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Reader,

I haven’t written you since Nairobi LitFest (you can watch my session with David Maillu below and many other sessions on the YouTube channel) because…life has been doing its thing (memoir forthcoming etc etc). I hope to be back to regular updates by the end of Q3.

Before then:

1. I’m putting together a bingo board for this year’s Nairobi International Trade Fair (“the show”) - happening 28th September to 4th October - and would love your suggestions for different squares. I’ll share it with you all when I’m done. Thanks in advance!

2. Listen to and/ or watch my dear friend Winnie Makokha discuss child safety in this podcast episode. I’d love to discuss it with you!

3. This exhibition, which I worked on behind the scenes, opens next week on Wednesday. Please go see it (and take part) if you can (RSVP for the exhibition opening here and for events including talks and a monument walk here)

   

4. Early next month: the African Book Fair. Join me if you can!

5. On the 8th of August, my dear friend Ann Kariuki will be leading the Prelude Orchestra at Loreto Convent Valley Road. Join me if you can (get your ticket here)

   

6. Mark your calendar!

   

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you want to support my work, you can:

🎁 send me a treat 🎁

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Nairobi LitFest starts tomorrow. Say hello when you see this rusticated Nairobian in the city!

I’ll be in conversation with a legend. Join me if you can by registering here

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you want to support my work, you can:

🎁 send me a treat 🎁

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

I have been thinking about oral contraception for weeks because of the Femiplan stock out that seems to be happening (I’ve heard tell of shops carrying it but EYE have not been able to buy a pack in a while) so today I got another brand, which is a Progesterone Only Pill, for all its usefulness.

As a person who, as far as I know, has never been pregnant; menstruation has been a feature of my life for over a quarter century. I am exhausted and that’s the number one reason I take a contraceptive without breaks - there’s something freeing about not having to think about bleeding every 21 to 35 days. And for some of us, the attendant benefits are life-saving.

There’s a genre of right wing book content creator who says contemporary books are bad because they’re “too feminist and gay” but — and maybe I’m not picking up the right books — I find women, and AFAB people broadly defined, don’t seem to exist in books on a corporeal level. I wonder how feminist and gay literature that elides women’s bodies can truly be. The feeling of recognition those of us with big breasts, heavy periods, fibroids, flat chests, PMDD and so on have when we listen to, or watch, someone speak about these things online has been absent from my reading experience.

I wonder if it’s that men are overrepresented among writers (the recurring joke about a women breasting boobily exists for a reason) or that the sort of people who write want to inhabit the first person (if the Iowa Writers Workshop rumours are to be believed) but I increasingly feel that the reason so much of the embodied experience coded as female is obscured is that we don’t encounter it outside of interpersonal moments and medicalised settings. Give me a period with blood running down the leg, give me one so light one doesn’t have to wear pads approximating diapers, give me the relief of post-partum amenorrhea; give me all of it!!!

I’m talking only about periods here because they are the bane of my existence, as old hands know, but I wish this particular female (and/ or AFAB) experience wasn’t just the province of memoirs about the body (loving it, changing it, living with it) because it’s a not-insignificant part of how one moves through the world. And yes, I enjoy a book about class, race, nationality, religion and so on as much as the next person but this reader craves a body. Bring me the bodies!!!

If you know of a book that tackles the bodies and bodily functions of its characters, please let me know! Thanks in advance 🙂

Leave a comment

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Ending on Thursday (fyi: the homie who went over the weekend said there was no mobile network in the godown):

Next week:

I’ll be in conversation with a legend, join me if you can!

Ongoing (contribute here, join the WhatsApp community here):

Go see this show!!!

send me your event poster and alt text!

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished two books since I last wrote to you: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (audiobook narrated by Stina Nielsen & Saskia Maarleveld) and Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century: Stories by Kim Fu (e-book & audiobook narrated by Piper Goodeve, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Samara Naeymi, Gary Tiedemann & Jeena Yi). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

🎁 send me a treat 🎁

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Something happened last week: I finished zero (0) books and barely got my Ray Bradbury Challenge reading in.

That’s it. That’s the tweet. That’s the post.

I have been working my way through Lesser Known Monsters Of The 21st Century: Stories by Kim Fu and I would have finished it if it wasn’t for the instances of reading my cousin’s recommendations.

More importantly, I’m experiencing a weird thing where I’m struggling to read if I can’t hear the text. It led to me adding a text to speech extension on my browser (I’m using Read Aloud from LSD Software) so that I can listen to pretty much any text I come across. Three cheers for accessibility, the basis of such tools online.

Anyway, a lot has happened this last week but not of the variety I want to memorialise here so I hope YOU are having a better reading/ living/ being week. I hope to bring something to the table next week 😅

P.S. I watched My Father’s Shadow (2025, directed by Akinola Davies Jr.) and I want to chat about it with someone so please comment or message me!!!

P.P.S. If you have a stash of Femiplan (once the most affordable oral contraceptive on the Kenyan market), please divide the national cake with me.

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Starting today:

This Saturday

On Sunday (RSVP here):

Next month:

I’ll be in conversation with a legend, join me if you can! RSVP here

Ongoing:

And:

send me your event poster & alt text

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

send me a treat :)

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Share

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Reader,

Weeks ago, the brilliant wa Ngamĩro recommended No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi by Bettina Ng’weno and I have been having such a great time reading it.

As a person who was born outside the city and then lived in Nairobi for most of their childhood and adulthood, so much of what she writes about is so familiar and relevant. It’s also given me my word of the week: rusticated. I told my cousin and the look of glee on his face when he said “So you’ve been rusticated!” was priceless.

We have started a 2-person reading group (not a buddy read; he recommends stories to me from an anthology I lent him) and I read the first one yesterday. Like me, he very easily turns the book he is reading into his “book personality”. My thanks to everyone who has been there for each instance. The most recent was when I read Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History by Vidya Krishnan and made TB facts part of every conversation. The short story I read yesterday - Diary of an Interesting Year by Helen Simpson - came up as we talked about current affairs as we watched TV at their house (there was no power at my house) and it was a good recommendation! I wrote a bit about it in today’s blog post so head there for some more of my thoughts 🙂

Back to No Place Like Home in a New City. In the wake of mention of Singapore being all but banned at the Kenya National Drama and Film Festival, reading a book where Singapore is mentioned as a Royal Charter city feels apropos for some reason. It’s always important to remember that lots of things and places are made (up) and people and plans so often merge and clash to create intriguing spaces.

I’m looking forward to finishing it this week and writing my reflections during the weekly round up and maybe here because I can’t recall the last time a book about place made me feel so seen. Happy to recommend it even before I’m done.

If you’re a Nairobian, or a person interested in Nairobi, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book if and/ or when you read it because this rusticated Nairobian is highlighting a lot of it. You’ll be happy to know the e-book (PDF and EPUB) is available for free so have at it!

Leave a comment

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Tomorrow:

Saturday (register here):

Sunday (register here):

Next weekend:

Ongoing:

Also ongoing (recommended):

send me your event poster & alt text!

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished four books since I last wrote to you: Kin by Tayari Jones (e-book & audiobook narrated by Angel Pean & Ashley J. Hobb), We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek (e-book & audiobook narrated by Shelby Mwambu), Son of Sin by Omar Sakr (e-book & audiobook narrated by Hazem Shammas) and The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein (e-book & audiobook narrated by Finlay Robertson). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

send me a treat 🌱

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Happy New Month and Happy Easter Monday if you celebrate!

This was supposed to go out last week but between another 2-day blackout and all the activities that come with Holy Week (plus my ambitious goal to clean up my Ray Bradbury Challenge entries), today was the earliest I could send this out. Thank you for your patience and please share your March media highlights in the comments!

Books

I finished 15 books in March. I’ve continued doing weekly book reviews on the blog so you can read extended thoughts there.

I read some long books and some short ones, some in translation, and non-fiction, so I feel pretty good about it all round. Also pretty chuffed that 80% of the books were by women during Women’s History Month.

Some highlights:

• The two books I finished at the start of the month - The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad, One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon - were both dystopian texts that centred the Black (as in African American) experience. Highly recommend both.

• Solitaria by Eliana Alves Cruz, translated from Brazilian Portuguese (original title: Solitária) by Benjamin Brooks was also a Black book, this one set in Brazil; with that country and region’s complications. Quick, punchy, read.

• If you’re looking to read short stories from the 1980s and earlier, get into The Heinemann Book of African Women’s Writing, edited by Charlotte H. Bruner. As with all anthologies, it’s a mixed bag but the good stories are well worth it.

Films

I watched 5 films in March. It was another month when wasn’t able to get back to watching a short film a day so please send short film recommendations and feel free to share accounts 😉 to help me get back to it.

I watched two of the 3 films I had chosen for my turn with the film club I’m in (the one with which I watched Our Little Sister) and here are my highlights:

• Bamako (2006, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako) which I picked instead of Saint Omer (2022, directed by Alice Diop) because I was after a courtroom drama set in Africa. It was…something all of its own and I’d love to watch it in a room with other folks

• National Theatre Live: The Importance of Being Earnest (2025, directed by Max Webster); which was available to watch for free on YouTube for a week was such a delight. Watching it with YB reminded me why I love theatre.

Essays, Poems & Poems

These 3 sections will have to come later this month because I struggled to log and write about my Ray Bradbury Challenge reading in March (I haven’t written anything more than placeholder text since 2nd March) and I hope I can deal with that backlog over the coming fortnight.

In April, my plan is to write about my reading regularly (the 2-day blackout didn’t help things) so I’ll be able to report accurately in May. Wish me luck!

Feel free to send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!) - community is always the best way to discover great work :)

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

This Thursday:

Also on Thursday:

Ongoing:

February to April Queer Times Book Club selections:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished seven books since I last wrote to you: Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America by Brendan Ballou (e-book and audiobook narrated by Kevin Kenerly), The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman (free e-book via Project Gutenberg), Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park; illustrated by Denise Brunkus (e-book), Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe (e-book and audiobook narrated by Nneka Okoye), The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (e-book and audiobook narrated by Frankie Corzo & Barton Caplan), Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State by Mahmood Mamdani (e-book) and Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (Commonwealth subtitle: Inside the reckless race for total domination) by Karen Hao (e-book and audiobook narrated by the author). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library), doing weekly blog posts reviewing books and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

send me a treat 💐

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

I was in Nairobi for a number of reasons over the weekend and one of the things I did was go for the Kenya Museum Society book sale. I walked away with one (1) book - Remember Ruben by Mongo Beti, translated from French by Gerald Moore - which I only remembered to throw into the fridge today. There were a number of AWS titles (the heart of a recent entry) but they were dear and I am on a budget so I took photos and walked away from them. I hope they found loving homes!

Today’s entry is going to be short because the thing I really want to do is read a bunch of these marriage drama books that have recently entered the discourse - specifically Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden and Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane by Lindy West, both discussed brilliantly here - and think here about how women write about marriage. On the other hand, I really don’t care for the material enough to put in the time (I’m being honest here!) and I wonder if writing around the books is sufficient. I’ve already put in some time; surely it should count for something.

Before a decision is made: it was jolting to read this newsletter entry about West’s marriage then read the newsletter entry it referenced (now deleted but forever in our hearts inboxes) right after.

One(‘s inbox) contains multitudes or something. And also— I’d missed book and book-adjacent discourse.

Plus— relationship discourse, which this commentator does so well. He makes a great point, which a lot of us millennials who wrote about our lives online learnt the hard way: If you don’t want your name in people’s mouths, don’t put your business on the streets. Sorry for the mixed expressions!

Please send me hot goss/ discourse/ literary news/ book-adjacent stuff. I’m nosy curious and want to be where the mess fun is.

Leave a comment

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Ongoing:

Next weekend (tickets here):

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished five books since I last wrote to you: The Heinemann Book of African Women’s Writing; compiled by Charlotte H. Bruner (e-book), Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang (audiobook narrated by Carolyn Kang), Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood (e-book & audiobook narrated by the author), The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell with illustrations by Ned Asta (audiobook narrated by Morgan Bassichis & Tourmaline; PDF available here) and Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite (audiobook narrated by Weruche Opia, Diana Yekinni & Nnei Opia Clark). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

I forgot to let you know when my hold of Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State came in but this is one of those “the best time was then, the next best time is now” things. And it feels like the right time because this book has me annotating like never before.

I’ve been fighting the urge to live-post about this book (and I’m not yet done) but it’s making me think a lot about how people and countries are narrativised. This book has me feeling especially sensitive about the continuing fact that Africa and Africans are so often written about by people situated off the continent. Old conversation, will not be rehearsing it here, but I feel it keenly as I read this text.

I wish I could say I’ve made notes in books since my high school English teacher gave us permission to write in set books. In fact, I only began doing it outside of school when I started reading digitally. The reader and the writing device are one — all I have to do is type away. The challenge for me, increasingly, is moving from marginalia and consolidating them into some sort of critical media journal (as discussed by Jananie) because every so often books are in conversation but it’s all happening in my noggin, not in some notes (or should I say “second brain”?).

The latest such case is how Mamdani’s writing on the years of war in Northern Uganda has me thinking about We, The Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, which centres women in a narrative of armed conflict in a way that I’m sad to say I still find unfamiliar. I recently borrowed it and hope that approaching the violence of that time from both fiction and non-fiction can enrich what felt like an incomplete narrative.

The thing that all the highlighting and note-taking has crystallised is how vital reading in community is. I am eagerly awaiting a friend’s completion of Mamdani’s book so that we can talk and I may just do a reflection video (another video threatened!) or blog post when I’m done reading both texts. Speaking about Slow Poison during a recent call with friends has made me feel different as I complete the last two chapters of the books; now I speak to the text with them over my shoulders. Which, for this person who has a regular urge to return to university, feels like the closest thing to scholarship as I imagine it.

Before then— let me know if you annotate books, why (whether or not you do), and what book(s) had you highlighting passages lately.

Leave a comment

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

This Saturday (constituent events here, Silent Book Club in the afternoon cancelled)

Ongoing (there will be a guided tour during the Pop Up Market):

Next weekend (tickets here):

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished three books since I last wrote to you: Solitaria by Eliana Alves Cruz, translated from Brazilian Portuguese (original title: Solitária) by Benjamin Brooks (e-book and audiobook narrated by Madeleine Claude), Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana & Hwang Sunwoo, translated from Korean (original title: 여자 둘이 살고 있습니다) by Gene Png (e-book & audiobook narrated by Jessica Lee & Sofia Jin) and The White Book by Han Kang, translated from Korean (original title: 흰) by Deborah Smith (audiobook narrated by Jennifer Kim). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

This is coming to you even later than I anticipated because I was out and about all day Monday and then I arrived home to a house without power. I have called Kenya Power so many times I can now sing along to their new jingle. I know it’s new because I could sing along to the previous one until very recently. Mama Mike thinks Eric Wainaina sang this one - I’m calling it Nuru ya Kenya - so please factcheck in the comments if you know who sang it. [factchecking myself: It looks like it’s Saint P - first I’ve heard of him - from this post].

Leave a comment

I’m writing this from my uncle’s house because while the entire road I live on has no power (yes, I speak to the neighbours and not just because KPLC customer service representatives often ask me if it’s just me without power or more people in the area) while the one he lives on does. The village; it gives (uncle’s home in which to charge devices) and takes (no cafe with wifi to sit at to charge devices). [Update: Power returned 2 or so hours after I left. Whoever at KP said they’d sort it out today was right.]

Onwards.

Certain bookish spaces have been animated by conversations about piracy since a Twitter user posted a link to a number of African Writers Series (AWS) titles on the 2nd of this month. I am tempted to say “This, again?” but (and?) I would like to say a few words about piracy and the conversations we’ve been having (for years, at this point).

Those of us who are (or have been) poor or on low income however one defines it can tell you how expensive books are. Recently, a friend sent me a picture of a paperback that was priced at KES 5,800 (about 45 USD). It was a book in translation from a writer who was disappeared by his state after he wrote it so I imagine the price incorporates all that. Yet spending $40+ on a book is not something to sneeze at. It’s often the case in Kenya that the books we buy are paperback editions of the Commonwealth editions of books and it’s becoming rarer and rarer to find a book under KES 2,000 (15 USD). That puts new books out of reach for most people in countries like mine where so many people make under 100 USD a month.

Buy second hand instead of pirating, we are told. We’d love to, but the second hand book landscape in Kenya is nothing like the West and it feels disingenuous to give the same advice to people who live in countries with a thriving purchase to second hand pipeline and whose who live in countries where what one finds among second hand sellers is often older books (in terms of publication dates or their state) or, increasingly, expensive books (see: shops that’ll sell second hand books at KES 500 - USD 4 - or more).

Borrow titles from the library, we are told. Easy to say perched in countries with comparatively well-funded libraries when one is speaking to folks in countries where some libraries no longer loan books and more and more of them are means of personal and institutional myth-making more than they are places to come upon contemporary titles.

We are not operating from the same places, we are not reading from the same scripts.

I, too, was once a prolific pirate liberator of digital titles. I’d read about a book, look it up on one of that time’s book-sharing sites of choice, download the EPUB, and read. The only things that stood between me and a book were time and whether it was available on those sites. It led to a lot of Western and Western-published books; because that is what those sites privilege. It also resulted in me asking myself a lot of questions about what sort of reader I wanted to be, and how to remedy the imbalance I saw in my reading. Why was I, an African living in Africa, rarely reading books published on the continent? Did I need a Western publisher’s imprimatur to pick up a book? I’m still trying to cure that situation and there has been writing that shows it’s not just a Mike Matter.

For the 2 or so years I had some disposable income, I bought a few African books (I’m especially grateful for the Macondo Festival as a site of discovery and purchases). Even then, I was always keenly aware of how much they cost and the fact that there was rarely a sale on those titles. KES 1,500+ (13+ USD) for paperbacks was the norm then and I couldn’t begrudge a liberator. I still don’t.

In the time since, some people have generously shared their library cards with me (email me - 100onbooks@proton.me - if you’d like to share yours. I try to keep my loans at sub-10 across cards at a time so you’ll barely notice me) so I’ve left the land of piracy and entered that of holds, waits, and 14-21 day loans. The ephemerality of the digital over the years was good practice for a time-limited reading experience; though one sometimes misses the way an EPUB would stay on their device, as opposed to the “Title Not Available” message one gets when they tap a cover. Sometimes it’s weeks till I can borrow a title again and one almost has to start from the beginning so you win some, you lose some (you also learn to limit how many books you borrow, so you have a fair chance at reading them).

All this to say, I understand when people say they pirate books because they don’t have money. I have spent most of my adult life under- or unemployed. Yet I have read through the years of fasting (and they were many, this is one of them) and those of feasting. I have always been a reader (for my 65th birthday, life being granted to me, I’ll put together a slideshow of photos of me reading since childhood) but I’ve not always had money or someone to buy me books. If every book I read had to be purchased, I’d read way less. That’s not an uncommon occurrence. When I see folks come out and say (in one case verbatim) “Don’t read books if you don’t have money to buy them” I’m astounded by how anti-poor and anti-intellectual they come across. Either reading is valuable, in and of itself, or it is not. And if it is, let people come to it even by piracy!!!

In another world we would all have libraries a short walk or ride from our homes that are well-stocked and responsive to the needs of users. Some of us live in that world, lots of us do not. As a certified complainer (Sara Ahmed I will always love you!), I am always irritated by the sort of people who want to extract solutions from people who complain. Sometimes we just want to vent! In this instance, though, I wonder how many people would be willing to lend their digital library credentials to the cause. Let the people have access to those digital holds and loans, as a treat. I could make noise about the state of Kenyan libraries for days (G-d knows I have) but while we’re in this moment, libraries are not the solution so many posters seem to think they are (sorry!).

And now, to speak to the AWS of it all. This particular Drive folder (which was shut down in record time) was a dream come true for me. One I did not know I had, because one doesn’t always think they can dare to dream. In the world of film, folks have been writing and speaking about the fact that pirates represent people whose archival impulse transcends collecting to encompass sharing. More and more, with streaming platforms deleting or editing media, these pirated copies are sometimes the only record that something existed. This dynamic isn’t limited to film and TV. Jeff’s site will sometimes edit book covers (and much more besides; plus one doesn’t own their books) so an EPUB may be the only way a certain instance of a book exists other than print (still the holy grail for me; I will be accepting questions). These AWS books were a revelation because so many of those books are out of print. Someone - or some people - had taken the time to scan hundreds of pages of books in libraries and so on and shared them. Even the person who initiated the first round of drama about those books detailed how she has less than 10% of the AWS titles. They’re hard to find (the 6 I have are prized possessions) and, in a continent where estate sales are not the norm, often disappear when the people who collected when as they were published pass on. Free the books, I say. I know that some titles have since been republished by Apollo Africa, a collaboration between Black Star Books and Head of Zeus (the EPUBs in that now-gone Drive, for instance) but for the 100+ that haven’t gotten that treatment, the PDFs were a treasure trove.

Unless we can address the issues of cost and access, piracy will be a perennial concern. I know some Intellectual Property (IP) defenders will rise up. Some of my best friends are IP lawyers etc. As a creative surely I, of all people, should want other creatives paid. I do!!! That’s why I’d love to have affordable books (see: book prices in India), more contemporary books offered by second hand booksellers and for more books to be eligible for public lending right schemes. We can have it all; there’s enough for us all. And before then, let the people read :)

One more thing. Those of us who have pirated books because of cost or access (or both) often buy titles they have loved if and when they have money. The possibilities abound; nothing is stopping us from imagining a world where all the people can read all the books.

For those making books, please work towards making “legitimate” books broadly available. For those sailing the high seas, stay safe out there.

send me book money xx

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Ongoing:

This weekend:

Upcoming Queer Times Book Club titles:

Save the date/ mark your calendar for a bookish day on 21 March — this sale in the morning, Silent Book Club in the afternoon

Get into the book before the meeting details are shared (probably the last Sunday of March)

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

I have finished two books since I last wrote to you: One Of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon (e-book and audiobook narrated by Nicole Lewis) and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (audiobook narrated by Amy Brenneman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jamie Hanes & Frederick Coffin). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Happy New Month!

And Happy Birthday to Mama Mike, whose Big Birthday™ it is today!

An alternate subtitle of this entry should be “short month, long list” because even though I called February 2026 a “flop month” yesterday when I shared my Storygraph graphic with the Ụmụ Akwụkwọ Literary Club 🗺️, I have more highlights than last month. I highly recommend reading in community and finding anthologies one enjoys!

I promised I’d do a quarterly update on my 2026 reading goals in March so I won’t be posting monthly here. I’ll link that update when I put it out. I’m yet to return to YouTube but I hope this is the month it happens (February was a low energy time for this Spoonie).

Books

I finished 6 books in February. I’ve continued doing weekly book reviews on the blog so you can read extended thoughts there.

This month’s highlights:

• Lovers of literature that focuses on working class people (bonus points if you enjoy a novel set in a day), get into Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa. A slim novel that packs a punch; I highly recommend it.

• If you love reality TV you’ll enjoy Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum. The way Nussbaum provides a history of a universe some of us have been exposed to for years is a revelation

Films

I watched 8 films in February. I wasn’t able to get back to watching a short film a day so please send short film recommendations and feel free to share accounts 😉 to help me get back to it.

It was a good month overall so here are some highlights:

• Two People Exchanging Saliva {Deux personnes échangeant de la salive} (2024, directed by Alexandre Singh & Natalie Musteata) was unnervingly good. I’ll be thinking about it for a while. I watched it on YouTube.

• The Librarians (2025, directed by Kim A. Snyder) is for library lovers. Focused on the US, it raises many questions about what, and who, a library is for. This was another one I watched on YouTube (previously behind a PBS paywall)

• My first 5 star film of the month - Banel & Adama {Banel e Adama} (2023, directed by Ramata-Toulaye Sy) - is one I discussed here. Annual rewatch film added to the canon? [Note to self: create an annual rewatch list on Letterboxd]

• The only other 5 star film I watched - Our Little Sister {海街diary} (2015, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda) - broke and mended my heart. I’m so grateful for the film club I watched it with.

Essays

I read a few essays due to the 1000 Nights Challenge (you can find them here). Here are some I’ll be thinking about for a while:

(Note: I should add one more to this list - A lesson in coexistence by Toby Green, which I finished on 1st February - but I accidentally put in the January list)

• What technology takes from us – and how to take it back by Rebecca Solnit (available to listen; narrated by Laurel Lefkow) | Solnit makes some great points about life mediated by technology

• Swallowed up by the earth by Josaphat Musamba and Quentin Noirfalisse in Issue 227 of The Continent | This felt like a corrective after the narrative that was Cobalt Red. I recommend The Continent for sharp writing on Africa

• How to Be an Anticapitalist Today by Erik Olin Wright via a Bluesky post by Mariame Kaba | This made me pick up his book - How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century - because it made some great points.

• The Broken Record by Audrey Watters; in my inbox | EdTech’s Cassandra continues to do good work. Keep AI out of education, please!!!

• What If Trevor Noah Is Right About the Left and Religion? by Liz Bucar via someone in the 1000 Nights Discord server | Interesting to read an argument for religion in politics as a person who dislikes the way it’s often marshalled

• 2 essays by Trevor Mukholi - the “art world” is in the Epstein files. and The Professor Who Abolished African Nations | I read the second because I was getting ready to pick up Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book and I was led to it by an invigorating conversation with folks in my zine group. The first is timely.

• 2 essays by Mary Turfah - I’m Not Done with You and Doctors Without Politics | I read the former after it was shared on Bluesky and it led me to the latter. Read and weep about how so many have stood by as Israel has tried to disappear Palestinians

• Learning From the UAW’s National Organizing Push by Chris Brooks via this Bluesky post | I’ve been slowly reading a book about organising - Organizing: People, Power, Change by Marshall Ganz - for months. Interesting to see some of its main ideas upended.

Poems

I read several poems due to the 1000 Nights Challenge (you can find them here) and there were a few I am still thinking about:

From the 1000 Nights Discord server:

• Bogland by Seamus Heaney | Reading about this such an education

• My Hispanitude by Darrel Alejandro Holnes | More Afro-Latin poems, please!!!

• Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi | A grief poem, if you need one

• I live at the foot of Taipei by Maniniwei, translated from Chinese by Emily Lu | A delight for those of us who love poems about place, especially cities

From the poetry books I’ve been reading (Modern Poetry of Pakistan; edited by Iftikhar Arif & translations edited by Waqas Khwaja and Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall; edited by Stephanie Burt):

• A Prayer for the Homeland by Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, translated from Urdu by Omer Khwaja | Famed disliker of patriotism goes in for this. More at 9

• You Throw a Party and Everyone You Have Ever Been Attracted To Is There by Stephanie Chan | A very bisexual poem, with all that entails

From seeking out African poetry, 2 poems by Namibians:

• Silence of Mariental by Martha Hagemann | If you, like me, have feelings about dams and colonialism, this does some work

• The Silence After Congratulations by Johannes Shikongo | *cries in tarmacking and its digital equivalents* When will the graduate premium arrive for so many young people?

Short Stories

In The Heinemann Book of African Women’s Writing; compiled by Charlotte Bruner:

• The Story of Jesus--According to Mokuba, the Beloved Tribesman by Violet Dias Lannoy | Set in Kenya, the way things were both familiar and unfamiliar was such a ride

• Regina’s Baby by Jean Marquard | Reading something set during Apartheid, in the same month I watched Long Night’s Journey Into Day (2000, directed by Deborah Hoffmann & Frances Reid), was jarring

• Bowl Like Hole by Zoë Wicomb | Class, race, capitalism, and much more besides. A rich text.

In A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker 1925-2025; edited by Deborah Treisman:

• In The South by Salman Rushdie | As a known lover of literature featuring old people, I enjoyed this

• Visitor by Bryan Washington | I love a story that complicates one’s narrative of one’s parents and other elders. Also, I’m a known lover of Bryan Washington, whose latest novel Palaver I absolutely loved

Discovered via the 1000 Night Discord server:

• The Feminist by Tony Tulathimutte | This is one of the stories in Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte which I saw discussed when it was released and which 2 people in the server have said positive things about

Feel free to send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!) - community is always the best way to discover great work!

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Ongoing:

Next Saturday (register here):

Save the date/ mark your calendar for a bookish day on 21 March — this sale in the morning, Silent Book Club in the afternoon

Get into the Queer Times Book Club book of the month before the meeting details are shared (probably the last Sunday of March):

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished two books since I last wrote to you: Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa (e-book and audiobook narrated by Zoe Doyle) and The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad (e-book and audiobook narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

send me a treat 🧁

• Share an excerpt on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Ramadhan Mubarak and Happy Lent to all who observe!

Last week, I went for Ash Wednesday service too late to get ashes. A group Zoom call with a Catholic priest later in the day made me feel better about it (plus my fellow Kenyan Anglicans have only recently come into Ash Wednesday, despite it being mentioned in Our Modern Services) so Lent was a go.

This year, I’m almost a week in and have no plans, despite reading all sorts of guidance about Lent, and downloading the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Lenten Campaign 2026 Booklet. I know the 3 things I need to aim for are praying, fasting, and almsgiving. Light on the prayer on any given day, trying to fast from the internet, and trying to figure out almsgiving in the midst of (un)(der)employment. Please send any and all Lenten ideas!

I have been thinking about libraries for years and a recent dispatch from Mariame Kaba has me thinking about libraries in Kenya and their funding. When last I was at KNLS Maktaba Kuu, I was shocked to learn that one can no longer take home books. We’re engaged in such different fights — folks in the US speak of libraries as the last commons, we are charged 20KES (16 US cents) to access libraries from which we cannot borrow books and which sometimes do not have toilet paper — and yet I think of the power libraries still have in Kenya. They are places to study, to pause indoors inexpensively, to get wi-fi, to discover books that are sometimes out of print, to attend events, to introduce children to new environments.

One of the things I miss now that I am in the village is library access, even as I acknowledge how far one had to go to visit a public library when they lived close to Nairobi (Macmillan, for example, or my dear Maktaba Kuu, which brought me up in the days when it was the Nairobi Area Library) and I keep thinking about how to bring the particular joy of libraries to my community. I’d love to hear from folks who have started community libraries, participate in their administration, or are in a “friends of the library” group for advice on how to create a similar space where I am.

The thing that strikes me about the demand being made of Mayor Mamdani is that he sticks to his commitment to assign at least 0.5% of the city’s budget to libraries. Looking into the situation in Kenya, I cannot find any budgetary floor for funding or mandated minimum and maybe 2026 is the year I act on my perpetual joke that if I ever run for political office, libraries will be my sole platform. Part of me thinks the popular narrative about Kenya’s poor reading culture (it’s mentioned in the KNLS 2022-2027 Strategic Plan so you know it’s true!) and the low per capita numbers (less even than the 20/- a day one is charged for entry) in the budget are an indicator of where libraries lie in the national list of priotities.

Either way, reading about libraries has - in the words of my country people - left me with more questions than answers. Is this an animating issue? Can one work with others to make it so? How do we get a library within walking distance of every Kenyan?

Not much (else) happened last week (not least because of menorrhagia) so there’s not much to report (not much reading or writing was done either. See: the blog) but I’m hoping for a better week and some progress (finally) on the Personal Curriculum front; maybe even a zine. Wish me luck!

send me a treat for luck 🫶🏽

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

Ending this Saturday:

This Sunday:

Ongoing:

Next month:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

I have finished two books since I last wrote to you: Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives by Emily Amick and Sami Sage (e-book and audiobook narrated by Nikki Massoud) and How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (e-book and audiobook narrated by Fred Sanders). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Happy Monday after Valentine’s Day to all who celebrate!

On Saturday, I went to the first Mengi Mengi Film Club meeting of the year and it was such a delight to watch films with other people. I’d watched the feature film - Banel & Adama {Banel e Adama} (2023, directed by Ramata-Toulaye Sy) - before and yet it felt like a new film. Please let me know if you have watched it because this viewing had me thinking about how queer the film is. Or maybe I am queering everything (and why not, it’s LGBTQ+ History Month somewhere in the world).

Before the screening, I asked the shuttle driver to drop me off at the Nairobi National Museum to see Peteros Ndunde’s show. I had the pleasure of having a chat with the artist after I walked around the show; a joy considering he had an artist talk lined up at 2pm which I couldn’t attend as I’d be at the screening. Please see it if you love art, book illustrations, and the fantastical.

Both these events reminded me of the power of revising; whether it’s re-reading a book, watching a film again, or seeing an art show.

The first, I struggle to do. Mostly because books take time and my TBR list is long. Strangely, even being in my 3X speed audiobook era hasn’t made re-reading appealing. Even then, I am aware that you cannot step into the same river twice. If you’re a re-reader, I’d like to hear why you enjoy it, and how you go about it.

Re-watching a film isn’t as hard, as demonstrated by my trip to Nairobi over the weekend. Part of it is that I am a very vibes-based watcher. A cursory look at my Letterboxd reveals a non-zero number of reviews that amount to just the word “HEH” so I’m always happy to go back and see what else there is (or why my past self had that reaction). That said, I am trying to build back my media journal practice because I have written many a short review in-cinema in the past and not revisited what is sometimes a strong visceral feeling. I stuck film posters and wrote reviews in a notebook for a while in early 2025 and I think I’ll get back to it because I’d like to plumb the depths of feeling films evoke long after I am done.

Seeing an art show again, on the other hand, is not always easy; especially now that I live out of Nairobi and have to make a bunch of calculations every time I venture into the city. I found myself stacking on my experiences on Saturday, though. I had seen Wahenga wa Sanaa: Tracing two centuries of artistic legacy (1800 - 1980) on Sunday 8th February and yet I still saw new things. Moments like those make my annual Kenya Museum Society membership (Nature Kenya also offers the benefit of free museum entry) well worth it. Please see the show if you can — it’s a delight for anyone interested in Kenyan art and its history.

I’d love to hear what is bringing you joy lately – whether it’s your first encounter, or it’s a revisit. I’d especially love to hear the why. It always makes for wonderful conversation.

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Ongoing:

• Happening soon:

  

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished two books since I last wrote to you: Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum (e-book and audiobook narrated by Gabra Zackman) and Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara (e-book and audiobook narrated by Peter Ganim). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

get me a treat

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

On Saturday, I went to my first Powerpoint Party and shared the 4 strands of my 2026 Personal Curriculum (my thanks, as always, to Jananie for putting me on) so I’m sharing here for public accountability.

I’ll share each strand and the measurable goal I’ll be aiming for at the end of my year.

Strand 1: Learn Spanish 🇪🇸

Years ago, I decided I would read Gabriel García Márquez in the original Spanish. It’s been almost 20 years; I still can’t read my Spanish edition of Charlotte’s Web but this is the year when I can finish a book. Even if it’s just one of the children’s titles mentioned here. Please send me any and all resources (not Duolingo!) that you’ve found useful in your language learning 🙂

Goal: Read a simple book 📚

Record myself reading a Spanish book on video and tell the story in English 🙂

Strand 2: Dairy Technology 🐄

Since I moved to the village, I have been craving the variety of cheese and yoghurt I enjoyed in Nairobi. A conversation with a friend led to me learning about Ethiopia’s fermented dairy products. I also enjoy certain Indian fermented dairy products and I want to learn more about how they are made.

Goal: Make a dairy product 🧀

Present some dairy products I have made at an event at home or alone. I will document the process with pictures; maybe even do a little podcast series? We’ll see. I’m taking suggestions!

Strand 3: Community Radio 📻🎙️

I have loved community radio for more than a decade and was surprised there wasn’t one in the area where I am now living. Since moving here, I have immersed myself in writing about community radio. I love national, even international, radio stations AND there is something powerful about something local.

Goal: Pitch a local station 🎧

Without doxxing myself, I live in an area with low enrolment at the local comprehensive school and no community library. I’ve been thinking of using the unused classrooms for the radio station. While the school is not an ideal location (safeguarding, for one), a similar space would be great for a library/ studio combo. So let’s see if I can pitch it to the community. If I have an episode recorded in a community radio station at year’s end, I’ll count it as a success.

Strand 4: Tech Skills 🐍

Last year, I wanted to learn Python but the way my spoons were stacked? This year, when I said I was hoping to learn it, a friendly person in the Anti Brain Rot Discord suggested learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript & C++ before. I know some of the first 2 and I have never checked out the other 2 so I’m hoping to build a foundation.

The other tech skills I’m hoping to acquire are around editing videos and sound because I’d like to bring back my channel and podcast. So… big on tech; even though sometimes tech is tek.

Goal: Build a site highlighting my tech skills 🧑🏾‍💻▶️

Basically what it says on the tin. I always tell creatives to have a website and if I am to think of myself as a creative, and this as a creative pursuit, let me make a website! I’ll definitely post a link here when I do it 🙂

🎯 The goal, more than anything, is to learn and experiment. Feel free to send advice, tips, tricks, encouragement, money even (to buy study materials) and thanks for reading this far ✨

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Some upcoming events, in the spirit of kiwaru ⤵️

• Mengi Mengi Film Club this Valentine’s. Sign up here.

• Queer Times Book Club to start off March (RSVP here)

• Kenya Museum Society pop up market; always a great place to get second hand books

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

  I have finished one book since I last wrote to you: Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson by Tourmaline (e-book and audiobook narrated by Tourmaline). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

  As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

  Leave a comment

  ---

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

get me a treat

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Subscribe now

Reader,

Yesterday I was so caught up doing chores I somehow forgot to post here. No worries, because I was able to see a media round up that inspired this post.

Going forward, I’ll be sharing a monthly highlight reel as I work towards recreating Aisha’s Fighting the Brain Rot 2025 series. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to YouTube soon (I miss being there, and weekly videos may be manageable) along the same lines (yes, I spoke to sister about this) so here are some media highlights from January 2026.

On the reading front, I have some intentions and, starting next month, I’ll use the 5 goals in this blog post to measure my reading progress. Before then:

Books

I finished 11 books in January. I’ve started doing weekly book reviews on the blog so you can read extended thoughts there.

Some highlights:

• I finally read La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono. I’m tempted to re-read it because I’ve seen some negative reviews since I finished it and I’m curious to look at it with new eyes

• I want a copy of Special Topics in Being a Human: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I’ve Learned the Hard Way about Caring for People, Including Myself by S. Bear Bergman; illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson. So much good stuff!

• Lovers of absurd literature: get into Hangman by Maya Binyam!!! I don’t know how I didn’t know of it earlier but I recommend Brittle Paper round-ups 🙂

• Folks curious about India from an outsider’s perspective: try The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco

Films

I only watched the one - Foundling (2025, directed by Nina Podlesnyak) which I watched on YouTube with my nephew - and I absolutely adored it. I’m hoping to get back to watching a short film a day so please send short film recommendations and feel free to share accounts ;)

Essays

I read a few essays due to the 1000 Nights Challenge (which I discuss here) and there were some stand-out ones. I try to write about all the ones I read but there are some gaps because I live in a society. Here are some I’ll be thinking about:

• The New Literalism Plaguing Today’s Biggest Movies by Namwali Serpell via this Afrocritik article - I love writing about media and this will sit with me for a while

• Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons? by Ursula K. LeGuin - this came to my attention via this tweet during the annual wildness that is reading wrap ups. I immediately sent it to the homie and now I intend to read the book it appears in.

• A lesson in coexistence by Toby Green via Ory’s newsletter - this was an education

• ‘There were a lot of threads working against this happening’: How Stevie Wonder’s joyful hit song changed the US by Diane Bernard - I read this on my birthday and it gave me a deeper understanding of “the Black Happy Birthday song”

• Nollywood Needs NollyTube, But Does NollyTube Need Our Brains to be Turned Off? by Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku via the Afrocritik article above - I have been offered NollyTube films in the past and now I view them with some depth thanks to this. Yet to watch one (!)

• A Portrait of Building A Body by Nathan Shuherk - this mix of the personal and historical is the sort of writing that is in my top 5 non-fiction loves

Poems

• Resolution #1,003 by June Jordan - long time fave, always a good read at the beginning of the year

• Strange Waves of Pleasure by Meeraji; translated from Urdu by M. A. R. Habib - very sexy poem, ok???

• The Broken (I) by Kei Miller - this really resonated

• Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III) by Gwendolyn Brooks - me when I read this: exactly, exactly!!!

• sisters by Lucille Clifton - gotta love a sibling poem!!!

• No More and No Less by Mahmoud Darwish; translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah - my first Darwish and it will not be my last!

Short Stories

• Birthday Party by Katharine Brush - small story, big feelings

• Old Wounds by Edna O’Brien - family drama!!!

• The Red Girl by Jamaica Kincaid - this is gay, I will not be explaining

• A Handful of Dates by Tayeb Saleh; translated from Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies - oof, this always hits!

• The Torn Veil by Mabel Dove-Danquah - magical realism folks to the front!

Feel free to send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!) - community is always the best way to discover great work

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished two books since I last wrote to you: Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (e-book and audiobook narrated by the author) and The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco (e-book). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

get me a treat

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send opportunities my way. I can run your communications effort, do research, write reviews, craft copy, do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast) and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• send M-PESA or PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Pinning this because it’s 🎉birthday week 🎉

My birthday wishlist, now an annual tradition, is out! You can find it here and any and all gifts will be appreciated 🙂

(I’m also open to surprises; as long as it’s not a surprise party.)

Subscribe now

Reader,

While I’ve been away from Nairobi, and before I start one in the village, I have not sat with a book club in ages. Not something as loosely organised as the Silent Book Club or as structured as Noname Book Club (which met yesterday to discuss Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga) and I’m panting for one like a deer pants for water. This feeling of wishing I was with other readers was heightened over the weekend when Uncle Mamdani Prof. Mahmood Mamdani was on the Nairobi leg of his tour for his latest book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State.

A short aside about this tour: the Mombasa leg happened the weekend before I went down to the city and this one happened after my move. Would I have gone to the event? Maybe Definitely, as a person interested in postcolonial Africa and Mamdani’s work. So I did the next best thing: I put the e-book on hold at the library. Now I wait (there will be annotations).

Back to book clubs. I have been reading with folks in various Discord servers but our geographic spread means we’ll never be in the same room, even virtually. I have realised that being in the city meant I neglected my lone virtual book club but no more. Partly because I want to be back in book community, mostly because of the January selection — Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown.

I am (in)famously not a re-reader (WE KNOW, MAIKO!) but every time I re-read I am reminded how of rich texts are. When last I read Rubyfruit Jungle, I was a wee lad (it was 3 years ago). Then, I listened to it. This time, I read it with my eyeballs and my ears and what mine eyes have seen… Miss Brown didn’t hold back on the slurs and, as I was thinking about the book today, I was reminded of a lecture by Nell Irvin Painter titled What Can ‘The History of White People’ Teach Us About Race in America? in which she dissects whiteness in the American context. I mean, nobody was left unscathed and it was jarring to read the book’s original language. The way I can’t wait to talk about it with other folks in the club - some of whom love this queer classic - is a feeling I’d missed.

I’ve been thinking about the work of community as well as what power there is in desire (or envy, or jealousy, sometimes they look the same) and I’m hoping to alchemise how much I miss literary spaces in Nairobi into creating those spaces where I am. Maybe a book club, maybe a club where we read short stories (as I have started doing with Mama Mike), maybe a Silent Book Club chapter. I’ll keep you posted if and/or when I make something of this feeling. This feeling must be made into something!!!

If you have started a reading group in a rural area (I go to church, I intend to recruit there and not for a Bible-focused reading group) and have tips & tricks advice, please reach out. I’m serious!!!

(Next up: A film club. Might pitch it as an extra-curricular for kids on the Social Sciences pathway. Watch this space.)

If you’re wondering how to support me during in the days ahead:

• Money goes a long way so feel free to send M-PESA or USD via PayPal (paypal.me/cmutanyi)

• Send opportunities my way (I can do run your communications effort, research, write reviews, write copy and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• If you’ve made a move like this, please tell me what you found helped the most with your transition

• Send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!)

• Imagine what you’d like in this situation, and do it for me (this has yielded interesting results in my experience)

Take good care of yourself and each other and thanks for taking the time to read this far xx

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished four books since I last wrote to you: Special Topics in Being a Human: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I’ve Learned the Hard Way about Caring for People, Including Myself by S. Bear Bergman; illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson (e-book), The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo by Judy Blume; illustrated by Debbie Ohi (e-book and audiobook narrated by Laura Hamilton), Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (e-book and audiobook narrated by Anna Paquin) and La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono; translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel. I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.\

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

• Hire me to write for you or do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast)

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

*A catch in the throat due to envy (or is it jealousy?). “Kiwaru” literally translates to “a big potato”

Pinning this for the next few weeks

My birthday wishlist, now an annual tradition, is out! You can find it here and any and all gifts will be appreciated 🙂

(I’m also open to surprises; as long as it’s not a surprise party.)

Subscribe now

Reader,

This week marks 2 years since I was laid off and I wish I could say I have some big insights to share. All I have is un(der)employment sucks (been here before so I didn’t need this lesson) and, contrary to some takes on the internet, it doesn’t do wonders for one’s media consumption. Between AI and cuts to jobs making the job seeking space horrible, I went to bed last night determined to radically change something in my life in Nyambura Year 2026/27 (31 Jan 26 to 30 Jan 27) because I need to tell myself another story of myself this time next year.

For the first time in almost 3 years, I went on a birthday period getaway last week. The only electronic devices I carried were my phone and my Kindle and neither of them got much action. Which is to say, I should probably have scheduled last week’s post before I left on the SGR to Mombasa on Sunday night.

Maybe it was the fact that coastal temperatures hovered in the mid to upper 20s but I was fighting for my life. My attempts at reading in the spot I stayed at, in cafes, on the beach, in transport (starting to sound like Dr Seuss lol) were mostly failures. I was telling my friend yesterday how Nadine Gordimer’s City Lovers, which I’ve read (and listened to) many times, was hard to get into even with waves lapping the shore in front of me. Your Honour I am not built for the ocean. I’ve had an easier time in Lamu in the past, but I also spent a lot of time in spaces with air conditioning so really….

I’ve been joking all week that the heat was melting my brain too much for me to really get into a book, despite loading my Kindle (with books via Libby and Send to Kindle as well as articles via the dotepub extension) before leaving home but I fear the noggin was melted before I left the village. I suspect the Protestant in me has some guilt about taking a holiday sans job (I kept telling myself it was a budget holiday and I packed lots of snacks whenever I was out and about!) and it showed up as a struggle to face the text but I might just be attaching too much significance to a regular degular reading slump. Oh well 🤷🏾

With that in mind— please feel free to share what works for you when you hit a reading wall and also (especially?) let me know how you braved the passage of time while unemployed. I’m drowning here.

If you’re wondering how to support me during these early days after my big move and in the days ahead:

• Money goes a long way so feel free to send M-PESA or USD via PayPal (paypal.me/cmutanyi)

• Send opportunities my way (I can do run your communications effort, research, write reviews, write copy and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• If you’ve made a move like this, please tell me what you found helped the most with your transition

• Send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!)

• Imagine what you’d like in this situation, and do it for me (this has yielded interesting results in my experience)

Take good care of yourself and each other and thanks for taking the time to read this far xx

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

  I have finished one (yes, 1!) book since I last wrote to you: Freckle Juice & The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo by Judy Blume (audiobook narrated by Laura Hamilton). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

• Hire me to write for you or do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast)

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Pinning this for the next few weeks

My birthday wishlist, now an annual tradition, is out! You can find it here and any and all gifts will be appreciated 🙂

(I’m also open to surprises; as long as it’s not a surprise party.)

Subscribe now

Reader,

I’ve been in the village for almost 5 weeks (almost because I went to Nairobi for just under 48 hours) and I seem to have decided the way I’ll go through this year is by filling as many bingo cards as possible.

The most exciting bingo-adjacent thing (like a good parent, I don’t have favourites hehe) happening for me this year is Jananie K. Velu’s Anti-Brain Rot Reading Challenge whose Discord I absolutely adore. I think this is tickling something in my brain because it has a learning component and it’s something within my control during a time when so much feels out of it. I know you just got here and that might be a bit heavy but this acceptance of big feelings is how we’re going into the year, ok???

I’m still applying for roles wherever they are to be found but I’m also doing some experiments in this quarter so I might be sharing them in Quarter 2 and Quarter 3. Please feel free to send me roles - and advice on free or low cost learning resources - as I make my way through the year.

I’m also aiming for 10K steps a day for no reason other than I said I’d try for 3.65M steps in 2026. I was challenged by a dear friend to take in less American media when we went hiking last year and I’m happy to share that this year’s steps have mostly been accompanied by non-US podcasts (my plan is to have a 75/25 split in favour of non-US podcasts). I’m tempted to go back to keeping my media blog because it made me really think about what I was taking in plus Jananie’s challenge includes a critical media journal so I might just incorporate elements of that into my blog.

I’ve talked about my reading intentions in the first blog post of the year and I’m excited to be tracking my reading (this suffers almost every year lol) and sharing my thoughts on books and other media with you this year. Per usual, I’m taking advantage of having a birthday early in the year to give myself permission to start the year on the day after my birthday. Yes, I have a birthday wishlist, thank you so much for asking hehe.

If this is a bit all over the place, blame it on my brain defrosting after the holidays and my inter-county move. I want to honour the commitment I made years ago to write to you on Mondays so thank you for reading this far, despite despite despite.

If you’re wondering how to support me during these early days after my big move and in the days ahead:

• Money goes a long way so feel free to send M-PESA or USD via PayPal (paypal.me/cmutanyi)

• Send opportunities my way (I can run your communications efforts, do research, write reviews, write copy and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• If you’ve made a move like this, please tell me what you found helped the most with your transition

• Send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!)

• Imagine what you’d like in this situation, and do it for me (this has yielded interesting results in my experience)

Take good care of yourself and each other and thanks for taking the time to read this far xx

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Film folks: Solidarity Cinema, for your consideration

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Film folks: Check out the Japan Foundation’s JFF Theater online streaming platform

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished the following books since I last wrote to you: Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee (e-book and audiobook narrated by Rachel F. Hirsch and the author), Palaver by Bryan Washington (e-book and audiobook narrated by André Santana), Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (e-book and audiobook narrated by Arthur Morey), Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis by Kelly Hayes (e-book and audiobook narrated by Amina Camille), Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor (e-book and audiobook narrated by Kevin R. Free, Nicole Lewis & TL Thompson), Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (audiobook narrated by Dominic Hoffman), Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe (audiobook narrated by Matthew Blaney), Airplane Mode: Travels in the Ruins of Tourism by Shahnaz Habib (e-book and audiobook narrated by Deepa Samuel), Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime by Sarah Weinman (e-book and audiobook narrated by the author), Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto (audiobook narrated by Risa Mei), The Hidden Life of Trees: A Graphic Adaptation by Peter Wohlleben & Fred Bernard; Illustrated by Benjamin Flao (e-book), Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel (paperback and audiobook narrated by the author), Okchundang Candy by Jung-Soon Go (translated from Korean by Aerin Park, e-book and audiobook narrated by Sarah Chang), The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green (audiobook narrated by the author), Hangman by Maya Binyam (audiobook narrated by Ronnie Butler) and Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert (audiobook narrated by the author). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

• Hire me to write for you or do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast)

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Either way— Thanks for reading this newsletter. A click of the ♡ button makes a difference. You can also share excerpts on social media, forward it to someone who might enjoy the vibes, or text it to a friend.

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Reader,

In the last quarter of my 37th year, I have decided to go back to the place where my umbilical cord is buried to try and figure out what to do next with my life. It’s…not an easy decision (“Narudi Ocha” is not what I thought would be the soundtrack to this time in my life) but it’s one I am making because I know there are possibilities that exist beyond a city I love, even if it hasn’t always loved me back.

In the last two years or so, I’ve put on a brave face as I’ve applied for more jobs than I care to admit, attended interviews that have led nowhere, and gritted my teeth with more anxiety than any one person should experience in a lifetime. Then I was reminded by a dear friend who made a similar move that, despite narratives of failure when one quits, there also exists a world in which one is loved and doesn’t have to worry about where they lay their head.

I write this surrounded by moving boxes as I wind down decades of life in the place I’ve called home for over 3 decades; even when I lived outside the city. This, for me, is goodbye. I hope that getting the weight of surviving off my chest will let me breathe enough to dream — which is to say, I hope I can sleep without feeling like demons are at my heels.

If you came here for books: I have struggled to read in the last few months. Anhedonia plagues me, as old readers know, but this has been something wholly unprecedented. I have reached the end of the road and even books have not been the refuge they once were. I can’t say I’ll get back to making videos or blogging about the books I’ve read but not having to worry about daily living may just be a catalyst for new projects. I’m promising nothing, other than I’ll try things and share those attempts here.

I haven’t finished many books this month, for instance, but I’ve stayed on course with the 1000 Nights Challenge, which you can read about on my blog here and whose daily entries you can find here and that’s something to be proud of. The last year has made me consider my relationship with productivity in a world where money, and its acquisition, is its chief measure. What am I if not a wage earner? To what end do I write if there is no income to be made? Why think in public? I can’t say I’ll find the answers to these questions when I’m hundreds of kilometres outside the city, but it won’t hurt to not have to worry about rent when they cross my mind.

I don’t believe in narratives of “coming out” yet this feels like a public confession. Of what, I don’t quite know, yet I know from the range of reactions I have gotten that it hits a nerve to hear someone one regards as a peer say “I have given up on The Green City in the Sun.” If I had the friends Harper Lee had and got a year’s living expenses, maybe I’d stay, but I don’t have the book she had in my drafts. So off we go.

I don’t usually announce a hiatus but I’ll need some time to settle in, especially because my move coincides with the holidays. The earliest I’ll be back is January 2026 (most probably with a birthday wish list, which might be posted earlier on the official wishlist blog), though it might take longer than that to transition from “person who visits the village” to “permanent village resident”. In any case, without the jaunts I go on in Nairobi (Laps & Livres is, de facto, on hiatus) I’ll have a lot of time in my hands so check out my Twitter and Bluesky for personal updates (blog posts, life events, a job even) and my Storygraph and Letterboxd for the media I’ll be consuming.

If you’re wondering how to support me during the move and in the days ahead:

• Money goes a long way so feel free to send M-PESA or USD via PayPal (paypal.me/cmutanyi)

• Send opportunities my way (I can do research, reviews, write copy and much more besides; just shoot me an email - 100onbooks@proton.me)

• If you’ve made a move like this, please tell me what you found helped the most with your transition

• Send reading and watching recommendations (better yet, share a library card!)

• Imagine what you’d like in this situation, and do it for me (this has yielded interesting results in my experience)

Take good care of yourself and each other and thanks for taking the time to read this far xx

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Add me to your New York Times Crossword leaderboard!

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• A thread for folks looking to support Usikimye’s work

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Film folks: The Japan Foundation has newly launched the JFF Theater online streaming platform

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished the following books since I last wrote to you: The Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History by Vidya Krishnan (e-book and audiobook narrated by Sneha Mathan), The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners; edited by Lauren Groff & Jenny Minton Quigley (e-book and audiobook narrated by Lauren Groff and a Full Cast), Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green (e-book and audiobook narrated by the author), A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (e-book and audiobook narrated by Jesse Nobess), Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq; translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi (e-book and audiobook narrated by Deepti Gupta & Vikas Adam) and Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell (e-book and audiobook narrated by the author). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

• Hire me to write for you or do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast)

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

*Unikumbuke is Kiswahili for “remember me”

Share

Reader,

Today is a dear friend’s birthday and it has me thinking about how we’re all growing older (more than halfway done with our life expectancy at birth etc etc) and childhood is increasingly a smaller portion of our lives, yet still such a strong influence.

I’ve especially thought about childhood because of three of the books I’ve finished since I last wrote to you — Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno and Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre — each of which I’ve discussed over on the blog, where I’ve been writing daily for almost two months. Each of them tackles childhood in an interesting way and they all feature women over thirty looking back at their lives and considering how they’ve affected their present.

Disoriental, the lone fiction title of the three, is a title I picked up because of the Queer Your Year Discord server (like members of the Goon Squad I discussed last week, I too spend time on Discord) when I realised I could get into it before the meeting on 1st November. I’m so glad I was able to chat about it with folks whose work I’d only interacted with online, and some interesting people from the server, because it was such an enriching experience.

Our narrator looks back at her childhood and youth as she sits at a fertility clinic’s waiting room and her remembrance scratched a number of itches for me. In a time when migration is even more fraught than usual (being the lone person in the Global South in some literary spaces often results in one being reminded that they occupy the body of a potential immigrant, never a citizen), reading a narrative of national belonging for whatever that’s worth transformed into one of being the Other during childhood was quite the experience. I often speak about how I can’t fathom bringing up a child in the US with its guns and its healthcare system; this book reminded me that for many of the world’s people - whether in France, the US, Australia, or wherever else people emigrate to from the Global South - “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” in the words of Warsan Shire.

Sad Tiger and Nobody’s Girl are both memoirs of women who experienced child sexual abuse (CSA), with both of them having experienced it at the hands of male relatives. Sinno weaves in literature, history, sociology, and memory to create a memoir of survival unlike anything I’ve read before. I want so badly to talk about it with someone who was struck by its craft like I was while also confronting the issue at its heart. This isn’t something I speak about often but as a child, I took the school bus and experienced the sort of inappropriate behaviour from a man on the bus that had me leaving the bus before my stop every day with as many other girls (by which I mean, we were AFAB children) as I could to try and protect us all. The way she writes about the powerlessness that children feel in the face of what should be trusted adults harming them was visceral and the book resonated on so much more than the literary level. Please feel free to reach out by replying or via email (100onbooks@proton.me) if you’d like to chat about it.

Roberts Giuffre’s book is heartbreaking for the way its author did not live long enough to see its publication. This was me the whole time I was reading it:

And I mean this for all of them, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor inclusive. The entire time I was reading and listening I wished I could hug young Virginia and protect her from these people (because there were men and women involved) while also acknowledging that she was implicated by virtue of being under the control of Epstein and Maxwell. Her voice is so strong and her determination is something to behold. I just wish she’d lived long enough to know how many (more) people were rooting for her and how many people are in solidarity with survivors everywhere.

So much of the work of living is the work of memory and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the way books do this work. Whether fiction or non-fiction, the way literature can fill in gaps or bolster memory is something I value greatly. Even in a week when dysmenorrhea was giving me a thrashing; I’m grateful for the respite that was, and is, books.

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Add me to your New York Times Crossword leaderboard!

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• Join us for these Laps & Livres meet ups this month (sign up here, feel free to reach out for more information via lapsandlivres@proton.me)

• Film folks: The Japan Foundation has newly launched the JFF Theater online streaming platform

• A bunch of (mostly American) short stories if that’s your jam

• Software resources for audiobook management. Especially Audible-centric, including organization and removing DRM from Audible files

• A thread for folks looking to support Usikimye’s work

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

I have finished the following books since I last wrote to you: Disoriental by Négar Djavadi; translated by Tina Kover (e-book and audiobook narrated by Siiri Scott), Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno; translated by Natasha Lehrer (e-book), Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre (e-book and audiobook narrated by Gabra Zackman & Thérèse Plummer) and Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin (e-book and audiobook narrated by the author). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

• Hire me to write for you or do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast)

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!

Share

Reader,

If you’ve been in certain corners of the internet, you’ve probably seen the gooner article that’s doing the rounds. I wrote a little about it over on the blog, where I’ve been posting daily for almost 2 months (please clap) so this isn’t only about the article but also about the stories being told regarding community.

Discord (where I think about writing in multiple servers filled with folks who love to read) keeps coming up in conversations about where gooners congregate and there is a non-insignificant number of people whose introduction to the platform is an article about masturbation so their perception of it is definitely being coloured by that. Far be it from me to run to the timeline or skyline or whatever we’ll be calling the feed next week to “defend” Discord — I don’t go to so many places on that platform (realistically, there’s a limit on how many servers one can join) — but I think we all need to live in reality together, as Jourdain Searles once said.

I think it’s striking how folks in gooner spaces have gained a sense of community around a solitary pursuit, even meeting to enjoy it together. This feels just like literature in some ways — a solitary pursuit, something that some people are embarrassed about (ranging from the content or genre of books to the conversations about fanfic, for instance) — but it’s framed as a bunch of…shall we say…odd folks doing weird stuff by the discourse.

I wonder how much of gooning has to do with the pandemic and its attendant isolation as keeps being suggested and how much has to do with the lack of community in what may be one of the most hyper-connected eras for people with access to certain technology. I’ve seen people who love media - books, films, games - discussing how building community around them is a corrective to gooning. I don’t know if it’s that simple (sorry!) — I love reading (it’s a core part of how I navigate the world, as old hands know) but if I’m touch-starved, if I seek certain connection, sorry books aren’t enough!!!

I have no solution; I just find it interesting how sex and sexuality are framed in a world that values consumption (including of media — porn in this case) and how the realm of the acceptable is constantly shifting (how shall we look back at this article, for instance). I am curious, though — how did you find the gooning article, what opportunities exist for folks looking to explore their sexuality in community (I’d love to read writing about this) and are books are substitute for gooning? Please write back and let me know!

Leave a comment

Quick news/ things that may be of interest:

• Kulture Klub, African film screenings at The Space, Amee Arcade, Nairobi twice a month. Next screening tomorrow, showing Mandabi (1968, directed by Ousmane Sembène)

• Treat someone you like (me, for instance, I have a Switch) to the Tiny Bookshop Game (which is also on Discord)

• Subscribe to my WhatsApp channel for texts I find while I spend time online

• Add me to your New York Times Crossword leaderboard!

• If you’re in the Global North and would be open to engaging in the North-South solidarity that is sharing a library card, please email or message me so we can figure things out. Thank you!

• Join us for these Laps & Livres meet ups this month (sign up here, feel free to reach out for more information via lapsandlivres@proton.me)

• Film folks: The Japan Foundation has newly launched the JFF Theater online streaming platform

• A bunch of (mostly American) short stories if that’s your jam

• Software resources for audiobook management. Especially Audible-centric, including organization and removing DRM from Audible files

• A thread for folks looking to support Usikimye’s work

• The Queer Liberation Library 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️, which is free to join here

• Digital Library of Korean Literature, which is free to join here

• How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired

• An interactive self care flow chart

• Links to Reading Lists, Free Books, Book Recs, Book-related Items, and Calls for Submissions in this document (most recent links at the top)

• Since Elon seems to want (some of) us gone, I’m trying to post more often on Bluesky. Follow me there if you’re on it!

• You can send me books, postcards, letters, and assorted items via PO Box 102439, Jamia Posta 00101, Nairobi, Kenya (I write back!)

  ---

I have finished the following books since I last wrote to you: Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki; translated by Polly Barton (paperback and audiobook narrated by Hanako Footman) and Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry by Austin Frerickc(e-book and audiobook narrated by Stephen Bel Davies). I’m primarily using Storygraph now (passively updating Goodreads as I read most e-books on Kindle via the library) and I hope to get back to making videos soon.

As ever, please write back to me and tell me what books you’re reading or looking forward to reading — it’s always a great time talking about books.

Thank you for reading 🙂

If you have enjoyed this newsletter and want to support my writing, you can:

• Share an excerpt of this newsletter on social media, tap that ♡ button, & tell someone to subscribe

• Send me a gift off my wishlist

• Send me job ads (communications, research, digital policy & arts positions especially)

• Send me opportunities for art makers e.g. residencies, grants etc.

• Check out my other work

• Forward this newsletter to a friend you think would enjoy it

• PayPal me a one-time gift at @cmutanyi

• Hire me to write for you or do cultural work (moderate, interview, make a podcast)

Enjoy the week ahead and have a lovely time reading. Talk to you soon!