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ON EARTH, IT’S VENUS VS. MARS!

Posted by eclectictope on March 27, 2012July 27, 2013

If she doubles as your punching bag, you’re wrong. Click here to find out why.

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One Comment Add yours

temitayo says:

April 7, 2012 at 5:20 pm

I think his abuse of her probably started while they were dating, a lot of girls put up with it all in the name of love…. Even if it started in marriage, my advise is get HELP fast else he’ll kill you, marriage isn’t a do or die affair, if he doesn’t stop beating you after you’ve tried everything, please leave his home, once you’re dead you’re dead…. Get help or get out…

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Since January, I've received a few books from publishers with release dates beginning from March till June. Unfortunately, the current terrain of the world has made it impossible to have book tours and readings for authors especially debut authors which is sad as this is a major lifeline for sales. 📚 There have been a few insta live interviews like with @kateelizabethrussell for her new book "My Dark Vanessa" which published last week. @dialoguebooks also started a virtual book event which holds every Thursday night. There's also a #BooksConnectUs hashtag you can follow from @penguinrandomhouse 📚 Bookshops and libraries are closed but please try and use online platforms to buy books or use #eBook and #audiobook apps. Don't buy pirated copies. I'm especially speaking to you, Nigerians. Don't ask people to send you Pdf's. Hard work goes into writing and publishing a book and if an incident like #Covid-19 has already turned things on it's head, don't add more misery, please. 📚 Here are some books I will be reviewing in the coming days and weeks as the publication day draws near all of which I'm looking forward to discussing with as many people as can get them. Support authors. Events are cancelled but books don't have cancellation dates. Order them online. Call your local bookstore, some are working out logistics for delivery. Use Amazon too. I bought some books that took about 10 days to deliver even with prime, but this is still a better option. As always, stay safe. . . . . . #bookstagram #books #literature #fiction #nonfiction #authors #bookphotography #readersofig #lockdownreading #quarantinestories #bookishfeatures #bookblogger #booklover #bookclub #bookrecommendation

Happy #TopeRecommends Day. This week's pairing was a no brainer. In whatever shape or form your reading goes, if you liked Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's wives, you will most certainly like Ayobami Adebayo's Stay with Me. 📚 One word for both novels? Unforgettable. Even if you were to forget the characters, the base story never leaves you which is what good story telling is isn't it? 📚 One reason I paired this book is that they both have a central theme of secrecy. Though the reader can already predict the secret, it is the life line of the novel till the very end. Both are set in rural Nigeria and follow complex characters through an African family setting saddled with the responsibility of polygamy, keeping a marriage, fertility and jealousy. It's hard to think that in the middle of all of it, there is love. 📚 Often, in African traditional stories, women get the short end of the stick and are often at a place of disadvantage. In these two stories, we see the women switch up on the men through this disadvantage with gentle reminders that it is not only men who have the monopoly of wisdom, or cunningness as should be rightly said of these stories. 📚 The women in both stories need to keep their marriage and come up with solutions to shield themselves from chaos, which opens discussions about why the responsibility of "keeping" always falls on the woman. 📚 Two very very delightful reads. The type you read and finish in one sitting, then proceed to buy for your friends so they can enjoy too. If you read both back to back you are definitely in for a rebellious treat. 📚 Fun fact - The author of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's wives, Lola Shoneyin is the #Nigerian publisher of Stay With Me. Talk about literary synergy👌 Have you read any? . . . . . #Eclecticrecs #eclecticreads #Abooklikethis #Reclectic #Treccs #bookblogger #fiction #womenauthors #bookreview #bookrecommendation #Staywithme #babasegi #Africa #storytelling #bookphotography #bookstagram #Nigerianliterature #womensprize

In my last post I asked us to be kind. Kindness is looking out for others and I wanted to point out a specific way to look out for others this #Covid19 season using this book FACTFULNESS by Hans Rosling. It's simple - Don't spread panic (and) or false messages online. I'm not sure that we understand the gravity of what false messages do even if they come from a well meaning place. 📚 Any random person can create false news and you can't stop them but you can stop the spread. You can ensure that if it comes to your phone, the trail ends there. No matter how compelling broadcasts, videos and messages sound, be sure that you can fact check every bit of it before sharing. Remember that while you have at your disposal tools to fact check, our parents, who are part of the most vulnerable to this virus can't. They are the ones who respond to these news, don't put them at more risk. Don't be the reason for a rise in their blood pressure, not in these hard times where we are all already anxious. 📚 There's a tendency to exaggerate when we are desperate to get people to understand a dilemma. Our minds are unconsciously consumed by fear so we throw fact out the window All that does is cause undue panic. If you see info from someone claiming to have insight based on their time in the UN and WHO and FBI and NHS and what not, best believe they only know as much as you do. 📚 Corona respects no one, as we can see from how it has swept through the world. Even the most equiped countries are failing at containing the spread. If it were so easy, we would have had it under control with all the different panic solutions and advice online. 📚 Stay home, wash your hands. Follow and share ONLY official guidelines from the state or country you live in. Take everything else with a pinch of salt. If you believe in God, now is the time to do the heavy lifting of interceding for your community. We are all mostly on lockdown so instead of sending broadcasts, maybe actively check on friends and family, even acquaintances. Be alert, but don't be the cause of panic to a storm already raging, don't fuel an already consuming fire. Be safe. Be kind. . . . #bookstagram

Today, 79 years ago, Virginia Woolf died by suicide. She was 59. If you've read anything about her, you'll know how much of a troubled life she lived from about the age of 13. Sinking in and out of manic depression but writing desperately through it. From the passing of her parents to the horrors of war and the slow reception of her work by the public. 📚 Woolf attended the ladies department of King's College, London where she studied History and Classics. In 1918, she wrote a weekly review for the Times literary supplement. Her writing is wide ranging - Political, feminist, historical, experimental. There are at least 12 published books in Virginia Woolf's name and lots more essays. She took up book binding as a past time when she was 19 and it was the beginning of what would be her life as a publisher running a printing press. 📚 As the literary world remembers Woolf's passing, I wanted to remind us to remember to be kind as the world goes through this Covid-19 war. I'm carrying thoughts of those who have been ghastly hit by this pandemic, not just those who have lost family but those who have lost jobs and livelihood, those who are experiencing a new normal and are struggling with it. Please hang in there. We will get through this. 📚 Let's ensure we are checking on family and friends and community in these tough times. We are social distancing but technology can go a long way now. Don't let this overwhelm you, comrades, we need each other on the other side. We need your songs and art and painting and latest discoveries. We need you on our TV's and in our supermarkets, we need you in the post office and in hotels, we need you driving us to new destinations, building new things, showing us easy recipes. We need your editorial eye, we need your expertise on how to keep money. We need you producing food for our bellies, we need you making sure our streets are clean. We need your advice and your ideas, we need you, yes you. Sending you all love and light. Please reach out, please continue to stay safe. Xx . . . . #bookblogger #mentalhealth #virginiawoolf #bookstagram #covid19 #stayhome #staysafe #writer #fiction #essays #bookphotography

Happy #TopeRecommends day. How's everyone holding up? I know news hasn't changed much with Covid-19 but lets keep hanging on. Don't spread fake news or news you haven't verified. Wash your hands and stay at home. 📚 So, today I've paired Kazuo Ishiguro's "The remains of the day' with Yewande Omotoso's "The Woman next Door" Both tell the story of love and loneliness with everything in between from the perspective of the elderly. 📚 In "The Woman next Door" the protagonists are two widowed women in their 80's, one white one black with impressive careers as young women now sharing a wall as next door neighbours in a nice suburb. The selling point of both women is the bitterness festering in each one for the other, furnished by themes of racism, class, gossip and makeup. 📚 In "The remains of the day" we follow Stevens, a long standing buttler in an English manor house whose boss gives him a few days off work so he travels across the west of England and journals the experience. We get a sense of fascism in Europe, the second world war and the privilege being a butler in a manor house affords you, such as serving prime ministers and Lords. Through Stevens journaling, there's an underlying story of love and longing introduced through a stifled likeness for the housekeeper. I recently began watching #DowntonAbbey and I see some gentle similarities in the longing between Stevens and the housekeeper and Mr Carson and Mrs Hughes. 📚 I've paired these two books because of how the narration is from the point of view of the elderly protagonists. They are not appendages. They aren't just the grandparents or retired person in the story. They are the story. They get upset, they are kind, mean, hungry, they sing, dance, are badly behaved, loving too. 📚 Both books are slightely tedious reads in terms of embodying the characters, but what elderly person isn't tedious? We can't even get them to stay home in these dangerous days we are in. Any way, both are good reads. If you love one, I think you'll love the other. Have you read any? #Eclecticrecs #eclecticreads #Abooklikethis #Reclectic #Treccs #bookstagram #bookblogger #fiction #nobelprize #literature #bookish

15 year old Vanessa Wye likes her 42 year old teacher, Jacob Strane. He notices her, pays her attention in class, compliments her red hair. Then, he touches her knee casually, gives her books like Lolita to read outside of class reading. He has class discussions that only her can understand thereby making her out as the special student. He grooms her so slowly but so delicately to the point where even the reader is kept in a doubtful state of whether or not his actions and words are pervy and predatory. They clearly are, but Strane is the kind to make a 15-year-old feel like her agency is still intact and all she has to do is consent, choose. 📚 I found this a rather disturbing read and though I read it over a week, I took a day off to breathe. The description of abuse is explicit and unsettling, yet, there's a romanticization of Strane as if the author was trying to make the reader see reason with him and understand the fact that he sought consent every step of the way, also considering that naive (permit me to say foolish) Vanessa went back to him and defended him to the principal, her friends and even parents every step of the way. But this wasn't the author's intention as I continued to read. It was her attempt to make us see what manipulative behaviour can look like to young women. 📚 I feel like this book could have been about 50 pages shorter, especially because the story flashes between Vanessa's teenage and early adult years when she was actively with Strane and her 32-year-old old self working a hotel receptionist job and going to therapy. 📚 As a 32-year-old, Vanessa is contacted by a journalist and a younger woman who attended the same school and wants to bring up charges of many years of misconduct against Strane. Vanessa insists what they had was consensual love and the noise and agitation of the #MeToo movement does not refer to her. I'll put a trigger warning and tell you this is dark and unsettling. It brings up tedious but necessary questions about where the line of consent is drawn and who a real victim. It's out from @4thestatebooks next week. . . . . #bookstagram #bookish #fiction #lolita #Literature #bookblogger #bookphotography

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