TOBI'S DESK

Have you ever wonder why most Nigerian citizens who go overseas to school would graduate with firstclass honours but if the same students were to school in a Nigerian University,they would graduate with a secondclass lower or a thirdclass probably. Every time we watch television, we see Nigerians in diaspora excelling in academics and we … Continue reading Why you should be proud of schooling in Nigeria → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2EsbBRS

In a sea of Best Book lists, LitHub spoke to 40 booksellers about the most overlooked titles of 2017 . On the list?  Emil Ferris’s  My Favorite Thing Is Monsters ,  which was featured in Emily St. John Mandel ‘s Year in Reading . The post The Forgotten Forty appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2C1fls0

The Digital Reader  rounded up a list based on Amazon’s end of year book sales . Some interesting factoids: Dan Brown’s  Origin :  A Novel  was the most read and gifted book this holiday season, and Margaret Atwood’s  The Handmaid’s Tale   was the year’s most borrowed book from Prime Reading. Pair with: our cheat sheet for Kindle (and other e-reader) owners. The post Amazon’s Numbers Are In appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2zT84Zr

    Toyin walked back into her office at 8pm feeling not very happy. She had earlier left her office and was almost home when she got a call from her very close friend Bose. Bose told her that she had arranged for Toyin to see a very important client or patient as she preferred … Continue reading The Session → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2DBZ6Sz

Crime novelist Sue Grafton passed away earlier this week from cancer. Lit Hub and Vulture both have touching tributes to her and her detective series starring Kinsey Millhone. “Grafton belonged to a cluster of female authors who viewed the private-detective subgenre, previously dominated by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Grafton’s own hero, Ross Macdonald, in desperate need of subverting” and “The annual release of her latest Kinsey Millhone novel was, for generations of devotees, one of the year’s premier literary events. ” Rest in peace Ms. Grafton. The post Remembering Sue Grafton appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2zSByqm

The Brittle Paper Person of the Year award is in its third year. The award has become an important way of celebrating excellence and identifying those qualities we value in the leaders of our intellectual communities. By highlighting the efforts of those committed to building our communities, we hope to inspire others and ourselves to […] from Brittle Paper http://ift.tt/2CuN1iQ

Buzzfeed interviews Naomi Alderman author of The Power , a 2016 book receiving heightened attention this year for its timely feminist premise. “In the book, women develop the ability to electrocute people at will, and as the dynamic between the genders shifts after centuries of oppression, women (finally) begin to take control back from men.” Why all the newfound attention? Alderman believes that it’s due to the subject matter and it being released in the States. ‘It’s only just been published in America and some American reviewers have responded to it as if it was written in response to Donald Trump, but in fact no, it was written before that. I think some of the things in the world have not changed and that is why you can mistake it for having been written yesterday.’ But she adds: ‘I think actually one thing that has really changed is that women are really fucking angry.'” The post Reading The Power in 2017 appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.t...

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has named author Lesley Nneka Arimah its 2017 Artist of the Year . They note, “Arimah is at the forefront of a growing number of young authors, primarily immigrants and writers of color — in the Twin Cities, as well as across the country — who are writing some of the most original and interesting fiction and poetry being published today.” Arimah is the author of the short story collection What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky , a 2017 Year in Reading favorite . She was also honored as one of the National Book Foundation’s “ 5 under 35 ” and named as a finalist for the John Leonard Prize . Congratulations! The post Lesley Nneka Arimah: Artist of the Year appeared first on The Millions . from The Millions http://ift.tt/2lrJtqn

To Christopher Okigbo To Chinua Achebe To Wole Soyinka To JP Clarks To Habila Helon A measure of time past I am part of your dark side To this wayward side of this wet Benue roads, children had learnt to be naked leaving their thoughts hang in the air, Famished. Cattle and herdmen Death and … Continue reading Wet Roads Of Benue → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2Csascu

THE MULTIMILLION BUSINESS EPISODE 2 Pastor Mathew was in a beautifully furnished hotel room wearing a boxers and was sitting on the bed and behind him was a fair lady wearing a lacy pink bra that revealed her avocado sized breast and a matching G-string pant that exposed smooth fresh looking buttocks was kneeling on … Continue reading The Multi Million Business – Episode 2 → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2DxilwI

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! Still from Woody Allen’s Manhattan .   Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Caravaggio, Floyd Mayweather, though if we start listing athletes we’ll never stop. And what about the women? The list immediately becomes much more difficult and tentative: Anne Sexton? Joan Crawford? Sylvia Plath? Does self-harm count? Okay, well, it’s back to the men I guess: Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Lead Belly, Miles Davis, Phil Spector. They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate t...

AWOOF! You listen again to be sure the sound came from your door… ‘kpom! Kpom! Kpom!’ You hear it again. You start to wonder who could be disturbing you this early Christmas morning when everyone in the city of Lagos had gone to church. You leave the kitchen for the door, but not before mentally … Continue reading Awooof! → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2BTzwYI

  Murmur. You could hear it from every angle emanating from the audience waiting desperately for the crucial moment.It has been like this for the past few minutes with cops at strategic location ensuring that law and order is maintained. Amidst the audience were the defendant’s mother, his wife and his 13 year old daughter … Continue reading The Bad Road → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2CjlbrT

It is not too early to plan 2018. Yes, your employer has grudgingly released your December salary which has now put you in the position of buying gifts for people, enjoying Christmas without restrictions and having loads of fun till the new year. But remember to save some cash, sufficient enough to keep body and … Continue reading It is not too early to PLAN 2018 → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2BRMJ4d

THE DEVILS LAIR episode 1 . Saturdays are usually special for most Nigerians . It’s mostly an off work day for corporate employees and possibly a time to relax . For some others , it is a perfect day to fix an occasion like a wedding or naming ceremony . It gives everyone an opportunity … Continue reading The Devils Lair – episode 1 → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2BX93JX

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! An illustration from Struwwelpeter .   It is not my habitual practice to go toe-to-toe with Mark Twain. I revere him, have made lengthy extracts from his works, have read aloud many times from Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn . I find Twain much funnier than [insert the name of your favorite humorist here]. But. Read More >>   from The Paris Review http://ift.tt/2Caep8T

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! Museum of Anatolian Civilizations We arrive at the hospital at seven in the morning. It is still dark, and the air is heavy with exhaust. Patches of muddy snow dot the streets, which branch out without a discernible plan. The taxi ride from the hotel has taken less than five minutes, and yet once we step out of the car, it is impossible to tell which direction we came from in the midst of overpasses and underpasses and the highway warping the hospital. “Shit-town Ankara,” my brother says. We take the elevator to the ninth floor and walk down a hallway, deserted except for an old man in pajamas and a woolen vest, who stands holding onto his serum pole, staring out the window. Up ahead on a hill is Atatürk’s pillared mausoleum, rising high above the city. Read More >>    from The Paris Review http://ift.tt/2lrCSv1

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! John William Waterhouse, The Magic Circle , 1886. The inquisitors wanted something old from each witch they tortured—a Sabbath orgy or blood oath or cat demon or wolf-faced baby or some other verification of the stories they already believed. They also wanted something new, so they could feel, with each trial and execution, as if they were getting somewhere: With what instruments do you fly? What did the toad in the pot say? Which direction do you turn the horseshoe over the door to summon your demon? Read More >>   from The Paris Review http://ift.tt/2lqrtLX

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! A photograph of H. W. Fowler in sporting attire from his biography The Warden of English .   Grammar enthusiasts either love Henry Watson Fowler or they have yet to encounter his work. It is possible to read his Dictionary of Modern Usage (1926) from cover to cover as a weird, wonderful essay; it is impossible to do so without laughing out loud. A few entries from the second edition, revised by Ernest Gowers: avoidance of the obvious is very well, provided that it is not itself obvious; but, if it is, all is spoilt. [If the reader believes] that you are attitudinizing as an epicure of words for whom nothing but the rare is good enough, or, worse still, that you are painfully endeavouring to impart some much needed unfamiliarity to a platitude, his feelings towards you will be something that is not admiration. The obvious is better than obvious avoidance of it … ...

Early pages from  Here, George!   Even with the most contemplative toddler on your lap, a dramatic reading of Sandra Boynton’s  Moo, Baa, La La La!  will probably top out at two minutes. That’s approximately how long it took Boynton—the beloved children’s author who’s sold more than seventy million books to date—to conceive of her latest board book. It’s called  Here, George!  and features George, a white dog with a red collar who happens to have a secret: he’s wild about dancing. Read More >>   from The Paris Review http://ift.tt/2CdPrVn

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! J. D. Salinger on November 20, 1952. Photo: San Diego Historical Society   In 1953, J. D. Salinger fled Manhattan for rural Cornish, New Hampshire, hoping to protect his privacy and find the solitude he needed for his work. The Catcher in the Rye , which spent thirty weeks on the  New York Times ’ best-seller list, had generated immeasurable publicity and adulation for Salinger, who wanted none of it. Among his new suitors were such Hollywood bigwigs as Samuel Goldwyn and David O. Selznick, both vying for the screen rights to Catcher . They failed to secure Salinger’s approval, as did many others, in turn—but that didn’t stop Bill Mahan, an unemployed former child star and devoted fan from Los Angeles, from giving it a shot. In the early sixties, he resolved to claim the film rights himself, even if it meant disturbing Salinger at home. Read More >> ...

And this picture on the wall of my heart told a story of men giving birth among themselves in the north promiscuously… Sipping memories from the lungs of the girl child. They were not ashamed of the little ones watching their nakedness which howled at them mannerlessly. We bathed the oceans again and again, We … Continue reading Illusion → from NaijaStories.com http://ift.tt/2lfMQ3h

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! Jean-Michel Basquiat, Back of the Neck , 1983, silkscreen with hand painting.   While visiting Los Angeles a couple of years ago, I strained my back. My mother gave me the name of her former chiropractor. As I stood before him, I listed my symptoms, and in one quick gesture he ripped my pants down, without warning, just below the cheek. He hadn’t really looked at me while I spoke, so I wasn’t sure how to make sense of the way he’d stripped me. It was like he was going to spank or fuck me. He used a TENS machine to electrostimulate my muscles and I left with almost no back pain. A bit ambitious, I walked the several miles back to my hotel. It’s only now that I wonder what else might have prompted that need to wander so far by myself. Read More >> from The Paris Review http://ift.tt/2zHculU

Yesterday we showed you the essays and reviews that drew the most readers to our site in 2017. But there are other metrics–less literal but no less meaningful–by which we assess work. Thoughtful writing about books, reading, and the writing life is often a casualty in the digital economy, and it has suffered particularly in the gruesome news onslaught of 2017. Below, in no particular order, is a list of some (not all!) of the pieces I loved at the site this year. Think of this is as a great big “In Case You Missed It (ICYMI)” list for 2017. -Lydia Kiesling 1. What Gets Lost in Translation Gets Transformed : A methodical and incredibly illuminating study of English-Chinese/Chinese-English translation by Jianan Qian . 2. Returning to My People : A poignant essay by Zak Salih  on being invited to join his Sudanese father’s book club, and the book he chose for the group to read. 3. In Defense of the Third Person : Meticulous reader and polite partisan  Adam O’Fallon Price ...

We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2017. Enjoy your holiday! Thiago Rocha Pitta, Heritage , 2007. Courtesy of the artist, Galeria Millan, São Paulo, and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. © Thiago Rocha Pitta   On the cover of this pocket-size edition of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror , the poet stands in a doorway. He wears the somehow simultaneously ill-advised and completely stylish ensemble of a half-unbuttoned patterned shirt and tight beltless pants. Looking closer, the doorway seems to open not to a room or to the outside but to a closet: on a shelf behind him there is a pot or urn, and the flatness of the photograph makes it seem a bit as if he is wearing it on his head, like a bizarre hat. He is looking straight out of the front of the book, with a direct, slightly furrowed expression. He is about to smile beneath his full mustache. Something strange is just about to happen. Read More >> ...