Books and being bookish...
Oral society to reading society; Somalis slowly moving towards the written word.
I promised a weekly posting, that was during the covid19 lockdown in Melbourne. Apologies to all those who wrote to ask, ‘where is the next post?’, thanks for keeping the faith. So, what happened? In short, life happened. I had more time during the depths of the pandemic. Like many of you other commitments — including travel — accelerated back to full speed. Am sure you can all relate to this as this caught us off guard. Looking at the bigger picture, this is just a little bump in the road. I enjoy writing to you, and it is really a huge privilege, and I am very optimistic about the community we’re building together and this journey we’re on to make sense of Somalia.
I can’t believe how fast time has flown by. Thanks for being part of this community, and I hope you’ll continue to find these posts useful as we push into 2023 and beyond. I put writing posts on pause for a while due to travel and other commitments. To make up for it, as promised in earlier post, I will try a weekly instalment during the university holiday.
Standby for an updated plan for other initiatives, including short notes, chat facility, paper reviews and a roadmap for the next instalments of the posts about the Somali diplomatic deficit, which is also the name of book on the way.
Oral society indeed. I thought I will start with the clip above to prove the point. We like to talk and listen (I hope), some would say, hence our limited presence in the world of books and written literature. Although online content, including videos from the Somali diaspora and many in Somalia are on the raise, the quality of these digital output is questionable. Allow me to remind ourselves, the famous quote from Epictetus ‘that we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak’. And also, when it comes to books and the written word…. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen*. The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, (* see https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Jojen_Reed).
Let me start with quick overview of book publishing and readership, a subject I will return to in future posts. There is a serious debate about the impact of the internet, online and the overall digital revolution on books and the written word on paper. The Jury is still out, but my personal observation on my lengthy time in many libraries and bookshops indicate that the trend towards digital is overwhelming.
A thousand years ago, Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in-waiting at the Japanese imperial court, was in mourning after her husband's death. She retreated to the Ishiyama temple at Lake Biwa near Kyoto. There, while gazing at the moon and freed from distraction, she wrote the 54-chapter and1,200-page story, The Tale of Genji, capturing the peak of Heian court society. This became the world's first novel.
Written to entertain Japanese aristocratic women, The Tale of Genji wasn't only popular in its day - read by the emperor no less - but is recognised today, a millennium later, as one of the enduring classics of world literature, capturing a time and place that have long since disappeared.
History has countless examples like this - human beings putting themselves under the right conditions, especially unbroken concentration, to take on a challenging activity, creating something innovative and valuable. I will return to this topic over the next posts.
Reading and books- where to start? 500,000 to one million books are published annually, but this might not be accurate, as it excludes self-published authors, in which case the figure will be close to 4 million new book titles published each year. During the Covid pandemic book publishers actually thrived and Publisher’s Weekly reported that print book sales rose more than 8.9% since the start of the pandemic in 2020. In any case, visit Book Statistics - Worldometer (worldometers.info) to get almost real time figures. Suffice to say that despite the advent of kindles and e-books, the original book design continues to cascade from presses all over the globe as the recent edition of the economist pointed out that every 30 seconds, a new book appears.
How about Africa? Let me start with the following number and charts. My apologies for the dated figures, that is the reality on data availability about Africa. The number of books published in Egypt is equivalent to what is published in the rest of the continent.
How about Somalia? When I was growing up, my friends and I (Hussein who many of you are familiar with as the writer who shared with us his experience in the Somali Foreign Affairs ministry in early posts and former Hisrshabelle president Mr. Ware) among others spent many memorable days at the USIS library in Mogadishu during the 1970s. I will write more about this and related stories about libraries and books in Somalia in the upcoming posts. Focusing on Somali writers; young and old and readers of different content.
Why do readers love books? was a question asked in the first sentence of a book review in a recent edition of the economist. I enjoy reading book reviews, it really is amazing writing skill to summarise a whole book and sometimes add additional comments. However, how much influence will this have on readers and whether it enhances the marketability, i.e., sales of the book is a hotly debated issue and perhaps I will cover in a future post.
Many of my friends are bookish and we exchange views on books we are reading and lately we try to review some books and share among ourselves, however, soon this will be distributed for wider audience, i.e., for this community we’re building together. Book reviews can inspire us, for example having recently read the economist’s book review of Papyrus**, a book by Irene Vallejo which I highly recommend, it encouraged me to revisit and reread books about books and writing, philosophy and the classics, that I read many moons ago.
Readers love books for variety of reasons for wisdom and wit, the lift of comedy and the noble pain of tragedy, for advice, comfort and entertainment. We like them not just for content and sentiment but also loved as objects.
The last word(s) - here I will share with you what piqued my curiosity the last few weeks.
I read Dr Omar’s paper (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/11/1074?s=08)
And Dr Samatar’s Op-ed piece (https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-11-06-somalias-strategy-for-the-war-against-al-shabaab-will-condemn-the-country-to-perpetual-hell/). Highly recommended for anyone interested in Somali’s current affairs. I will include in future posts, a section on academic papers.
I highly recommended both these two brilliant thought-provoking contributions for anyone interested in Somali’s current affairs. I respect others’ views who found Dr Samatar’s piece controversial, or Dr Yusuf’s paper biased… that is the beauty of academic and freedom of expression. We should encourage contest of ideas. I will include in my future posts, a section on academic papers with additional commentary based on my own reflections.
I must acknowledge Nuruddin Farah, described as "one of the cornerstones of modern East African literature today" and Nadifa Mohamed for their contribution. I will cover their work in future posts.
** Oct 27th 2022 edition of the economist, book review section - “Papyrus” is a lively history of books in the ancient world Texts have long been dangerous and disruptive as well as pleasurable, Irene Vallejo argues.