#Blessing Banwo

[gospelhotspot]

Born In A Manger - Unify World x King Uid Ft. Blessing Banwo

Gospel music minister, King UID, and his music empire Unify World, blesses us with a fresh Christmas sound titled ‘Born In A Manger‘, featuring Blessing Banwo. Born In A Manger is a song that ushers in the season of Christmas and the good tidings it comes with. The song acknowledges the humble introduction of our Messiah into the world in a lowly state. The song is coming off the newly released…

[ninja-muse]

I posted 3,047 times in 2022

That's 22 more posts than 2021!

132 posts created (4%)

2,915 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@a-ramblinrose

@therefugeofbooks

@leer-reading-lire

@mostlyghostie

@stefito0o

I tagged 3,045 of my posts in 2022

#who queue? - 2,870 posts

#book covers - 915 posts

#stacks of books - 652 posts

#bookshelves - 601 posts

#cover art - 432 posts

#spines - 386 posts

#open books - 333 posts

#book recommendations - 295 posts

#mugs - 209 posts

#bookstores - 203 posts

Longest Tag: 112 characters

#lords noodle and doodle came back and there was the most spectacular collective accident scene i've read in ages

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

2022 Release TBR

Where the Drowned Girls Go - Seanan McGuire (contemporary fantasy) - January 4

Heartstopper, Volume Four - Alice Oseman (YA romance) - January 4 🏳️‍🌈

Battle of the Linguist Mages -  Scotto Moore (contemporary fantasy) - January 11 friend says it’s probably not my thing

Anatomy - Dana Schwartz (YA historical fantasy) - January 18

The Servant Mage - Kate Elliott (fantasy) - January 18 🏳️‍🌈

Love and Other Disasters - Anita Kelly (romance) - January 18 🏳️‍🌈

Some by Virtue Fall - Alexandra Rowland (fantasy) - January 25 🏳️‍🌈

Hot and Sour Suspects - Vivien Chien (cozy mystery) - January 25 BIPOC

The Christie Affair - Nina de Gramont (historical fiction) - February 1

Bluebird - Ciel Pierlot (science fiction) - February 8 🏳️‍🌈

Dead Silence - S.A. Barnes (science fiction/horror) - February 8

Age of Ash - Daniel Abraham (fantasy) - February 15

Carolina Built - Kianna Alexander (historical fiction) - February 22 BIPOC

Gallant - V.E. Schwab (YA fantasy) - March 1

The River of Silver - S.A. Chakraborty (historical fantasy) - March 1 BIPOC

Spelunking Through Hell - Seanan McGuire (contemporary fantasy) - March 1

Umboi Island - J.J. Dupuis (mystery) - March 8 🇨🇦

Memory's Legion - James S.A. Corey (science fiction) - March 15 I’m three books behind on the series, no way am I getting to this this year

When We Were Birds - Ayanna Llord Banwo (fabulism) - March 15 BIPOC

The Cartographers - Peng Shepherd (mystery) - March 15

How to Take Over the World - Ryan North (science/humour) March 15 🇨🇦

Comeuppance Served Cold - Marion Deeds (historical fantasy) - March 22

The Diamond Eye - Kate Quinn (historical fiction) - March 29

The Wolf Den - Elodie Harper (historical fiction) - March 29

Conversations with People Who Hate Me - Dylan Marron (memoir) - March 29

Portrait of a Thief - Grace C. Li (thriller) - April 5 BIPOC

Shadows of Berlin - David R. Gillham (historical fiction) - April 5

Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch (urban fantasy) - April 12 BIPOC

Persians - Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (history) - April 12

See the full post

97 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

#4

A couple weeks ago I was blessed with a reading copy of A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows, and let me tell you, it should be on every fantasy lover’s TBR for this summer. This is a story about kind, sensible, competent people dealing with assassins and intrigues, about finding love in unexpected places, about healing and unlearning unconscious biases. The writing and the setting are both lush and to be sunk into. It’s a beautiful queer love story, full of gentleness, wonderfully escapist in general, and gave me serious Marvellous Light vibes the whole way through. It’s not without darkness—there’s a very notable rape early on, for instance—but gosh, I need people to read this just so I can squee about it with them.

Out July 26, 2022.

108 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

#3

My dad unhauled a bunch of books before Christmas and let me have my pick of them. A pic of the full stack will be coming, probably in my February wrap-up, but I just had to share this one! Don’t have a date for it, but it was awarded to a technical school student in 1910.

116 notes - Posted February 25, 2022

#2

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper is a refreshing take on historical fiction. Not only is it set in Roman Pompeii rather than northwestern Europe in the 19th or 20th centuries, but it’s centered on enslaved sex workers and told in modern language. (No thou’s or attempts to mimic Latin here!) The author has done a great job of bringing the ancient world to life and making it feel nearer than it is.

The book focuses on Amara, born into a middle-class Greek family and sold into slavery after family tragedy. As she does her best to better her circumstances at any cost, we get not only a portrait of a living Roman city with its pubs, parties, clothing stores, food stalls, and everyday injustices, but also a wonderful sense of the friendships and competition within the brothel she works in. I loved seeing how the women there formed a community among themselves, and how they fit into the wider society (or didn’t). I got the real sense that Harper had not only delved deep into how Roman society would’ve worked at the street level, but had done her diligence regarding the lives of (modern) sex workers too.

I also thought that Harper did a good job portraying the characters as complex, fallible, and human. She gives her female characters, especially Amara, the full range of emotions and all are believably imperfect. The worst of the men get sympathetic moments and the best of them, damning ones. They all feel of their time too—relatable or familiar, but also holding attitudes and beliefs that remind you this isn’t a modern story. (For instance, it’s clear that Amara knows slavery sucks for all enslaved people, but she never quite questions why slavery is even a thing.)

All in all, reading this felt like reading about real people leading real lives much more often than it felt like reading a novel. It’s a slowish read that feels at times like it’s digressing or offering up set pieces of Pompeiian life, but those moments all get woven back in neatly by the end. (It’s also slowish because of emotional drain. I couldn’t binge-read because bad things kept happening.) I found the ethical dilemmas compelling, though—if you’d damned no matter what, what’s the right option?—and enjoyed both how Harper told this story and woven in her themes and critiques. It’s definitely been one of the highlights of my reading month and I hope it gets a lot of attention once it’s out.

Note: while this book is definitely pro-sex work and has a lot of sympathy for those who find themselves forced into that life or exploited, it’s still set within an incredibly misogynistic society that saw no problem with degrading or harming women. If harassment, issues with consent or boundaries, or sexual violence are things you don’t want to read about, this might not be the book for you. They’re rarely graphic, but definitely prevalent.

122 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Hello! I saw your 2022 Release TBR come across my dash, and I don't know if the Pride flags are to denote that the author or that the book itself is queer, but in either case, Seanan McGuire can absolutely have a flag :-)

Thanks! The flags are to denote queer characters here, not queer authors (for brevity and minimal confusion). I'm trying to be responsible and not put flags on books I'm not 100% sure of. For instance, I know Where the Drowned Girls Go is Cora's book, but I don't remember if Cora is canonically queer? Same goes for the characters in Seasonal Fears and for Alice in Spelunking Through Hell. If they're confirmed, I'll be adding that flag during my wrap-up, for sure.

129 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Tagged by @aliteraryprincess and @franticvampirereads, thank you!

Tagging @lizziethereader @thelivebookproject @rae-reads @thesheepthewolf @doughtah @howlsmovinglibrary

[rockislandadultreads]

Book Recommendations: Magical Realism 

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

The St. Bernard women have lived in Morne Marie, the house on top of a hill outside Port Angeles, for generations. Built from the ashes of a plantation that enslaved their ancestors, it has come to shelter a lineage that is bonded by much more than blood. One woman in each generation of St. Bernards is responsible for the passage of the city's souls into the afterlife. But Yejide's relationship with her mother, Petronella, has always been contorted by anger and neglect, which Petronella stubbornly carries to her death bed, leaving Yejide unprepared to fulfill her destiny.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when his ailing mother can no longer work and the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life she built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, Port Angeles's largest and oldest cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and immersive lyricism, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova

The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers.

Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, the four descendants travel to Ecuador - to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back.

The Storyteller’s Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal

There was always an old woman dying in the back room of her family’s house when Isla was a child...

Isla Larsen Sanchez’s life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her grandmother and great-aunt each summer like a piece of forgotten luggage.

When Isla turns eighteen, her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies. It is then that Isla discovers she has a gift passed down through her family’s cuentistas. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

At first, Isla is enchanted by this connection to the Sanchez cuentistas. But when Isla has a vision of an old murder mystery, she realizes that if she can't solve it to make the loop end, these seemingly harmless stories could cost Isla her life.

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings 

Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behavior raises suspicions and a woman - especially a Black woman - can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

But fourteen years have passed since her mother's disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30 - or enroll in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At 28, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she's offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.

The Measure by Nikki Erlick 

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

[pasinmusiclimitedcom]

BORN IN A MANGER by Unify World x King UID ft Blessing Banwo

[samueladu-mrexponent]

It is OUR Digital God-Father's birthday today! Dr. Ope Banwo II @opebanwo aka the Wealth Apostle, I celebrate you now and always sir. You are a mentor, coach and a role model to us. You are a philanthropist, a rare gem and a giver with reckless abandan. My success story in Digital Business Specialization and freelancing cannot be complete without your name written in bold. Down to earth, easily accessible, fatherly, teacher and trainer. Sir, you are too much. Today, I join my colleagues from the American Internet Business School, the Netvangelists and other well wisher to celebrate your milestone of impactful living sir. You are an inspiration, blessing and motivation to we the younger generation. There is so much to learn from your wealth of experience. I remember how you locked us in a training room like that to teach us the "Monkey Principle"- over 8hours of dept, insight, information and learning in one single training! And to say it is never a dull moment with you is an understate. You are livelier that life, comical than some comedians and blunt like that. Lol. Your own is to see us go and make money online legitimately as you believe that Africans need to start leveraging the power of the internet to make wealth for themselves. On this special day of celebration of your +1, I pray that God keep you and sustain you for us. Make you stronger physically, mentality and spiritually. Increase you on all frontiers, and make your path keep shining and shining unto the perfect day. As you have laboured on us all just to see us grow and better, you will never know a better yesterday. Sweetness, bliss, plenty, riches, wealth, sound health, longevity sha be yours. You will eat the fruit of your years of labour even unto old age in Jesus name! Amen. Ad multos annos. https://www.instagram.com/p/B_nEMTSJERy/?igshid=16nmp19id27ni

[banjokosh]

*The Functional Church* A functional church is a church that understands its mission and is pursuing its purpose according to the will of God. Join us as Pastor Kunle Banwo gives more exposition as per our identity and purpose in this divine plan of God this Sunday March 1 2020. Time: 11:00am. Venue: The Bethel Place Heywood. You will surely be blessed. Amen. https://www.instagram.com/p/B9KASbeHRVc/?igshid=15clhmheoxtal

[jumiatravel]

2017 Travel Goals: 6 tips to help aspiring globetrotters accomplish their goals this year

Every year, we make a list of all the things we will love to do and how we would love to make a change. But of all these goals, the hardest to cross off the list might be that you wished you had traveled more. The New Year affords you another opportunity to gift yourself a lasting memory of some of the most captivating cities in the world.

Making a list is just never enough, you have to make appropriate plans as well. Planning allows you get rid of nervous tensions or anxiety, avoid overspending and make the most out of your travel experiences.

I recently interviewed a number of influential travel bloggers, see here and here. Some of whom have been fortunate to have visited close to 50 countries.

Here are some of the tips I picked from the interview to help you accomplish your travel goals in 2017

1.       Do not be in denial of your money situation:

Depending on your income, set up a dedicated saving account to help meet your travel goal. You will be surprised at how quickly it adds up to make a whopping sum of money. Declutter your home or wardrobe and get rid of anything that is unessential. Put them up for sale on an online marketplace and put the money straight into your dedicated savings account.

2.       Plan according to your budget:

Pick destinations within your budget and start planning. Making plans always get easier once you know what destinations you can or cannot afford. If you have an endless budget, good for you as there are endless possibilities just for you.

However, all hope isn’t lost for everyone else on a low budget. You just need to be more tactical about your travel plans. Consider going to affordable destinations closer to your country, focus on places where the currency exchange leaves you at a considerable advantage or where local lifestyle is much affordable than back home.

3.       Explore your backyard:

Who ever said traveling mean going far away and for a long time? Explore nearby cities, visit ancient landmarks and museums or take a vacation to one of the best resorts in Nigeria. Enjoy a weekend getaway at La Campagne Tropicana Resort in Lagos or Sheraton hotel Abuja.

Get to know your own country and check off all the tourist attractions and sights on your list of things to see. Remember that awesome things are happening all around you and your travel goals might take flight if you start with a couple of “staycations”, enjoy and learn more about the place you call home.

4.       Make the most of the long layovers:

Getting the longest layover possible is recommended as your fare is likely to be cheaper. Layovers can be a blessing, whether it’s for a few hours at the airport or a night’s stay in an unknown city, take advantage of that layover time to the fullest. Enjoy 2 trips for the price of 1, as it gives you the chance to get out of the airport and experience a middle destination ahead of your final one.

 5.       Take advantage of your business trips:

Congratulations! If you are lucky enough to have a job that allows you travel. Going to a seminar in Tanzania, obviously, doesn’t mean you’ll be spending the day at the beach or a game reserve. But if you have a bit of free time on your hand, enjoy a couple of touristy visits or even just hang out in a bustling city center to feel the local vibe.

6.       Find the right travel buddy:

If traveling solo isn’t your thing, find a travel buddy with similar interest. This may inspire you to visit places that you have never heard of before. The right travel companion may not be your closest relative or spouse. It could be your colleague or a new friend. Once you’ve succeeded in finding your partner in travel, be sure to discuss interests, expectations, and budget before traveling.

 Photo by http://www.geodus.com/

Written by: Mariam Banwo Barry