By Victor Ochieng’
vochieng.90@gmail.com
It was Seneca, the great Roman philosopher that sagely said, “So long as you live, keep learning how to live.” No wonder, I must admit right at the onset, that this art of life is enshrined in good books. It is just good to develop a close camaraderie with words welded well. You may not enjoy books that much, but you must strive to love and cherish them to a great extent. For Judah ibn-Tibbon advised, “Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and gardens.”
When the year is starting, one of the best resolutions you can set is to read good books. This is because prodigious reading habits come with bountiful benefits. Reading provides knowledge and information. Reading makes writing easy; because reading is breathing in, writing is breathing out. Reading is therapeutic. Reading reduces stress and puts people in a good mood. Reading enhances the verbal-linguistic intelligence and eloquence. Reading builds the word bank. Reading adds glamour to ones grammar. Reading improves massive powers of memory. Reading improves the attention and concentration span. Good books are sources of awesome adventure. You can travel far and wide by cultivating your reading culture. Books make you imaginative, creative and innovative. Reading well-written books entertains, educates, and edifies the mortal mind. Reading self-help texts and sacred scriptures enhances personal discovery and development.
Reading makes people to live right in the lucent light. Living right means that you take care of each day, week, month, and year. No wonder, when the year is still young and virgin, purposeful people envision the kind of books they want to buy – devour and savour. As aptly put by Dr. Steve Covey, in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, such men and women simply have an-end-in-mind.
Therefore, a wise person, who yearns to grow and glow, sets resolutions on how to gather winsome wisdom in the course of the year. For integral intellectual growth does not happen through serendipity. It behooves all and sundry to be deliberate and intentional in acquisition of knowledge, which translates into wisdom after painstaking application. In the whole scheme of things, motivation keeps us growing, but discipline keeps us going.
At this juncture, I reminisce on my reading habit. More so, how I went about it in 2019, 2020 and 2021, which I also intend to have a repeat in 2022. Permit me to submit to you that those who long to read avidly, must approach it as a rite, routine, ritual, hobby and habit.
A habit is a repeated pattern of behaviour. Good habits like riveting reading rituals make people evince excellence in several spheres of this life rife with strife. In the distant past, Aristotle advised, “We become what we repeatedly do, excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
In 2019, I read 60 books. In 2020, my target was to read 100 titles. Fortunately, as we were bidding that ill-fated year adieu, I was on the book number 108. In 2021, the target was to read 150, I also hit it. In 2022, by the grace of God, I want to read 200 heroic books. I have started with Life’s Greatest Lessons: 20 Things that Matter by Hal Urban. My clear conscience tells me it is the only way to be become a better writer, editor and orator.
I strongly believe that if you want to read and pick precious perks, then this thing should never be taken as fun per se. It is imperative to have a plausible plan, and a stupendous strategy. Everything must be done with clock-like precision.
There are books you read, and you feel they are talking to you directly –edifying, educating or encouraging you – to become a better version. Reading the series of Malcolm Gladwell in 2021 I think is one of the best choices I made in this year dented by omicron, the lethal Covid-19 strain. The three titles I read included David and Goliath, Outliers and the Tipping Point.
Moreover, voracious readers who want to reap bountiful harvests from the garden of books, should look for (auto)biographies of puissant personalities. For through life stories of legendary leaders, we learn how to live a life replete and complete with purpose.
In 2021, I learnt a lot of lustrous lessons when I read one of the latest autobiographies in town – In the Shadows of My Father by Oburu Oginga – the MP at the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA). I also read a book on the life of Tom Mboya as narrated by the Kenyan walking archive – Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot. Tom Mboya: Life, Death and Disintegration of the Nascent Enterprise ‘Project Kenya’ – is one of the best biographies I read in 2021; that left me informed and inspired.
Finally, I strongly advise readers that in their giant list of books to be read and digested, they try to sneak in panoply of poetry. It is said that prose are the best words, but poetry are the best words in the best order. The colourful cocktail of both prosaic and poetic forms is worth it. Those who read a lot of poetry find pretty ways to express themselves in a manner that is both musical and magical.
The writer is an editor, orator and author.
