The Daily News on Sunday’s Assistant Editor Maxwell Sibanda caught up with different personalities who shared with us the books they have been reading lately.
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Guitarist Master Pablo Nakappa
I have been reading a book by Bishop Dag Heward Mills, Loyalty and Disloyalty. He talks about faithful and treacherous people. He outlines a few reasons why the subject of loyalty is such an important one. I found the book very informative and a must read for both Christians and non-Christians. Bishop Dag is the founder of The Lighthouse Chapel international. He is an author of many other books that I have enjoyed reading.
Multi-Choice Zimbabwe publicity manager Liz Dziva
I am reading “Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do!” by Robert Schuller. It’s a book about how you can be tough too and the secret ingredient of tough people that enables them to succeed.
The difference between those who win and those who don’t is the application of a powerful concept of “Possibility Thinking”. Winners dare to dream, they commit themselves to it, they dare to try, to take risks. They understand that failure is an event, not a person, they never quit!!
Politician Chalton Hwende
The book is called “My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence.” This is a unique book in which His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, examines aspects of the UAE’s unique development experience.
This young country is making every effort to achieve excellence and upgrade its status from a regional economic centre into an international hub. It is striving to excel in services, tourism, the knowledge economy and creative human resources in order to reach its ambitious development goals.
Poet Barbra Breeze
I have been reading Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore”. It is a book that blends Japanese mythology into present day reality. The book documents the experiences of one runaway boy named Kafka who goes in search of his mother and sister and an old man who has the ability to talk to cats.
Prone to the writers’ nature, reality and dreams are hard to tell apart in this book and his characters find themselves on a journey to rediscover who they are and where they belong.
MISA-Zimbabwe director Tabani Moyo
I’m reading “Dang Xiaoping and the Transformation of China”. The book was written by Ezra Vogel. No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist--the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China’s radical economic, technological, and social transformation.
Vogel, a Harvard professor who has bounced between interests in China and Japan for all of his professional life, picked one man on whom to centre his tale: Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), the communist leader who left the Sichuan countryside for France when he was 16.
While Deng might have been tiny (he stood 4-foot-11), this book is massive, Yao Ming-big — the text alone runs to 714 pages. His main argument is that Deng deserves a central place in the pantheon of 20th Century leaders.
For he not only launched China’s market-oriented economic reforms but also accomplished something that had eluded Chinese leaders for almost two centuries: the transformation of the world’s oldest civilisation into a modern nation.
The books outlines in refined detail how visionary leadership has the power to build enduring and transformational ideas.
Journalist Stanley Kwenda
I have just finished reading a book called “Dictatorland The Men Who Stoke Africa”. It was written by British journalist Paul Kenyon. It chronicles the history and evolution of African dictators. Most of them are the men who took over from colonial masters. It stretches from Mobuto Seseko in DRC to Nigerian military men to Libya’s Ghaddafi.
What I particularly like about the book was the theme of how dictatorship in Africa is fuelled by the continent’s natural resources and the west’s complicity.
At the moment I am reading “The Art of War” by Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. The book is a crash course in military strategy. It’s a very good book to read if you’re a student of business, politics or simply want to think on your feet.
I work in a very competitive environment where I am in the minority. I always have to fight for space and a voice so this book is giving me a lot of valuable lessons and I recommend it to anyone who wants to outwit the next person.
Journalist Vivian Marara
I am currently reading “The House of Hunger” by Dambudzo Marechera. The book aptly captures Zimbabwe’s current socio-political and economic disintegration and one man’s quest to unshackle themselves from the bondages of poverty.
What are they reading?
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