{"id":31027,"date":"2017-05-31T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=31027"},"modified":"2017-05-30T18:01:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T23:01:53","slug":"now-arriving-from-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/now-arriving-from-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Now Arriving from: Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rivershare.polarislibrary.com\/search\/title.aspx?ctx=14.1033.0.0.3&amp;cn=225052\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-31035 noopener noreferrer\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-31035\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/guide-to-the-birds-of-east-africa.jpg?resize=263%2C400&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"263\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a>Hello Friends!<\/p>\n<p>How did your month in Kenya (or African country of your choice) go? Sadly, the quantity of books isn&#8217;t especially generous, but the quality of what is available helps make up for that.<\/p>\n<p>This month I read <a href=\"http:\/\/rivershare.polarislibrary.com\/search\/title.aspx?ctx=14.1033.0.0.3&amp;cn=225052\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em><strong>A Guide to the Birds of East Africa<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Nicolas Drayson. This is not an actual bird guide, but a novel, although the birds and wildlife of Kenya make many appearances. Rather, it is about Mr Malik, a widower, who has attended the weekly bird walks\u00a0of the East African Ornithological Society, which are lead by a certain Rose Mbikwa, for years. Mr Malik is desperately in love with Ms Mbikwa and, just as he&#8217;s nearly gotten\u00a0up the courage to ask her to the annual society dance, a rival appears in the most horrible form &#8211; Harry Khan &#8211; brash, good-looking and flashy, the very opposite of Mr Malik.<\/p>\n<p>A competition is cooked up by their fellow birders &#8211; whoever can identify the most species of birds in a week wins the right to ask Ms Mbikwa to the dance. What follows is a charming love story (think Alexander McCall Smith) set against the sweeping landscape of Kenya. I have always thought of Africa as dry and hot and empty and while some of this is partly true, <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/rivershare.polarislibrary.com\/search\/title.aspx?ctx=14.1033.0.0.3&amp;cn=225052\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A Guide to the Birds of East Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/em> also shows how gorgeous it must be, a land of wide open skies and teeming with birds and wildlife as well as people from all walks of life. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s your turn &#8211; what did you read this month?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello Friends! How did your month in Kenya (or African country of your choice) go? Sadly, the quantity of books isn&#8217;t especially generous, but the quality of what is available helps make up for that. This month I read A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicolas Drayson.<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/now-arriving-from-kenya\/\">[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,3371],"tags":[376,2152,3395],"class_list":["post-31027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-online-book-challenge","tag-africa","tag-kenya","tag-online-reading-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-84r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31027"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31036,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31027\/revisions\/31036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}