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Our March selection for contemporary literature written by a man is Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole.

i just read this in february! i found it so interesting. what is the protocol for book discussions here in your group? do i just chatter away? heh! :) should i hide spoilers?

Jennifer wrote: "i just read this in february! i found it so interesting. what is the protocol for book discussions here in your group? do i just chatter away? heh! :) should i hide spoilers?"

Yes, chatter away! but do hide spoilers for a little bit...

I'm about to read it after Three STrong Women :)

I also just finished this book.
Hope to have my overall comments/impression of the book posted this weekend. (no spoilers)

I'm about half way through. I'm reading on my kindle and I'm on page 91; Teju is visiting with his childhood friend who is a doctor in a private hospital now, making just $500 a month. Teju shows us how little that is by explaining there is no cost of living adjustment so things like cars and televisions cost the same in Lagos as in the US...and a paperback novel costs $14. Earlier in the book (when he was curious about the girl reading on the danfo) I was wondering what factors contribute to such a low reading rate in a country that has reasonable literacy rates and produces some great writing---well, besides the lack of cultural support to read for fun, if a book costs $14 and a doctor makes just $500 a month, that explains a lot! Holy cow!

that sucks = /
(I felt that books were expensive relative to average incomes in Brazil and China as well, the only countries other than UK where I've visited bookshops.)

the money was a constant curiosity and concern for me while reading, marieke.

one of the things i found with this book was the blurred line between fiction and nonfiction. i kept having to remind myself that this was published as a novel. it felt so personal and as if this could be a memoir from cole. i know from reading interviews and listening to cole speak that he wants to challenge the form of the novel, so i think he succeeded really well with every day is for the thief.

Books are expensive in the US too, but still affordable for most people. Also libraries...I'm guessing lending libraries don't really exist in Nigeria, making it even harder to develop widespread reading habits.

Any Nigerian members want to weigh in on this? :)

Omg Jennifer, I totally forgot this is a novel! I've been reading it as a memoir of sorts.

I wonder what is fiction? Friends? Family?

Marieke wrote: "Omg Jennifer, I totally forgot this is a novel! I've been reading it as a memoir of sorts."

RIGHT??? :)

i was constantly reminding myself. i think the inclusion of cole's own black and white photography helps blur that line even further.

Marieke wrote: "Books are expensive in the US too, but still affordable for most people. Also libraries...I'm guessing lending libraries don't really exist in Nigeria, making it even harder to develop widespread r..."

Yes, I am so glad because of my public library I am able to read an interesting variety of books.

While I am not Nigerian, I can think of several reasons why more people are not reading books.
Limited number of book stores and the price of books. Also I have heard from African friends that often the books available in the bookstores are not the ones they want to read. A lot of the books that are available in the US by African writers are not readily available. That also could be because of the publishing rights by country so book distributors may not have the books in their stock.

A lot of the books available are "literary" fiction and this does not appeal to all readers. Genre fiction is becoming more available and so more readers.

Cultural expectations on what one does with their "leisure" time.

i believe in cole's book, when he goes into a bookshop, he talks about the limited variety of the inventory. or am i mis-remembering? i shall have to pull the book back up on my nook, and look at the quotes and passages i saved when i read it last month. :)

Marieke wrote: "Omg Jennifer, I totally forgot this is a novel! I've been reading it as a memoir of sorts.

I wonder what is fiction? Friends? Family?"

Yes, it definitely reads like a memoir.

I think we should always remind ourselves, while reading this book, of that what's written by Cole is a westernized point of view. The types of leasure differ in each country and region. The relatively high price of books does not necessarily mean a bad thing when looked at by many Nigerians because they find greater value and fun in many other beautiful things. Nigerian culture is very rich and I'm sorry but I'd like to express here that this book neglects to describe what lies as the core of Nigerians' lives.

Aki, yes, I agree...the narrator (and author?) had been away for 15 years, but not just any 15 years...this first 15 years of adulthood, which are very formative; but I don't think it's a bad thing that he brings a westernized view to his experience there. I think it helped show his disconnect with the place.

What is it that you think he neglected in his book?

Aki wrote: "I think we should always remind ourselves, while reading this book, of that what's written by Cole is a westernized point of view. The types of leasure differ in each country and region. The relati..."

agreed, but i know i have to keep reminding myself that this book is fiction and it's been hard to extract what may be very personal for cole, to the fiction he's chosen to give readers.

my take from the book was the narrator working through his own personal issues and trying to figure it out, and he happened to be in lagos doing it. so it's just a slice of the whole he's giving us which is a narrower focus than if he was, say, writing nonfiction and getting more into some of the bigger ideas and issues in nigeria. (i hope i am expressing myself well here... i think i am not. sorry!)

i'd love to know (genuinely!) the things you would have liked have had him write about concerning 'what lies at the core of nigerians' lives'.

Thank you for your comments, Marieke and Jennifer. And I'm sorry if I'm spoiling your liking this book...

This is totally my personal point of view, but I think he could have added more in a way that connects readers with Nigerian people's lives - I mean the inside of their real lives. I got an impression the narrator only goes with surface of peoples' actions that are considered not good in Western societies.
For example, I remember the part where he wonders why bribery is so widely ingrained if people talk about God all the time. He didn't go much deeper into the religiousness of the majority of Nigerians, but I wanted more insight on this point: the religion is one of the main forces for maintaining their tenacity and resiliency in life and what would happen without it?

But as you say, this is a fiction book after all and the author can only take a subjective view to develop the story.
I wonder if it's only me who got only a dark and problematic impression of the country from this book? Reading through the narrator's contacts with the people, I felt his frustration and kind of blame on Nigerian society and even ordinary people by measuring everything with Western standard. It was difficult for me to take this "measuring" as a help to feel his disconnect and inner struggle.
I guess if I read the book again, maybe I could focus more on that point.

ah, thanks for explaining things a bit more, aki. it was helpful. for me, i came away with the the feeling that the book was more about the narrator's internal struggle, his trying to figure things out for himself and his own life, more than the book was a focus on nigeria or lagos and trying to address any issues or observations that resulted from being there. he happened to be in lagos (mostly) while he was sorting through things, and i definitely liked the combination of setting and internal reflection. i felt his frustration at moments too, but i didn't feel he was placing blame anywhere. but i also felt a sense of hope - he spent time looking for that ray of light, knowing it had to exist. do you live in nigeria? (i hope you don't mind me asking. i feel like you might, given your response to the novel.)

when i reviewed the book, i quoted this passage:

"Nigeria's disconnection from reality is neatly exemplified in three claims to fame the country has recently received in the world media. Nigeria was declared the most religious country in the world, Nigerians were found to be the world's happiest people, and in Transparency International's 2005 assessment, Nigeria was tied for third from the bottom out of the 159 countries assessed in the corruption perceptions index."

i quite liked it because he's acknowledging the disconnect, but he is also highlighting that nigerians are the happiest people for whom religion is very important. i also feel that the narrator acknowledged his outsiderness, seeing as he had been away from nigeria for so long. there was a sense of him being 'in-between', nigerian and american. had he done the work as nonfiction, i expect much deeper explorations would have gone on.

recently, i read a great memoir about these ideas: And Home Was Kariakoo: A Memoir of East Africa, by M.G. Vassanji. it's personal, but it's also a study in history, and a bit of a travelogue. it was important for vassanji to offer his insider's view that isn't only about the negative things portrayed by the media about east african countries. but he is also 'in-between', since he calls canada home now. it was quite interesting!! after i read it, i imagine what cole would have done were his book to be more like this / a memoir / nonfiction.

sorry for the long ramble. :/

Aki, no worries! The best book discussions are the ones where we don't all agree and have a different experience with the book. It's quite boring if we all say "I liked it."

Thank you for your reply to my question. The funny thing is, I was concerned I would not like the book after you posted in the Teju Cole thread, but I didn't end up reading it the way you did. I actually thought much of what he said was positive and although he was looking for the western things he came to enjoy outside Nigeria, I didn't read that as putting down Nigerian culture at all. I think he was looking for more cultural exchange. I can't find the quote at the moment but I remember him saying something about Shakespeare in Lagos, Soyinka in London. Also, I loved that he pointed out that while fast food was becoming popular and accessible to middle class people, all the fast food was Nigerian--no McDonalds or KFC and he was happy about that.

I think I read this book similar to the way Jennifer did..an internal struggle for someone who had been away, and the frustration at decay and lack of opportunity for people because of how bad corruption had become...

I enjoy discussions about religion so I would have enjoyed it if he had explored that more but I think he just couldn't do everything. I did like that he pointed out that both Christianity and Islam can exist in the same family, though :)

Here are my overall thoughts on the book:

� I have mixed feelings/opinions about this book.
� I think that maybe I have read too many books about contemporary Nigeria as this book explored some of the same issues I have recently read about in fiction and nonfiction. So there was hardly any “newness� to what I listened to. A little while ago I read Into the Go-Slow and this book felt like a re-read/re-hash of the same issues.
� I also think I made a mistake of listening to the audio while waiting on the print book from my library. The audio narrator was a turn-off for me as he makes the book narrator sound arrogant and snobbish and so the book narrator’s journey to understanding himself and the complexities of returning to Lagos were lost.
� I like how the book felt like reading creative non-fiction and when reading I was very much reminded of reading Looking for Transwonderland. But once again I did not feel the emotional connection to Every Day Is For a Thief as I did when reading Looking for Transwonderland.
� I have received the book from the library and liked the inclusion of photographs and the short chapters reading like vignettes make for an easygoing read.
� I do realize this is a re-released book and if I had read when first published I might have found the book more enlightening/thought-provoking before I read other Nigerian authors.
� This is the second book I have read by the author � both to me had a narrator that seemed like he was observing events from hovering in the sky above the situations instead of being emotionally immersed in them.