#nsibidi scripts

[j--mno-art]

Sunny and Chichi meet Udide

[npdclaraoswald]

Did not realize The Nsibidi Scripts was a recent enough series for the third one to end with Covid starting

[slightlybiasedbookreviews]

Books read in February 2025

Wind and Truth Brandon Sanderson 🎵 read by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer

The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman 📖

A Court of Thorns and Roses Sarah J Maas🎵 read by Jennifer Ikeda

Lord Edgware Dies Agatha Christie 📖

The Darwin Affair Tim Mason 🎵 read by Derek Perkins

Akata Witch Nnedi Okorafor 🎵 read by Yetide Badaki

Both Yetide Badaki and Derek Perkins are really good readers. If you're looking for a good audiobook to listen to find something read by Badaki, she's great.

I'm really enjoying Okorafor's The Nsibidi Scripts series. It's a fresh take on wizard school while tying in so much Nigerian and West African folklore and history. I love getting to learn about stories and culture that I haven't been exposed to as much in my life. I always enjoy when fantasy novels draw from folklore and it's been fun to see an author do that with folklore that I'm less familiar with.

More talk with spoilers about Wind and Truth below the cut.

Currently Reading

Storm Front Jim Butcher📖

Akata Warrior Nnedi Okorafor 🎵 read by Yetide Badaki

Wind and Truth was a great ending to the first arc of the Stormlight Archive. I like how the series works through various mental health issues that the characters are facing. I wish that I had this series when I was an anxious depressed teenager. I love that one of the main arcs is resolved with therapy.

There were things (well, thing) I wish were a little more resolved, like Gavinor being totally ignored at the end. I needed more with his story! He needs a hug! I am so upset that Jasnah doesn't remember him when she's feeling lonely; they have each other! I want to know about Gav and Lift's reunion. Hearing her feelings might change things for him. I understand why it wasn't in the book since it could be bulky but I have feelings!!!

Otherwise I really enjoyed most of the story endings, even if I want just a little more, I can imagine things and wait for the next arc to see if there might be answers. Part of me wishes I had a physical copy to go back through for the additional bits from Szeth's wife (whose name do not remember). Also listening to the book means I'm not 100% sure if it's "Knights" or "Nights" of Wind and Truth because both kind of work. I'm realising I can just look that up now...

[haveyoureadthismgyabook]

Series info:

Book 1 of The Nsibidi Scripts

Book 2: Akata Warrior

Book 3: Akata Woman

[chelshiart]

sunny!

[ofliterarynature]

TBR TAKEDOWN: GOODREADS, WEEK 8b

Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Scripts #1) by Nnedi Okorafor

I'm trying to trim down my tbr list(s) and I'm asking for your help! Descriptions and more info under the cut. Please reblog and add your thoughts!

* * * * *

Akata Witch weaves together a heart-pounding tale of magic, mystery, and finding one's place in the world.

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing--she is a free agent with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?

Ursula K. Le Guin and John Green are Nnedi Okorafor fans. As soon as you start reading Akata Witch, you will be, too

Date added: 2017

Goodreads: 4.03

Storygraph: 4.01

PRO:

Liked Okorafor's Binti series

Magic school quartet?!

Entire series available from the library in my preferred format (audiobook)

CON:

YA/MG, younger than I typically look for these days

[bookishfeylin]

I didn't know black people any had writing systems in Africa before colonialism so that's really cool

Yes, there were several. Notably, Ge'ez from Ethiopia like my other reblog:

Bassa Vah, developed by the Bassa people in what is now the West African country of Liberia (and which narrowly avoided extinction at the end of the nineteenth/early twentieth century):

The Nsibidi writing system in Nigeria:

And the Meroitic script in Kush:

And these are just the ones I personally know of. I also feel it necessary to add that a lot of writing was also done in Arabic or with separate writing systems derived from Arabic due to centuries-long contact with the Islamic world and the spread of Islam in Africa.

[stephenembleton]

In conjunction with isibheqe.org.za this is a visual representation of various African writing systems Pule kaJanolinji and I have been working on for the past few months. A continuous work in progress. Visit their site for more information and links to the respective syllabary projects.

The map depicts the array of ancient and modern writing forms found all over the continent, and some show the branches of origins. 📜 👀 ❤️

It is included in Pule’s August 2023 presentation:

UBUCIKO BOKULOBA: African Writing Systems as Creative Cultural Technologies

In respect to the modern scripts and syllabaries, it is vital the developers of those works get the support and recognition they need to continue and to produce creative language representations.

Included here are:

1. Arabiese-Afrikaans

2. isiBheqe soHlamvu / Ditema tsa Dinoko

3. chiMbire

4. Mwangwego

5. Lusona

6. Mandombe

7. Ńdébé

8. Luo

9. Bamum

10. Adinkra

11. Vai

12. Osmanya

13. Wakandan

14. Nsibidi

15. Old Nubian

16. Ge’ez

17. Zaghawa

18. Adlam

19. N’ko

20. Proto-Sinaitic Script

21. Meroitic (derivative of Mdw Ntr)

22. Wadi el-Hol

23. Coptic*

24. *from Demotic

25. *from Hieratic

26. *from Mdw Ntr (Egyptian name for Hieroglyphs)

27. Tifinagh

[panafrocore]

Nsibidi: The Ancient Symbolic Proto-Writing Script of Nigeria's Ekpe Society

Nsibidi, also known as nsibiri, nchibiddi, or nchibiddy, holds a significant place in Nigerian history and culture. Developed by the Ekpe secret society, this intricate system of symbols or proto-writing is believed to have originated in the southeastern part of Nigeria. The Nsibidi symbols, numbering several hundred, are classified as pictograms, although some researchers have suggested that…

[cricketcat9]

Hugo Awards

in literary categories, from LitHub:

Best Novel: Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)

Best Novella: Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

Best Novelette: “The Space-Time Painter,” by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)

Best Short Story: “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)

Best Series: Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)

Best Graphic Story or Comic: Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, by Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, Krzysztof Ostrowski (Dark Horse Books)

Best Related Work: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book (presented by the World Science Fiction Society): Akata Woman (The Nsibidi Scripts), by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Books for Young Readers)

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines): Travis Baldree

You can read the full list of winners and finalists here. 

Congratulations! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

As usual, a lot of bitching in the LitHub comments 🙄

[j--mno-art]

Sunny Nwazue

[tlaquetzqui]

Hieroglyphic is writing, anyone can read it if they know the system, just like anyone can read Chinese. (It in fact works almost identically to Chinese, it just doesn’t stylize the underlying pictographs—and the derived systems, hieratic and demotic, are even more like Chinese, because they do.)

The term for this, where you can only understand it if you recognize the images in context, is proto-writing. Examples are the Nsibidi symbols of West Africa, and the symbol systems used in most of Mesoamerica. (Not the Maya or Epi-Olmec scripts, though: those were actual writing.)

always remember, friend,

now go in peace

This meme was inspired by the piece "Lucky 10,000" by Randall Monroe.

[noahsbookhoard]

📚May 2024 Book Review (Part 2/3📚

The september weather is not being kind to me right now so let's travel to Greece and Nigeria! And solve a murder too, why not.

Le Meurtre de Roger Ackroyd (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) by Agatha Christie

Roger Ackroyd is murdered just a day after Mrs Ferras, the woman he was planning to marry, was found dead from an overdose. One year earlier this was Mr Ferras who was found dead. Illness? Murder? This was unclear at the time, but the two deaths at 24 hours interval piqued Hercule Poirot's curiosity. Did Mrs Ferras really commit suicide? And who killed Roger Ackroyd?

My first Poirot and as of writing this, my favorite! (Granted I only read three so far but still.) Maybe it was a mistake to start with one with such a particular ending, maybe not. I fell from my chair at the revelation, I really saw nothing coming and it was thrilling.

I can't say too much because spoilling a murder mystery is not nice but I especially loved how this one had the answer staring us in the face this whole time and if you missed the one (1) clue or failed to understand it, the murderer would pass you by until Poirot unmasked them. Brilliant work but I understand why people were mad about it.

Poirot is unsufferable but that's why I love him so much, he has a flare for drama that suits the genre, you can almost feel him wink at you through the pages (and Agatha Christie through him as well, she would enjoy watching the read pull their hair trying to solve it and always ending up two steps behind her detective)

Surely one of the best, I can't recommend it enough. It is one of the earliest Hercule Poirot novel but still works really perfectly well today.

The Illiad by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)

Ten years after the beginning of the Trojan War the city is still under siege and the Greeks, away from home. Homer recounts the final months of the war, Achilles' anger at Agamemnon, the emboldening of the Trojan army, the death of Patroclus and Achilles' revenge on Hector.

This is my first reading of The Illiad, although I have heard the story of the Trojan War multiple times in different forms, my favorite being The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. It was tume to give the original a go! I had a lot of choice as for as translation goes, both in French and English but I was curious about Wilson's translation. Also I was adamant that I wanted it as an audiobook, to have a closer experience to what it would have been to listen to an epic in Homer's time and Audra McDonald does a pretty good job in my opinion!

I loved all the events that never make the cut in retelling or abridged version of the epic, the details of the conversations, the battles, even the Catalogue of the Ships that I was dreading was interesting and soothing during a long train ride.

And it was nice to finally hear some of the most well known moment of the Greek mythology in one of the most ancient form: the wealth of details and dialogues makes it so much more vivid and intense.

Having studied Ancient Greece a little, especially the perception of otherness in Greek culture was really enlightening to put some context on the events. Even so, after thousands of years, it is just as entertaining and touching. Hector saying goodbye to Andromaque and taking his helmet off so it wouldn't scare Astyanax will never stop being endearing to me.

The characters are still relatable at times, Achilles' anger, his grief. Hector's love for his family and telling off of his brother. The words have travelled times and find us exactly the same today, there is some poetry in this.

A long journey, but a really satisfying one. I have The Odyssey audiobook at the ready, waiting for a podcast or another to go on hiatus so that I have a listening slot available!

Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Script #1) by Nnedi Okorafor

Sunny is albinos and Nigerian, born in America before her family moved back to Nigeria. Her difference always left her a little lost, until she met Chichi, Orlu and Sasha and discovered the Leopard people, where her difference makes her magic even stronger. But the foir friends will have to face a hard apprenticeship and a dangerous enemy: Black Hat Otokoto, a children serial killer.

This one wasn't my pick: I joined a book club back in May and every month each member suggest a book, we deaw one randomly and read it together. I love the concept, it's super fun, it invites people to try books they wouldn't have read otherwise.

It is a middle grade/early young adult novel, very Harry Potter like (very very much like it, some elements are a bit too close to pass as accidents) so I was definitely not the target audience and might have been a bit too old to appreciate it. This is a young girl discovering her magic abilities that had been hidden from her and with her friends she will have to defeat a menacing man that uses dark powers. That's really cliché as far as plot goes and I wasn't very invested because I could see it coming from a mile away.

The characters were archetypes and did not make a lasting impression on me. Among the children there's the clever boy, Orlu, the bitchy girl Chichi, and the American boy Sasha. I found them very two-dimensional, dialogues often felt flat and their actions were really predictable, not to mention how the group dynamic looks earily like Harry Ron and Hermione. The adults are worse: they are fully aware of the threat of Black Hat Otokoto and won't do anything except send four kids do the job for them. I found them very cold, not to say cruel at times. Physical punishment is expected and treated as normal, which I was really uncomfortable with.

However the setting is really interesting: I really enjoyed discovering the Nigerian culture through daily life and adventures of Sunny. It made me want more of this universe and its magic.

So even though this book was not for me and I won't be reading the rest of the series I am really curious about Nnedi Okorafor's work. I browsed a little and the author also have some adult books too, including some Nebula and Hugo award nominees. I'll probably try it at some point.

[jhavelikes]

Nnedi’s works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV series), the BINTI novella trilogy (optioned and in development with Media Res), THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES and LAGOON. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel ZAHRAH THE WINDSEEKER won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Nnedi has also written an Africanfuturist comic series LAGUARDIA (winner of the Hugo and Eisner Award); comics for Marvel, including BLACK PANTHER: LONG LIVE THE KING and WAKANDA FOREVER (featuring the Dora Milaje) and the SHURI series; and her short memoir BROKEN PLACES AND OUTER SPACES. Nnedi holds a PhD (literature) and two MAs (journalism and literature). She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Phoenix, Arizona.

Nnedi Okorafor – Official Website

[aislynndmerricksson]

Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorofor

Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorofor Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor is the stunning finale to the mystical Nsibidi Scripts trilogy that blends African folklore, and Nigerian culture/ traditions with contemporary life.  Themes of friendship, identity, and personal growth take center stage, as Sunny and her Leopard Knocks friends navigate complicated magical politics and face immense battles. The…