Category: Arts

We talk about books, movies, tv shows, music; all the arts that infuse our culture and influence how we speak, how we act, how we think about the past, present and future.

My Year in Books – 2016

I started this year on a book high. I was so pumped I would read a book in a few days, despite work and all. Eventually I was going to burn out, and burn out I did. You will notice a trend, but here goes the books I loved in 2016 and those that I gave up on in the end.

The Girl With No PastThe Girl With No Past by Kathryn Croft

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whoa. At some point I thought this was not going to make sense now that the past details were kept from the reader for so long, I got tired. Then everything made sense. Good read, save for the many repetitions.

I began with a psychological thriller, of course. Kindle store has this cool section it recommends current Kindle bestsellers. I was not disappointed with Kathryn Croft. Mostly because it reminded me of Girl on the Train but also because it is set in London. I noticed a trend, all the psychological thrillers I read in 2016 are set in London.

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My Year in Movies – 2016

I have been known to make fun of my sister for crying too much at the slightest provocation. I find it a tad too much. But as a grownup, I probably cry more than I should and I only realized this in 2016. I am just from tearing over the movie Siege of Jadotville. This is an amazing story about a five-day gunfight between Irish soldiers and mercenaries in Katanga, DRC. I had never even heard of the story before today. You should watch it if you haven’t already. Before that, I was watching The Magnificent Seven. I cried over this one too. Seriously. I cry over everything. Sometimes I do it so much, I end up sobbing. I have this peculiar way of rating movies, if I don’t cry, it was not that good. Even something like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them; I didn’t necessarily get the point of it or think it was an amazing movie, but I cried, so there is that. Something else, if a movie makes me spend minutes or hours on Google after the credits have rolled, that is an awesome movie.

Therefore, I will go down my Google History and tell you the movies that made me cry and Google, in addition to the above. I would track movies and shows I watched very easily in the past with what-was-that-app? I will remember by the time I am done here. Listed from most recent backwards.

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Books I Read in 2015

First of all, allow me to go backwards and start without much ado because I am just itching to express my thoughts on Americanah. I know I said I’d never read it but one Sunday evening I was feeling like I had nothing else to read (which was obviously not true) so I reached out to the book and turned the pages that looked like they had been turned by 20 people before me. Chimamanda got my attention on that first page when she talked about braiding and on the second page, where she mentioned that Ifemelu had a blog. Just because she captured me with this character with a blog, I hang on when she started making it look like women who straighten their hair have a missing part of their africanness than those who braid theirs. I always get pissed off at people who want to make one way of maintaining African hair superior to the other. At this point, I would rather Njoki Chege than Chimamanda. Okay, maybe I have gone too far but you get my point.

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Books I Read in 2014

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I make random resolutions any day, any time. Around December last year, I decided to read better, read more. And that is exactly what I did. And change I did. Change I have done. It began with John Grisham, the only guy I could read even before then. Even then, I still had a pile of his books I was yet to finish. I had gathered them from my trips to Eldoret. I still have some I have never finished. I would buy these novels on my walk down Tom Mboya Street, headed to the North Rift Stage. Most of the time, I would just read the first few pages during the trip and forget about the book once I hit the Moi University compound. I was going to change that.

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