
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (Simon & Schuster)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Abrams)
Eating the Alphabet (Houghton Mifflin)
Green Eggs and Ham (Random House)
Guess How Much I Love You (Candlewick Press)
Martin's Big Words (Disney Publishing Worldwide)
The Snowy Day (Puffin)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Hachette)
Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins)

Voting begins today, Oct. 29, and continues through Nov. 9. To vote, visit firstbook.org/vote.

The winning title will be announced on Nov. 15 at Martha's Table in Washington, D.C, a local nonprofit dedicated to meeting the needs of homeless and low-income children. It was at Martha's Table that First Book was born; the idea came to Zimmer when she and some colleagues were volunteering there 20 years ago and realized that the children they were working with had no books of their own at home. Children at the program will receive their very own copies of the winning title.

In addition, copies of all ten books will be available as a special anniversary collection to all of the 40,000 schools and programs that make up the First Book network.

Anyone who works with kids in need is eligible to get books from First Book. In addition to the First Book Marketplace, where over 3,000 titles are available at low cost, First Book also regularly distributes large quantities of brand-new books donated by publishers, free of charge.

To sign up, visit First Book on the web.

About First Book
First Book has distributed almost 100 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the United States and Canada. By making new, high-quality books available on an ongoing basis, First Book is transforming the lives of children in need and elevating the quality of education. For more information, please visit us online or follow our latest news on Facebook and Twitter.

CONTACT: Brian Minter
bminter@firstbook.org
202-639-0115

SOURCE First Book

Web Site: http://www.firstbook.org

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Hilary Mantel wins 2012 Man Booker Prize

Hilary Mantel wins 2012 Man Booker Prize

16 October 2012

The whittling has finished. The judges of this year's Man Booker Prize started with a daunting 145 novels and have winnowed, sifted, culled, and in some cases hurled, until there was only one left: Hilary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies.

Hers is a story unique in Man Booker history. She becomes only the third author, after Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee, to win the prize twice, which puts her in the empyrean. But she is also the first to win with a sequel (Wolf Hall won in 2009) and the first to win with such a brief interlude between books. Her resuscitation of Thomas Cromwell – and with him the historical novel – is one of the great achievements of modern literature. There is the last volume of her trilogy still to come so her Man Booker tale may yet have a further chapter.

The writing will have to wait a bit though. She may have won before but the torrent of media interest will still knock her back as if she's been hit by a wave. In 2009 she confessed to feeling as though she were “flying through the air”, well, she's soaring again. When she lands she won't have time to think and she will talk into microphones until her throat is sore. It comes with the territory: everyone wants a bit of the Man Booker winner.

It has been a long and uniquely intense journey not just for her but for everyone associated with the prize. For the judges it has meant nine months of work, worry and pleasure. Their choices have been scrutinised and criticised and their thoughts and penchants imagined. They will have read the shortlisted books at least three times. They will await the public's verdict on their choice with sang froid mixed with curiosity. They needn't be worried, Bring Up the Bodies has had near universal praise from critics and reading public alike.

The shortlisted authors meanwhile have felt the hot brightness of the media spotlight on them since July when the long-list was first announced. They can breathe out now. For Hilary Mantel all those middle-of-the-night moments when she had to tell herself not to think of what it would be like to win again, not to jinx herself, can stop.

Indeed, spare a thought for the shortlisted authors; they will have had a day unlike any other they have known. How do you take your mind off the fact that in a matter of hours you might be the winner of arguably the world's most high-profile literary prize? Of course it is an honour and validation to be shortlisted but they will have known that at 11.30 this morning the judges closed the door of a room somewhere in London – possibly near to where they themselves were standing/shopping/chomping their nails – and settled down to decide their future. They will have wondered what that group literary holy men and women, like the conclave of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel choosing a new Pope, were talking about and wondered whether the puff of white smoke that finally emerged was for them. They may be writers but they're only human.

The nerves will have continued all through the prize dinner, even a phalanx of loved ones, publisher and agent can't keep them away. They chatted amicably, a drink – but perhaps just the one – to steady the beating heart. I doubt they tasted their food. Who would have wanted to be them as Sir Peter Stothard took to the rostrum and opened his mouth to enunciate the first syllable of the winner's name? She may qualify as an old hand but Hilary Mantel confessed that her nerves this time round were infinitely worse than in 2009.

This is not the end of the process, however. For Hilary Mantel it is the moment of coronation before she confronts the wider horizons that have suddenly opened up before her. For the other shortlisted authors who came so agonisingly close they have the knowledge that every publisher in the land will bite their hand off for the chance to publish their next book and that, whatever they write, they will have a wide and eager audience. Their names are now known to readers who may have had no idea of them only a few months ago.

Perhaps the real object of envy is not the winner – she thoroughly deserves her triumph – but the readers who have yet to open Bring Up the Bodies. They have just won a prize too.

SOURCE: THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE.

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Chinese Author of Big Breasts and Wide Hips Wins 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature

Mo Yan.

Xinhua‎ reports the cheering news of Chinese writer Mo Yan and famous author of Big Breasts and Wide Hips winning the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced by Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday.

Mo Yan's real name is Guan Moye and his famous pen name "Mo Yan" (Chinese: 莫言) means "don't speak" in Chinese. Donald Morrison of TIME news magazine called Yan "one of the most famous and widely pirated of all Chinese writers".

A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression. Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions.
~ Mo Yan, Frankfurt Book Fair, 2009. 

About Big Breasts and Wide Hips.

In his latest novel, Mo Yan—arguably China’s most important contemporary literary voice—recreates the historical sweep and earthy exuberance of his much acclaimed novel Red Sorghum. In a country where patriarchal favoritism and the primacy of sons survived multiple revolutions and an ideological earthquake, this epic novel is first and foremost about women, with the female body serving as the book’s central metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900 and married at seventeen into the Shangguan family. She has nine children, only one of whom is a boy—the narrator of the book. A spoiled and ineffectual child, he stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful female siblings.

Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman who risks her life to save several of her children and grandchildren. The writing is picturesque, bawdy, shocking, and imaginative. The structure draws on the essentials of classical Chinese formalism and injects them with extraordinarily raw and surprising prose. Each of the seven chapters represents a different time period, from the end of the Qing dynasty up through the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao years. Now in a beautifully bound collectors edition, this stunning novel is Mo Yan’s searing vision of twentieth-century China.

Click here for the full report.

	Life and Death are Wearing Me Out: A Novel Mo Yan
	Life and Death are Wearing Me Out: A Novel Howard Goldblatt
	The Republic of Wine : A Novel Howard Goldblatt
	Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh Howard Goldblatt
	Pow! Mo Yan

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Pre Order Chinua Achebe's New Book There Was A Country on Biafra

CLICK HERE TO ORDER There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra.

Release Date: October 11, 2012

From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes a longawaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war.

Review
Chinua Achebe's history of Biafra is a meditation on the condition of freedom. It has the tense narrative grip of the best fiction. It is also a revelatory entry into the intimate character of the writer's brilliant mind and bold spirit. Achebe has created here a new genre of literature -- Nadine Gordimer --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war’s full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa’s most fateful events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature.

Achebe masterfully relates his experience, bothas he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigeria’s birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the country’s promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writers—they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people.

Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebe’s place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra.

About the Author

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry Christmas in Biafra was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize. Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s masterpiece, has been published in fifty different languages and has sold more than ten million copies internationally since its first publication in 1958. Achebe is the recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize.






















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81 Free Books for You

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
4. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
5. Aesop's Fables by Aesop
6. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
8. Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
9. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
11. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
12. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
13. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
14. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
16. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Dubliners by James Joyce
19. Emma by Jane Austen
20. Erewhon by Samuel Butler
21. For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke
22. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
23. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
24. Grimms Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm
25. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
26. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
27. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
28. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
29. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
30. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
31. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
32. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
33. Middlemarch by George Eliot
34. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
35. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
36. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad
37. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
38. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
39. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
40. Paradise Lost by John Milton
41. Persuasion by Jane Austen
42. Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
43. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
44. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
45. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
46. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
47. Swanns Way by Marcel Proust
48. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
49. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
50. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
51. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
52. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
53. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
54. The Great Gatsby
55. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
56. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
57. The Iliad by Homer
58. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells
59. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
60. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
61. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
62. The Odyssey by Homer
63. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
64. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
65. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
66. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
67. The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli
68. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
69. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
70. The Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault
71. The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan
72. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Duma
73. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
74. The Trial by Franz Kafka
75. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
76. Ulysses by James Joyce
77. Utopia by Sir Thomas More
78. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
80. Women In Love by D. H. Lawrence
81. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

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Photo of the Week: Dr. Tunji Braithwaite's 79th Birthday Book Launch in Lagos

Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), President Goodluck Jonathan and hero of Nigerian democracy Dr. Tunji Braithwaite having a good rapport at the book presentation of the second edition of Braithwaite’s all time classic Jurisprudence of the Living Oracles for the celebration of his 79th birthday at the Yard 158, Oregun, Lagos, on Tuesday, September 18, 2012.

The causes of domestic, national and international turmoil are wide and varied, but law plays an important role in resolving these conflicts. The role that jurisprudence plays in various societies is often misunderstood. Author Tunji Braithwaite, a longtime lawyer who has spent much of his career in Nigeria, demonstrates how theological laws, astronomy, and astrology affect secular laws. He also explains the differences between justice and law and examines the development of various legal doctrines. The Jurisprudence of the Living Oracles explores many concepts, including • the higher law that governs human society, regardless of boundaries; • the Everlasting Oracle, which judges everything and everybody; • methods by which justice may be achieved in a world regulated by laws; • the flexibility and inflexibility of the law of God; • the sources of God's laws; A useful guide for judges and legal practitioners alike, this scholarly examination also aims to generate discussions among scientists and members of various religions. Join Dr. Braithwaite as he connects religion with law and justice and seeks to help everyone avoid unpardonable errors through The Jurisprudence of the Living Oracles.



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Free Books Are Not Enough To Revive Reading Culture in Nigeria

Dear UBA and Read Africa,

I sincerely appreciate your commendable commitment to corporate social responsibility by your laudable initiative Read Africa for championing the revival of the reading culture across Africa.

Distribution of books to pupils and other young people through their schools is proactive, but that will not be enough to revive a reading culture in Africa, because the problem is not with our children, but with our intellectually disorientated society of youths and older people who are more distracted by the challenges and vanities of catching up with the Joneses in the rat race than being attracted to reading for pleasure, because it is what the children see their fathers, mothers and uncles are doing that they would emulate?

Giving free books to children will not make their parents to go and buy more books for them later, because they have been disconnected from the intellectual appreciation of our literary culture.

Until we address the intellectual disorientation and disconnection of the youths and older generation, the reading culture cannot be revived by the mere distribution of free books.
How many books are you going to distribute?
100, 000 or 1, 000, 000 copies of one single title or several titles of a particular book?
Are the selected titles the kinds of books the present generation of children would like to read?

Have you studied why the Harry Potter novels or The Twilight Saga attracted millions of children in America, Europe, Asia and Australia, but did not attract even a million children in Africa and the Middle East?
What factors discouraged the children in Africa and the Middle East?

Edward of the Twilight Saga and Harry of the Harry Potter fame. Photo Credit: Fan Pop.


The Missing Clock and the Missing Link in Our Reading Culture

The 2011 Nigeria Prize for Literature was won by Adeleke Adeyemi aka Mai Nasara for his children’s book The Missing Clock and the Nigeria LNG Limited, sponsors of the highly coveted prize $100, 000 which is currently the biggest literary prize in Africa distributed thousands of free copies of the book to school children and others. But that has not made the book a bestseller and even though there are over 43 million Nigerians in Nigeria accessing the Internet with other millions in the Diaspora and millions of them spend an average of $76 million daily paying for internet access, mobile phone calls and text messages, not even one thousand of them have gone to Amazon.com or Glendora and other book stores online to buy copies of the book after all the news media publicity given to The Missing Clock by the sponsors and news reporters in Nigeria and abroad. Why?

The answer is neither a puzzle nor a riddle of the Phoenix and the Sphinx, but simply the fact that the intellectual disorientation and disconnection of majority of Nigerians and other Africans distract them from the appreciation of reading books, except the books on how to get rich quick, pornographic booklets and celebrity fashion and gossip magazines or society photo albums like the popular OVATION International magazine, I call Dele Momodu’s Society Photo Album.

If Nigerians spend over $76 million daily on GSM phone calls, text messages and internet bundles, therefore they can afford to buy thousands of story books if they are attracted to them!

How do we make reading story books attractive to millions of distracted Nigerians and other Africans?

The problem of their intellectual disorientation and disconnection can be solved by behaviour change and how do we do this?

The first thing is to know what they are attracted to that is making them distracted from reading story books and prefer wasting minutes and hours chatting, gossiping and talking on their GSM phones and exchanging the same conversations via text messages.

Why are they attracted to these mundane or temporal things that do not add much value to life?

In spite of the cheering reports of Nigeria’s GDP growing at seven per cent annually and being rated as one of the fastest growing emerging markets in the world, Nigeria is still one of the most insecure places on earth with more darkness than light in majority of homes and more missing meals than having three square meals daily among the majority of the over 160 million people. So, the uncomfortable conditions of living in Nigeria have an adverse affect on reading for pleasure and those reading for academic scholarship or professional titles do so because it is compulsory for their progress and success! So, they would rather spend $1 on what comes natural to them from the oral culture of story telling by chatting, gossiping and talking to themselves on their GSM phones than going to the bookshop or roadside bookseller to spend that $1 on a small story book to read just for the pleasure of reading. Chatting, gossiping and talking on mobile phones are more engaging, exciting and interactive than reading a story book.

By our oral tradition, Nigerians and other African naturally talk more and read less.
We are naturally a talking people and not a reading people!
Western education introduced us to reading and reading more for academic retention to pass an examination in order to get a qualification for further education or for a lucrative occupation/profession for our survival and welfare. That’s all. And once we have passed the compulsory examinations and secured the compulsory qualifications to secure the dream jobs or titular positions in catching up with the Joneses in the rat race, we don’t have anymore need for books, except to read newspapers, tabloids, watch TV and surf the Internet to continue our conversations on Facebook and other social media that will not challenge our intellect. And the herd instinct drives majority of us than the intellect.

The millions of Nigerians on Facebook do nothing more than post the trivial minutiae of their daily lives with complimentary photographs to tickle their fancies in romantic escapism.

Now what is the solution to the problem I have identified and analyzed to start a positive behaviour change in the mannerisms and nuances of the daily lives of Nigerians and other Africans so that they can be attracted to reading story books for pleasure and intellectual empowerment?

I have the solution which is simple in application and the same things Nigerians are attracted to will also be used to make them turn to reading story books.
Let us consider the following approaches.


Have we tried audio books?
If they don’t like reading books, they may like listening to the books!
So, we can upload audio versions of the stories of our writers on audio blogs like Blog Radio, Facebook, Twitter, Googlle Plus, and make them downloadable on laptops, desktops, iPods, iTunes, iPhones and other mobile devices as I have done on my blogs.

Have we done enough publicity for the books to create a social buzz around them?

Majority of Nigerian and other African authors and their publishers hardly have any publicity plan for their books.
They simply dump the books at the bookshops and expect people to rush their books when the people are also being attracted by other things buzzing around them on the street and on the internet!

In America, Europe and other developed countries, authors and publishers spend thousands to millions of dollars on publicity such as placing adverts on the pages of newspapers, magazines, TV spots, and on websites and go on book signing tours from place to place to attract readers to their books! And this is why they are attracting thousands and millions of readers.
So, Nigerian and other African authors and publishers should include multimedia campaigns for the promotions of their books and start active book signing tours to bridge the wide gap between them and their target readers.

We have to promote books like music and movies, because they are all for the same entertainment and enlightenment.
In fact, there is nothing wrong in making book trailers like movie trailers to attract readers to your story books!

What else?
You can add your own ideas!


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
Publisher/Editor
Nigerians Report
Nigerian Times
CEO, International Digital Post Network Limited
CEO, King of Kings Book International
Founder, Eko International Film Festival,
Founder/CEO, Screen Outdoor Open Air Cinema

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HarperCollins Signs Newbery Medal-Winner Neil Gaiman For A Major Multi-Book Deal

11 Jul 2012 18:03 Africa/Lagos

Neil Gaiman

HarperCollins Children's Books Signs Newbery Medal-Winner Neil Gaiman For A Major Multi-Book Deal

NEW YORK, July 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- HarperCollins Publishers announced today that it has signed #1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning author Neil Gaiman to a major multi-book deal for three novels and two picture books that will feature the return of some beloved characters and introduce new favorites. Neil Gaiman is the author of many highly-acclaimed books for children and adults, including the New York Times #1 bestselling The Graveyard Book, the only book ever to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie Medals. He is also the author of the bestsellers Coraline, Stardust, and Odd and the Frost Giants. Coraline was made into an Academy Award-nominated animated feature film.

The multi-book deal for North American rights was negotiated at HarperCollins Children's Books by Kate Morgan Jackson, Editor-in-Chief, and Rosemary Brosnan, Executive Editor, with Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House.

"We are thrilled to sign these wonderful and diverse books by the immensely talented Neil Gaiman, who is such a treasure and has so many fans of all ages," says his editor, Rosemary Brosnan.

The two new picture books will center on Chu, the loveable little panda with the great big sneeze who stars in the forthcoming picture book Chu's Day, illustrated by Adam Rex. Chu's Day will be published on January 8, 2013. The Chu books were inspired by a visit Gaiman made to China. A hilarious young middle-grade novel titled Fortunately, the Milk will feature numerous interior illustrations by Skottie Young, and is an ode to the pleasure and wonders of storytelling itself. Also included in the deal is a sequel to Odd and the Frost Giants, which will follow the Viking boy Odd on further adventures. In addition, Gaiman will write a middle grade novel, as yet untitled.

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys (#1 NYT bestseller), and Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett); the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the short story collections Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things. He is also the author of books for readers of all ages including the #1 bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning novel The Graveyard Book, the bestselling novels Coraline and Odd and the Frost Giants; the short story collection M is for Magic and the picture books The Wolves in the Walls, The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, and Crazy Hair, illustrated by Dave McKean; The Dangerous Alphabet, illustrated by Gris Grimly; and Blueberry Girl, illustrated by Charles Vess. He is the winner of numerous literary honors, including the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards, the Newbery Medal, and the Carnegie Medal. Originally from England, he now lives in America. Visit him online at www.neilgaiman.com.

About HarperCollins Children's Books
HarperCollins Children's Books is one of the leading publishers of children's books. Respected worldwide for its tradition of publishing quality, award-winning books for young readers, HarperCollins is home to many timeless treasures—Charlotte's Web, The Chronicles of Narnia, Goodnight Moon, Where the Sidewalk Ends, the Ramona series, Where the Wild Things Are; and popular new classics—The Graveyard Book, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Warriors, and Fancy Nancy. Consistently at the forefront of digital innovation, HarperCollins Children's Books delights young readers through engaging storytelling in all formats, including ebooks and apps. HarperCollins Children's Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers, one of the leading English-language publishers in the world and a subsidiary of News Corporation (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). Headquartered in New York, HarperCollins has publishing groups in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia/New Zealand, and India. You can visit HarperCollins Children's Books at www.harpercollinschildrens.com and HarperCollins Publishers at www.harpercollins.com.

SOURCE HarperCollins Publishers

CONTACT: Caroline Sun, Senior Publicity Manager, +1-212-207-7753, F: +1-212-702-2586, caroline.sun@harpercollins.com

Web Site: http://www.harpercollins.com
























CLICK HERE FOR MORE BEST SELLING BOOKS BY NEIL GAIMAN.

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