The Reading List

This is an updated list of books that you may read to improve your cultural literacy, understanding of diversity and general exposure.

You may choose to read one a month or every couple of months.

Foundational

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
2. Every Other Book Written by Bill Bryson
3. Books on World History and African History e.g A history of Nigeria by Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton
4. African Classics which include:

a. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
b. Sosu's Call - Meshack Asare
c. Une Si Longue Lettre (Trans. So Long A Letter)- Mariama BÂ
d. Terra Sonambula - Mia Couto
e. Nervous Conditions- Tsitsi Dangarembga
f. Antériorité Des Civilisations Nègres- Cheikh Anta Diop
g. L'Amour La Fantasia - Assia Djebar
h. The Cairo Trilogy - Naguib Mahfouz
i. Chaka - Thomas Mokopu Mofolo
j. A Grain Of Wheat- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
k. Oeuvre Poétique- Léopold Sédar Senghor
l. Ake: The Years of Childhood - Wole Soyinka

See a fuller list here: http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/bl100BestBooksA.htm

Or here: http://www.amazon.com/Great-African-Novels/lm/R1X0DX5OEHL21P

General

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Facory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Notes for SMEs

It's amazing how people want the best but aren't willing to pay for it. It's okay for them to prosper but not those who help them.

These are principles SMEs must imbibe or else they'll always be afraid to charge for their services and will never aspire to greatness:

1. The fact that you need my services means you can't do it all and that your success is influenced by the services I provide. Therefore, I am worthy of respect and should be treated like a professional

2. When I come to your company, it never occurs to you to give me your services free; therefore kindly do not expect the same from me

3. If my services can help you make millions of dollars, do not begrudge me if I use the same brain to make billions of dollars for myself. We are both businessmen

4. My charges reflect the value I place on myself and my services. If you don't want to pay, kindly do not threaten me with walking away. Someone else will pay. Furthermore, you are not the source of my prosperity, God is

5. I may be small today but have plans to be great. Therefore, if you see me driving a new car or flying in first class someday; It is not the money you paid me that facilitated it - I have other clients besides you. Don't envy me

6. A service provider is not synonymous with servant. How would you like it if your clients looked down on you too?

7. I will never price myself at a loss to please you or because of our relationship. If you really mean well for me, you wouldn't ask me to commit business suicide