Pictures speak a thousand words...

Blink again, you're in the right place. Truth of the matter was that I was starting to miss the stark simplicity of my all white background and so I went and got it back.

...So if you've been reading my blog/paying attention, you will know that I've had this Harry Potter Fantasy in which I stroll into a Salvation Army/Goodwill store and discover that someone donated their entire collection of Harry Potter novels and yadi yadi yada.
Well, I will say that it didn't quite work out that way. As opposed to making a one time stroll into the Goodwill, it took more like 4 strolls. One one occasion I was lucky enough to snag books 4 and 5 on the same day but every thing else was on some walk in and peruse the book section and hope to get lucky.
Aniwoos like the title of ze post says...pictures speak a thousand words so please allow me update y'all picture style on my HP collection.

As of Aug 15, 2009...I, the Original Mgbeks am the proud owner of books 2-7 of the HP collection. For some reason, book 1 has been very hard to find but I aint fazed. Yes we can baby!
How you like me now???



Decided to include some bonus pics of one of the things on my 'Pride and Joy' list...bookshelf numero uno with some of my favorite books.



Ze bookshelf was originally white but one random summer day I decided to engage in some DIY style activities and painted it a lovely mustard color. I still have an unpainted one which I swore I'd paint this summer but *ahem*, it doesn't seem to be happening.
I'd say that a good 75% of the books in this mix were Goodwill finds with one of the most recent being 'A thousand splendid suns' by Khaled Hosseini. I hope it's as good as the 'Kite Runner'.


And in more book yarns:
I'm looking into building an African Author collection starting with the likes of Elechi Amadi, Chinua Achebe etc etc. As I type, I am expecting to receive my Chimamanda books in the mail any time soon. Yay to that!
My dream of owning a personal library that will make the county's public librarian go cross eyed with envy is coming ooo! LOL.

I hope y'all are having a good weekend so far...

Peace & Love.

Harry Potter inspired memories...

Update on my collection: 2 down, 5 to go. I found yet another hardback for 99c…dreams can come true. Yes we can baby! :-)

But this post isn’t about that…
Apart from the fact that I’m such a huge HP fan and I truly enjoy reading the books, Harry Potter is one of the things that makes me think of of Ken. I very vividly remember the day I started Uni in Naija, fresh and fly jambito I was. I was set with my hair looking good, a cute outfit and a hardback Harry Potter novel in my hand. You know how the first day of school be, no lecturer was going to be teaching anything for the first week or 2 but people went on campus to register and kiki it up with friends…which was pretty much what I was going to do.My sister who is like my second mommy and has always looked out for me, gave me the once over to ensure that her lil sis wasn’t going to go and disgrace her on campus and observed my Harry Potter book. She said ‘Aha, you have your Harry Potter…correct girl. Now any guy who asks you about it or says that he wants to read it after you is probably a correct guy who knows what’s up…’ Hehehehe, gotta love my sister o jare! She always brings it with the good advice. I took note of what she said, and I was off to school.

Like I anticipated, there were no classes and day #1 involved a whole lot of standing in line to register. When I was done, I hopped on an Okada and went to meet up with a friend of mine who was at her boyfriend’s house…and that is where I met Ken. One of the first things he said as soon as we were introduced was… ‘Oh you have that HP, can I read it after you?’ and I remembered my sister’s words of advice and smiled. But all wasn’t instantly gravy between Ken and I…I mean dude was kinda sweating me hard and I could tell, so me being the fronting, shakara making jambito that I was proceeded to make shakara for dear ol’ Ken.

When I was finished with the bubbling, I went home to gist my sister of how my first day of Uni was. The funny thing was that she happened to be at home with her really good friend Karen; who unknown to me was Ken’s sister. So I walked into my house and sister dearest and Karen wanted to know how school was, and which guys toasted me etc etc so you know I was in there running my mouth about this dude named Ken who was sweating me hard but I just wasn’t feeling him, I even added small jara for them sef…LMAO. After I don nack the tori finish, my sister and Karen looked at each other and burst out laughing. I was confused… ‘Did I say something wrong’, ‘what is so funny’ and in between giggles my sister told me that Ken was Karen’s brother. Jesu! I just wished that the floor would open up and swallow me…like dag. Talk about set up! I begged Karen not to tell Ken what I said and she promised not to, but na beans? Karen definitely told her brother because after that I would run into Ken on campus and he would seriously bone my side ehn! I mean, I felt kinda bad and even suddenly started to think he was kinda sexy but ah well, it was what it was. Ish happens…

Fastforward 2 years later
One day, I got a random call from a random area code and I picked up out of curiosity. It was Ken on the phone…he had just moved to this end and my sister gave him my #. It was so weird, yet funny…we really caught up on gist and even talked about our first encounter. He said he had written me off as one of those childish jambito babes. LMAO…
From that day on, we talked like almost every day and got to be very close. We even started to make plans to meet up, as we expressed a mutual interest in each other. I mean, Ken was like a comfort zone to me…I could talk about everything and anything and he was always willing to listen.
But seriously folk, is it that all good things must come to an end? Because, in this case…it did. You see, Ken had come to these parts for medical reasons and somewhere along the line when we all thought that all was well with him, and he was going to be okay, move on with his life and get started with his hopes, dreams and ambitions…things just went downhill in a serious way and just like that, my dearest Ken was gone.

It was a heartbreaking loss to everyone…his family, his friends, me…everyone! And the last thing that I could do out of respect to him was to go for his burial. How sad that we never quite got a chance to visit each other as planned and when I finally entered his hood, it was to wish him goodbye for the very last time…
I still think of him, and apart from Harry Potter, there are a bunch of very random little things that remind me of him. He was such a HUGE fan of the rapper Nas. When Nas and Jay-Z finally settled their beef, I thought ‘Dag! Ken would have loved to see this’ …just things like that.

He is truly missed and I pray that his soul continues to rest in perfect, perfect peace.
Amen.

My Harry Potter fantasy

Thanks for the comments on the previous post. If you saw the humor in it, I salute you! If you felt attacked/didn't see the humor, I still salute you. Make my britigerians no vex and block my application for britico visa o, I still wan chop that Nandos. And my Naija peeps, nothing but love from this end o.

Aniwoos on to the koko, make we yarn the main...the main...

I LOVE the Harry Potter books (Never watched the movies though). I was first introduced to HP back in Naija, when one of my oh-so lovely friends happened to move into the neighborhood and me, being the nice and friendly neighbor that I was, popped over to her house one day to introduce myself, make nice and at the same time do amebo work and see who the new chickito in town was. I think we hit it off (although she insists that we didn't..haha!), but either way I made it a point to visit her more often after I discovered that she had an admirable collection of CD's and books. One day I saw the Harry Potter book lying around, asked if I could borrow it and the rest is history...

I put my sister on it. I raved about it to whoever would listen. I mean, Harry Potter had me at Chapter 1.

So lately, I've been having this fantasy. I fantasize that I will walk into a Salvation Army/ Goodwill store and discover that some random individual got sick and tired of their Harry Potter collection and donated the entire thing to Goodwill, and of course I snatch the donated goods up and end up being the proud owner of all the Harry Potter books. Infact in this fantasy I will pay something along the lines of $12 for all 7 hardback novels (Oh, they gotta be hardback...Harry Potter in paperback version will not be as sexy).
Can you blame me for this fantasy? The friggin' paperback box set is currently going for $35 at the minimum on Amazon, and I believe I peeped the hardback set for $100.

But it seems that dreams truly can come true, and if you fantasize hard enough...ish just might pop off. Last week, I really did walk into the Salvation Army and decided to take a quick mental scan of the books that they had on inventory and SHO 'NUFF I could not believe my eyes when I spied with my little eyes, the 3rd HP book; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Ooooh weee, I was pretty darn elated, and even more so after I ended up paying $ 2.00 for the hardback. So now I believe that somehow my wish of stocking my library with the entire HP series will come true, I just need to keep a watchful eye on the book rack in the Salvation Army/Goodwill.

P.S:- If you are looking to beef up your mini library for cheap, Salvation Army/Goodwill is a good place to check out if you're up for it. I recently got 'The other Boleyn Girl' ( REALLY good book by the way, read it before but I figured that for $1, it would be a good thing to add to the library), A couple of Jane Green and Marian Keyes books (Gotta love the British authors, their sense of humor is off the hook) and a rack of others.

Next up on my 'walk into the Goodwill and I pray I see it' list: Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie. I'm definitely not holding my breath for these ones but hmmm you just never know. Oh, those are pretty good books by the way...Purple Hibiscus was a definite page turner, I stayed up all night to finish it. HOYS was pretyy good too but it took me 3 tries to finish it.

Hmmph, maybe one of these days I will blog about discovering these Adichie books tucked away in someone's goodwill store. *Fingers crossed*... In the meantime, I am truly on a mission to stock my shelves with the other 6 Harry Potter books. Wish me luck!