Dear Author: A “Book Reading” is Not A Chance For You To Literally Read Your Book

Dear Nigerian authors, a book reading is not actually an opportunity for you to read your book to people word for word.

Neither is it an opportunity to show the audience how well you pronounce words or how well you can follow the punctuations littered in your book.

And it is definitely not an opportunity to showcase your foreign accent to the local crowd or your local accent to the foreign crowd.

It is anything but an actual literal “book reading.” So please stop!

A book reading is an experience! A live performance.

An opportunity to give the audience something that they cannot find by merely starring at your book.

A book reading is ignoring some comma’s and adding your own extra “jara” as you really wanted to say it, before the editor over edited the crap out of your already edited book.

A book reading is pausing in the middle of your reading to tell the people what color toilet you were shitting on when the idea for the next paragraph they are about to experience hit you!

It’s an experience beyond words.

So please please please, for the sake of my sanity stop reading at your book readings!