July reads and buys

July seemed to be another relatively quiet month on the books side.

I feel I am getting increasingly distracted, especially by technology related matters, so don’t read as much as I used.  I guess I am looking for an ideal reading chair, with good lighting, and I still haven’t really found that yet.  The search is definitely on.

So I completed five books during the month: four fiction and one non-fiction. There was one African author, three non-Africans, and the last was a collection of British authors. Unusually mostly male authors (three) versus one female author, with the short story collection a mix. These are the titles:

• Mixed blood, by Roger Smith [a pretty good debut thriller, based in South Africa]
• What women want, by Paco Underhill [the need for marketing targeted at women]
• The angel’s game, by Carlos Zuiz Zafon [fantasy, thriller, Faustian tale set in Spain]
• Ox-tales – Air [collection of short stories]
• Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel [started ages ago, and finally finished; Booker prize winning historical novel]

My book-buying was a bit restrained too – I only bought four physical books, and no ebooks 😦

• The librarian as a manager, by Mac-Anthony Cobblah
• Fulani in Ghana, by Steve Tonah
• Six frames, by Edward de Bono
• In pursuit of my destiny: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian, by Kosi Kedem

Interestingly two of the above are by colleague Ghanaian librarians, though Kedem did leave the practice of working in libraries for politics for several years.

I attended a couple of bookish related activities in July: a library related conference (CULD – Committee of University Librarians and Deputies) in Cape Coast and the official Burt award ceremony, which I posted about earlier.