14 Years of Mary Okeke Reviews

 

Fourteen candles. If you'd told me, back when I published my very first post, that I'd still be here fourteen years later writing about the books I love, I'm not sure I would have believed you. And yet here we are.

I started this blog with nothing more than a love for books and a need to talk about them somewhere. No plan, no strategy, just me, a keyboard, and a growing pile of African literary fiction I couldn't stop thinking about. What began as a quiet, personal habit slowly became something much bigger than I ever expected it to be.

Fourteen years later, here's where we are: 290 posts, 1,571 comments, and 1,637,379 views from readers all over the world. Numbers like that still stop me in my tracks. Somewhere out there, over a million and a half times, someone opened a post of mine looking for their next read or maybe just wanting to feel less alone in loving a book nobody around them had heard of. That's the whole reason I do this. Every year I look at the all-time stats and every year they surprise me a little. Some of these are books I wrote about ages ago, and yet readers are still finding them, still reading, still commenting. That's the strange magic of a blog,   a review never really closes.

Sitting at the very top, with over

21,000 reads, is my review of Grief Child (1991) by Lawrence Darmani. I still remember writing that one, there was something about the quiet ache of that book that clearly resonated far beyond anything I expected.

Right behind it, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) by Amos Tutuola, with 13,500 reads, proof that Tutuola's strange, dreamlike storytelling still pulls readers in generations later.

Then One is Enough (1981) by Flora Nwapa, at 12,000 reads and a full five stars from me. Nwapa's voice was one of the first to really show me what Nigerian women's fiction could do, and readers clearly feel that too.

Close behind: The Concubine 1(966) by Elechi Amadi 10,800 reads, and Dance with a Poor Man's Daughter (1997) by Pamela Jooste 10,300 reads,  two very different books, two very different worlds, both still finding new readers all these years later.

And then there's the rest of the list - a real time capsule of this blog's history: the 2017 Children's Africana Book Awards coverage, my 2017 Reading Highlights, the 5 Years of Book Blogging & Book Giveaway post (which feels like a lifetime ago now), reviews of Heroes by Festus Iyayi, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, A Question of Power by Bessie Head, Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono, and so many more. Some of you have been reading since the Grill and Read Annual Readers' Awards 2017,  if that's you, thank you. Truly.

One of my favorite things about looking back at the stats is seeing just how far this blog has traveled. The United States makes up the largest share of readers by far, at 867,000 views, but what really gets me is everywhere else on the list: Hong Kong (78k), Singapore (64.6k), China (51.2k), Indonesia (42.1k), Germany (37.8k), Brazil (37.7k), and Vietnam (36k).

And of course, close to my heart: Nigeria at 34.4k, alongside Kenya (14.9k) and Ghana (11.1k), readers from home, finding a blog about our own stories.

Rounding out the list are readers from Russia (28k), Israel (26.6k), Spain (22.2k), Ukraine (20.4k), France (17.7k), the United Kingdom (16.7k), the Netherlands (12.9k), and Canada (12.3k), plus another 206,000 views from "Other," which is to say: from places all over the map I couldn't even begin to list. Fourteen years in, and this blog somehow reaches readers on nearly every continent. I started this as a personal hobby in my own corner of the internet, and it still amazes me that it found its way into so many others.

I started this blog because I couldn't find enough conversation around African literary fiction, the kind of books that deserved more than a passing mention. Fourteen years and 290 posts in, I'm still doing exactly that, just with a lot more books behind me and, thankfully, a community of readers who show up in the comments to argue, agree, and recommend books right back to me.

To everyone who has left a comment, shared a post, or quietly read one of these 290 reviews without saying a word, thank you. This blog only exists because of you. So here's a toast,  to the books that started it all, to the ones still waiting to be read, and to every single one of you who's been part of this journey, whether since the very first post or just this week. Fourteen years down. Let's see where the next chapter takes us.

Here's to the next chapter. 

Mary.