From Paris with Amore (Love) by @nichollekobi
I am going to be honest, I got a little nostalgic this year - looking back at my first posts, and how much I (as well as my blog) have grown. As I went through my old posts, I also got even more excited at just how awesome African literature is. Then I got a little shocked and amazed at how much I covered my first few months blogging. So as I celebrate five years of blogging - and because I absolutely love lists - I decided to look back at the first 200 books I featured on the blog. This excludes the same book that may have been on multiple lists and (as hard as it was) the same book that may have had a different cover based on the edition. I have to say, it was so much fun putting this post together, and looking back at the initial lists I thought of - ones on African Science Fiction and African Crime Fiction, on judging book covers, including the African Writers Series (AWS) cover designs from 1960s - 2000s, as well as how the same book had different covers based on the region, ones celebrating African publishers including Storymoja in Kenya and 'amaBooks in Zimbabwe and ones on women African writers, as well as on Ghanaian women writers to name some.
One of my earlier posts - and still one of my favourites.
It's also pretty cool to see what the first 3 books I featured on the blog were - the first one being Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy - and love that two of my all time favourites (The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives and On Black Sister's Street) were among the earlier books I reviewed. In the last 5 years this love for African literature and blogging hasn't waned - in fact, I think it has grown. While I have no idea what the next year has in store for me or my blog, I do know that for as long as I am able to do this I won't stop. So here's to 5 absolutely amazing years, and to everyone that reads the blog. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! And finally, here's to the me who, between December 2011 and March 2012, curated lists or wrote reviews that featured the following 200 books. Enjoy!
