Reading expands the mind and helps elevate to a greater height. We have therefore compiled a list of best selling books to help you stretch your imagination and keep you thinking, it’s all about being a better person.

Hardly anything is better for the mental, spiritual and creative health than resolving to read more. Today’s reading recommendations are to re-inspire your habit of reading and to introduce you to quality features where you can learn.

Enjoy!

Wings Of the Night – Azuka Onwuka

Author: Azuka Onwuka

Genre: Fiction Novel

Format: Paperback & E-book

Book Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches

Number of Pages: 144

Publication Year: July, 2012

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

ISBN: 978-1478115960

‘Wings of the Night’ is a novel that challenges some notions about life as well as draws the reader’s attention to some important aspects of life. ‘Wings of the Night’ has many themes, but the chief among them is that we should not give up in the face of challenges, no matter how weighty or insurmountable they may seem. Challenges are meant to bring out the best in us, not defeat us. There is also the theme of the need for us to know our genealogy or ancestry and not be ashamed of it.

The storyline is about Nduka. Fatherless from the cradle, bereaved of wife and son in his prime, Nduka seems to have a magnetic implant, which pulls disasters to him as carrion attracts scavengers. Is he atoning for the sins of his ancestors or his sins? Is this the evil hand of an envious uncle at work? Or is he merely star-crossed? 22 years in the making, and set in both 15th century and 21st century Igboland.

‘Wings of the Night’ is picturesque, compact, suspense-filled, literary fiction in which the past is inextricably woven into the present and breath-taking incidents gallop after each other from the first page to the last. Abandoned by his gods, forsaken by his ancestors, and betrayed by man, Nduka recoils from society, choosing his sheep as his new family. Wherever the winds lead, he follows like a lunatic. Neither the elements nor wild beasts will deter him. But it seems that the more he flees from life, the more he flees to his destiny, even though not without tears and blood.

The author, Azuka Onwuka has a knack for storytelling. He sucks you in, carries you along and by the time you are done, you are part of the scenery and the characters. He wrote as the Igbos of the old talked, with proverbs. This is a dying act and Onwuka by this singular deed, has put the engine in motion to revive this art. Considering that this is his first novel, he has set a standard that would make me anticipate his next offering with much eagerness.

There Was A Country – Chinua Achebe

Author: Chinua Achebe

Genre: Historical Biography

Format: Paperback

Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches

Number of Pages: 352

Publication Year: October, 2012

Publisher: Penguin Press

ISBN: 978-1594204821

World renowned poet and African respected writer, Chinua Achebe, has taken the minds of Nigerians back to the hard times of the late 60’s during the Biafran War or the Nigerian Civil War, in a book titled ‘There Was A Country’. The book is a personal history of Biafra as remembered by Achebe, described in detail and personal words the description of how the events during the war came about.

Achebe has already written extensively about Biafra in poems, short stories and essays. There Was a Country draws on much of this material. A dozen poems are dispersed throughout the text. His accounts of the mental-health burdens and role of women resonate with short stories from his Girls at War.

In his new book, Achebe writes about many things. His memoir is a deeply reflective tour de force into the events that shaped the Achebean era – an era of great promise that slipped into great infamy. Chinua Achebe has given shape and form to the truths of this era.

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war’s full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa’s most fateful events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature.

Achebe masterfully relates his experience, bothas he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigeria’s birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the country’s promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writers—they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people.

Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebe’s place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age.

How Laziness Saved My Life – Okechukwu Ofili

Author: Okechukwu Ofili

Genre: Motivational/Inspirational

Format: Paperback & E-Book

Book Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.4 inches

Number of Pages: 178

Publication Year: May, 2012

Publisher: OfiliSpeaks

ISBN: 978-0984572533

After Okechukwu Ofili’s first book, everything seemed to be going well for the engineer turned blogger turned speaker, but all that changed when he visited the doctor’s office for a routine check-up and was diagnosed with a life threatening disease. He later found out that his diagnosis was a result of over working himself at his job. After seeing other people getting burnt out from work, he decided to write his second book to show that contrary to popular belief, laziness can actually save your life! The result is the witty “How Laziness Saved My Life”.

The book is a collection of radical business ideas for tired, overworked and frustrated people looking for an easier way to get stuff done. ‘How Laziness Saved My Life’ is a hilarious attack at the way corporations and businesses push themselves and their employees to the brink of stress.

With chapters such as “Three Things I Learned From Getting Kicked In The Head”, “Why We Need Fewer Meetings and Managers” and “What WashingUnderwear Taught My About Customer Service”, Okechukwu Ofili was able to poke fun at the work institution as we know it but at the same time offer simple solutions for managers and entrepreneurs to help get the most out of themselves and their employees without killing anyone in the process.

The book is not your regular business book written by an MBA student and filled with dramatic case studies and business theories. Rather it is an accidental business book, filled with crazy and sometimes hilarious stories that often contain powerful and endearing business lessons.

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