January reading and book buying

January 2012 wasn’t a particularly great book-buying month for me, though my reading was what I would consider OK.

I finished reading seven books:   five  were fiction, two non-fiction.  Three were written by Africans, and an additional one was about Ghana.  The three non-African books were all mysteries.  So here is my list:

• Ratcatcher, by James McGee (a mystery set in Regency London)
• Tabom, by Marco Aurelio Schaumloeffel (about the Afro-Brazilian community among the Gas of Accra)
• Ways of dying, by Zakes Mda (South African novel which takes place in the townships before the end of apartheid)
• The sweetness at the bottom of the pie, by Alan Bradley (11 year old heroine in a country house mystery set in post World War II England)
• You’re not a country, Africa, by Pius Adesanmi (very readable essays; won the Penguin prize for African non-fiction)
• 10 years of the Caine Prize for African writing (winning short stories from 2001 to 2008; read for Accra Book Club)
• The snowman, by Jo Nesbo (serial killer in Norway involves snowmen)

With the exception of the Caine Prize collection and Ways of dying (which I borrowed from Ashesi‘s library), all were on my TBR shelves.

I didn’t really buy many books either.  I bought  two Tintin books (one is a gift), plus a couple of cookbooks (a weakness), and a copy of Children’s rights in Ghana, which was co-edited by a colleague – all in physical format. And there were  were two electronic ones, loaded onto my Kindle:  Silver sparrow, by Tayari Jones and the Caine prize collection mentioned already.

When I started writing this, I thought January was not very inspiring, but upon reflection, it wasn’t that bad, after all.