The Wonderful World of Joanna Bome Kure

Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work with God’s Plan for the World – Timothy Keller

Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work with God’s Plan for the World is the sort of book that completely resets your medulla oblongata. Relevant to every living human, but I want to emphasise its need for young people. As usual, Keller, in collaboration with Katherine Leary Alsdorf, writes with logical precision and unmatched clarity, using real-life stories and anecdotes to make it digestible and easy to apply to one’s life.

Written in three parts and eleven chapters, the book dissects God’s plan for work, our problem with work and the Gospel and work. Using Scripture as a foundation, Keller expounds on work from Creation and the Fall in Genesis, connecting it to Christ’s work on the Cross and the future New Jerusalem. Every Good Endeavour successfully reminds readers of certain truths about work, especially as these fundamentals are increasingly lost in hustle culture where work is largely viewed as only a way to make money and advance oneself. But work is good, not just because it provides dignity, but because God himself is a worker, and work is also a means through which humans can be fruitful and multiply. I know from personal experience that sometimes work seems pointless, especially when they do not match our desires. However, this book reminds us that in every seemingly pointless and fruitless job, God sees us and knows where we are.

This book is worth more than it costs. My prayer is that God equips me to utilise and build on the insights I gleaned from this book. I cannot recommend the book enough.  Finally, Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work with God’s Plan for the World should not be read in a rush, with room for personal reflection.

The God of Good Looks – Breanne Mc Ivor

I bought this book as a companion for a short work trip. I had never heard of its author, but the title and cover design caught my attention at my neighbourhood supermarket. The God of Good Looks is an unconventional love story of self-love, filial love, patriotism, love of friends and a budding romance all wrapped up in one. Told in a dual point-of-view of the protagonist Bianca Bridge and her eventual lover, Obadiah Cortland, The God of Good Looks is about identity, a tale of triumph over adversity, and good ol’ make-up – professional make-up!

I was impressed that Breanne Mc Ivor was inspired by James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a book I am pining to read. I must say Mc Ivor outdid herself. I googled Trinidad and Tobago for the first time after reading this book. It is not like I did not know it existed. It’s just that before then, I didn’t care much about it. Before then, I did not know Chinese Trinibagonians or Indo Trinibagonians existed until I read this book.

The God of Good Looks is also commentary on the socio-political realities in Trinidad and Tobago; realities somewhat similar to those in Nigeria, like a general lack of noblesse oblige from the elite.  This novel was a good purchase and a better read. However, Christian readers may want to exercise caution over some profane words in the book.

I Do Not Come to You by Chance – Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

I love the title of this book. And I love that it explores the world of advance fee fraud, 419 or yahoo-yahoo, as it is popularly known in Nigeria. The story is told with a humaneness that insists on understanding the psychology of some perpetrators of the offence. The book is no excuse for 419, but it draws readers to possible conditions that lure young people down this path. Rooting for the protagonist, Kingsley Ibe, becomes inevitable because one is either like him (first child, intelligent, jobless) or knows a family member like him.

Published in 2009, I Do Not Come to You by Chance examines Nigerian society and the expectations placed on first-borns (both male and female) and their consequent need to prove themselves and take up family responsibilities. It is relevant now as it was when it was first published. It hit way too close to home for me because I am the first child and have felt similar pressures as the protagonist. The novel also questions why those who follow the books suffer and die undignified, and why socio-economic hardships make it difficult to care for one’s family after retirement from the civil service.

As a debut novel, I do Not Come to You by Chance is impressive and deserves critical acclaim. While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I look forward to watching the film adaptation executively produced by Genevieve Nnaji.

The Karamazov Brothers – Dostoevsky

I was drawn to Dostoevsky by the references from a few Christian podcasters I listen to. They claimed he had a good way of analysing the human condition, as much of it drew from his life experiences and his faith. Thus, the sixteen-year-old me, who could barely read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park for A’ Levels, purchased the book. That same sixteen-year-old would marvel at my comprehension of a dense book like The Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

The Karamazov Brothers explores the problem of evil, the nature of suffering, the human condition, justice, the relationship between faith and reason, the battle of the isms, and the role of the Church in society, among other issues. It explores these questions at great length (my copy is about 900 pages long) and at great depth, but not in a textbook style. It is not a book on the need for world peace but a story. It is an exquisite psychological thriller and a delightful courtroom drama that tells a story of crime, love, family, faith, citizenship, madness, law and justice. Sometimes, I had to pause because it seemed like the author published the book today, not 1880. Some other times, all I could do was snap my fingers at the sheer profundity of some statements.

The Karamazov Brothers is also as much a theological debate as it is a story. It is a debate between the claims of the Christian faith, on one hand, and the claims of atheism (reason/science) and nihilism on the other hand. I think it is important to say that reason/science are not inherently bad and are not diametrically opposed to Christianity. However, it seems to me that Dostoevsky had a problem with the atheistic view of reason and rejection of objective morality. Noteworthily, The Karamazov Brothers was written at a turning point in history: the Age of Enlightenment, where the European intelligentsia argued that the claims of the Bible were obsolete and ultimately against progress. But Dostoevsky makes the point through a character that:

“…secular science, having become a powerful force, has examined in detail, especially in this last century, everything divine bequeathed to us in the Holy Scriptures, but having subjected all that is holy to such rigorous analysis, the scientists of the world have ended up empty handed. For in looking at the component parts in isolation they have quite overlooked the whole, and with a truly astounding lack of vision. But the whole stands inviolate before their eyes, as it always has done, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” P. 215

Both the Christian faith and all the other isms (not just socialism) make a case for what a just world should look like. The constraints of this mode of textual analysis, i.e., writing online and a general review for that matter, limit my ability to present the case of both sides in a composite post. However, Dostoevsky argues that Christianity provides better resources for engaging human suffering and ultimately has a better story about the meaning of life and humanity’s destiny.  It was bold of Dostoevsky to equate socialism to the building of the biblical Tower of Babel, and this has stayed in my mind for days on end. Before reading The Karamazov Brothers, I had never thought to see socialism or any of the isms in the light of a revolt against Heaven. However, after much pondering, I see Dostoevsky’s point about the futility of trying to eradicate suffering and create a just world on our own terms, and I wholeheartedly agree. 

I must mention that my copy was translated by Ignat Avsey and published by Oxford University Press. Many reviews suggest Avsey’s translation is superior. Other translators translate the Russian original as The Brothers Karamazov. Avsey, however, deviates from the norm. That in itself is noteworthy.