* Read 8-10 novels/collections by African based authors. To get closer to important general fiction, good genre fiction and explore modern history of Africa and its literature. Im starting Things Fall Apart by Chinu Achebe.
Those are two excellent Nigerian authors you quote there! ..albiet I've not read The Concubine yet. I would like to add a third, which I'm sure you would have included had your course had the go ahead. It was the winner of last year's prestigious World Fantasy Award, the book being Who Fears Death by American-born Nigerain Nnedi Okorafor. Nnedi has already won several literary awards, so this latest honour shoudn't really come as a surpirse. Admittedly I have not read the book myself yet but it is defniterly one of those that I do intend to read and review in 2012.Allow me to recommend Amos Tutuola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which I would have included in my 2011 fantasy course if that hadn't had to be abandoned. It is really weird. Also, consider reading Elechi Amadi's The Concubine.
3. As a follow-up to pt 2. reading according to specific themes, probably organised predominantly by country or region. For example, I'm seriously looking at starting with the theme of the modern Russian novel, equating to a review of several of the major Russian works from Lermontov's A Hero Of Our Time (my current book) predated perhaps only by Pushkin's classic 'prose poem' Eugene Onegin right through to contemporary authors like Vladimir Sorokin, Tatyana Tolstaya etc.
Those are two excellent Nigerian authors you quote there! ..albeit I've not read The Concubine yet. I would like to add a third, which I'm sure you would have included had your course had the go ahead. It was the winner of last year's prestigious World Fantasy Award, the book being Who Fears Death by American-born Nigerian Nnedi Okorafor. Nnedi has already won several literary awards, so this latest honour shoudn't really come as a surprise. Admittedly I have not read the book myself yet but it is definitely one of those that I do intend to read and review in 2012.
1. Reading as many of Dickens' 14 novels as I can as part of the anticipated discussion group we will be conducting here as a way to celebrate the 200th Anniversary.I probably won't be on board for Pickwick Papers and Dombey and Son, but I should think I could participate in discussions of many of the others. These two I haven't read and I'm not sure I will get to them this year.
OH now that is interesting....
I will going into depth with Dostoevsky's Demons and Brothers Karamazov in the next five months. If you think it would be appropriate to start threads on these books under General Book Discussion, that would be great. Brothers is the greater novel, I daresay, but Demons exercises a prophetic fascination upon me. I'd keep it if I had to get rid of nearly all of my books.