Monday, July 6, 2009

A Worthy Legacy - Tomi Akinyanmi


Tomi Akinyanmi has taken inspiration from her real life events and created a wonderfully inspiring fictionalized tale - A Worthy Legacy.

She writes from the point of a granddaughter who has returned to her Nigerian village to await the death of her beloved grandfather. With the family gathered around him, her grandfather says that he has no worldly goods to pass on, but wishes to share the wisdom of a lifetime with them.

Self respect, solitude, pride, doing what you know is right, learning from the past, using your destiny and living a good life are just a few of the pearls of wisdom shared.

It's a slim volume, but packs much food for thought into 100 pages. It's not a book you want to race through at all, instead take your time to savour and think about the ideas and thoughts presented.

Tomi writes with a lyrical beauty. Her prose are calm, gentle and thoughtful, interspersed with beautiful poetry.

The ending quote struck a chord with me,

"As for me, I have no doubt within my heart that if every physical property the dear old man bequeathed were to be lost today, the words and knowledge I've received from him cannot be taken from me. This is the greatest treasure I have received, the very best inheritance of all, an inheritance with not equal: a worthy legacy to bequeath."

I think Tomi's work will strike a chord with many readers, prompting us to ask, what is our legacy?

A Worthy Legacy won the 2009 Reviewer's Choice Award from Reader Views.

Tomi's tour stops tomorrow at Lost in Books with Rebecca.

8 comments:

Patti V. said...

Great review Luanne. This sounds like a really good book to balance out my "fluff" reading this summer.

Donna said...

Sounds wonderful. Great review!

bermudaonion said...

The quote you cited is stunning and really made me think. Great review.

Linda Nguyen said...

Great review. Worldly possessions can never match someone's wisdom.

cindysloveofbooks said...

Great Review.

By the way I have an award for you.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for a lovely review and congratulations on your award.

ANovelMenagerie said...

Luanne, this comment is unrelated. I have lost many of my fellow bloggers/readers due to a change in my feed address. As you're one of my favorite blogs, I wanted to let you know about this change in my feed address and URL. The post about it is here: http://anovelmenagerie.com/2009/06/30/blogging-update/. I just didn't want to lose touch (although, you're on my reader... so we're golden, there!)

Sheri

Anna said...

Great review! I've heard a lot of good things about this one.

--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric