Bookish activities in September 2011

When I started writing this, I thought September hadn’t been a particular active month for me on the books side.  But then upon reviewing it I realized it wasn’t as quiet as I had originally thought!

I bought nine books at local bookshops here in Accra:

• 2 cookery books – I just can’t resist buying these, though I don’t always cook from them!
• 1 novel – one of Boris Akunin’s books, The winter queen, which I had heard of on BBC World Book Club podcast
• 2 art books
• 2 pamphlets for visitors/tourists:  one on Twi and the other on Old Accra
• 2 copies of Ama Ataa Aidoo’s The days, to be given to children as gifts

And then there were two freebies downloaded to my Kindle.

I only completed two books – which for me is unusual:

• Flat earth news, by Nick Davies:  non-fiction on the media andvery relevant in the days of scandals from the Murdoch empire
• The historian, by Elizabeth Kostova:   probably the main reason why I didn’t finish many books, as this is over 700 pages long!  An entertaining vampire story

The last couple of weeks of the month was busy.

I went to GAWBOFEST – briefly, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  Like others, I look forward to more of such events, though I know there is a lot of effort involved in organizing them.

Next was one of the Writers Project of Ghana events at the Goethe Institut with Camynta Baezie reading from his novel The African agenda.  I had bought the book a couple of years ago, and quite enjoyed it – an international thriller with African characters!  A pity though that there weren’t more people attending.  I know Goethe Institut puts information onto its website, and sends out emails, and Writers Project also sends out information via Twitter, but maybe these means are still not enough to bring people in?  I guess it also depends on how much publicity the authors themselves do.

And there was a gathering for Accra Book Club, after a gap of couple of months, to discuss Diane Setterfield’s The thirteenth tale. .  The book is a contemporary “gothic” with tales within tales, but with lots of references to reading, writing and books. That was fun.  And we planned our readings for the next six months or so, which was good.

So that was my September on the personal literary side.

GAWBOFEST coming up on 21 September 2011 in Accra

The Ghana Association of Writers is organising its first Book Festival – GAWBOFEST – tomorrow, 21 September 2011, and I am intrigued. It is taking place at Aviation Social Centre, from morning till late afternoon. I gather from a recent phone-in that the Vice-President of Ghana is even supposing to be launching it, which means the opening ceremony will probably be quite long.

There are going to be readings by various “prominent personalities”, storytelling, poetry, books for sale, and so on.

Interestingly GAW does have a website , but there doesn’t seem to be much going on there, in contrast to the Writers Project of Ghana which I believe has a much younger feel to it, and is updated, and promoted regularly.

This is the first of these kind of events from GAW, which I always get the feeling is dominated by somewhat older writers, and I think it is worth taking a look at the event – maybe some time in the late morning, especially as it is a public holiday.

Needless to say I will report on what I found.