Hi friends,
Happy New Year!!
2023 will be amazing, full of opportunities, favor, love, flights, money and God will show up for us in ways we cannot imagine or comprehend. Doors will open for you; your name will be said/ mentioned in rooms you’ve dreamed of. Amen!
I’m grateful for this new beginning. Every year, we begin with optimism and strength for the work ahead and the goals we have planned. While this is a good energy to begin with, I’m leaning towards God’s grace for this year.
I journal a lot. I took a few days to go through them. What feeling did I not write out on those pages? Happiness, joy, fear, trepidation, guilt, jealousy, sadness, hopelessness, communal joy, staleness and peace. It was a mixture of feelings (this was mainly 2020 & 2021). When I read 2022, I noticed changes and it was because I let God take the reins (although, I still dey struggle with handing it over completely).
It’s why I was moved to pray for you all, my people on Beyonce’s internet. We will need his grace to carry us on because we will get tired. Some of us carried over the tiredness from the previous years into this one. Just hold on to God and if you do not believe in God, holding on to friends who actually care about you and family will give you the strength you need to march on.
2023 reading trends…
Is it me or is everyone doing a reading challenge this year? Perhaps, I’ve been spending so much time on Instagram because the reading challenges I have come across have been numerous and delicious. Another trend I noticed is the switch from Goodreads to Storygraph by a lot of readers.
I used both apps to track my reading last year and will tell you freely that Storygraph rocks! Is it the buddy reading feature, tracking books in whatever format you read, book recommendations tailored to your reading taste, tracking reading challenges and seeing what others read too or is it the ability to add .5 or .75 stars to book ratings we’ve been begging Goodreads for?
See, if you haven’t seen the writing on the wall; let me read it out loud. Port to Storygraph and experience decorum in your reading this year. Follow me on Storygraph- aggystacked_
Low key, I feel the tech guys in Goodreads and Zenith bank have one thing in common; they have resigned from their jobs and the companies don’t care about their users.
Do you think you can go on a book buying ban for an entire year while reading only books you own? I know it’s not possible for me but, she did. I found it brave. My version of this is asking myself truly if buying it is totally necessary. If it is, I will buy; if not, I use Scribd or Librofm.
The third trend I noticed is “Bookish ins/outs”. Bookstagram and book twitter comes with a ton of drama. We had drama last year and one that readily comes to mind is a reviewer who felt insulted by R.F Kuang’s writing about a certain race (guess) in Babel. R.F Kuang’s the Poppy Wars trilogy is in my TBR and now, Babel has been added because I need to know what the reviewer read that made her furious.
The Bookish ins/outs trend is all about choices readers are making concerning their reading choices this year. You can go through this and this list to see what it’s about.
If we had libraries in Nigeria, my bookish in would definitely be ‘use the library more’. Alas, the people-at-the-top do not think libraries are necessary.
What are your bookish ins/outs?
Reading goals for 2023…
Pressure isn’t my forte. I knowingly set my reading challenge to 12 books because I want to go with the flow. Reading is an art of self-expression and enjoyment for me, it shouldn’t be associated with trepidation.
With that out of the way, the reading challenges I am participating are below:
It looks a lot, right? One thing about reading challenges is that a book could cover 2/3 prompts. In essence, you can use a book to mark multiple prompts. If you’re interested in tracking these challenges and viewing the prompts, all these challenges are on Storygraph.
Apart from these, there are a few authors whose backlists I want to read. I have read a couple of their works and decided I want to experience their art in its entirety. Lisa See was mentioned in my last newsletter as one of the authors, the other two are Elif Shafak and Kennedy Ryan.
As I read, I will take you along, ok?
My work commutes usually go without drama but, there are some days things happen and the above was one of them. I made this tweet, and a friend wanted me to share another one. This one is a mix of sadness and thoughtfulness.
In the Ake newsletter, I talked a little about grief. Well, I have a little more to share. In November, I lost someone special to me, my family and a lot of people. It started with an illness which shook me because it has a difficult recovery but, I was hopeful she would pull through. I carried long faces to work and my friends did all they could to comfort and assure me. Then, my mom texted me while I was at work to inform me about her death, a week later.
Ebele doesn’t cry in public. She holds it till she gets home, and the floodgates break free. I surely didn’t expect the tears, let alone at work in front of a patient. Luckily for me, she was decent enough to let me recover before giving her medication - God bless her soul.
Anyway, I became this person who cried publicly whenever a memory came through. It was horrible and the lack of control irritated me. One thing about grief is, it hits you anywhere and it has no respect whatsoever. As I prayed to God to comfort her family and friends, I prayed for strength too.
One day, I was heading to work. Immediately I stepped foot, I noticed a guy’s reaction to my appearance; he gawked unceremoniously. Normally, I would let it slide but, I decided to do an “Ebele” thing- I sat down beside him.
Pretty sure he wasn’t expecting it but, I wanted something to distract me from crying and needed to question his reaction. I asked him why he gawked, and he was surprised I noticed. He made a comment about my appearance (*coughs* beauty* coughs*) and I nodded. Anyway, for the rest of the journey, we settled into a steady, animated conversation.
I didn’t cry, even when a memory came to mind.
If you do get to read this K, thank you for your thoughtfulness and dialogue. You helped me get through that day.
This can be romance novel material for the writers among you, just include me in the acknowledgement, ok?
The lesson here is, be kind to people- even if it’s a person daily. Your smile, compliment or help might be an upward shift in someone’s day.
I guess this is it!
The weather isn’t smiling in Nigeria. If you have allergies or respiratory issues, please have your pills and inhalers on your person always. Wear sunscreen, drink enough water and don’t carry ashy skin around.
Moisturize people!
Until next time…
xoxo
Ebele
I read this newsletter from beginning to end!
First, I'm glad you are participating in my reading challenge again this year, thank you 🥰
Second, I'm so sorry for your loss and I'm glad you found solace on your conversation with that person. I hope you keep on finding solace in everything. Thanks for telling us. Enjoyed reading this newsletter!
I haven’t done any reading challenges because I tend to want to read what I want and feel it would restrict that. I live where there are functioning public libraries and I plan to continue to use them. Sorry about your loss and I pray God comforts you and all her loved ones.