Book Club: Nadia’s Book Club
Nadia Ahmed Abdalla, Chief Administrative Secretary at the Ministry of ICT, State Department of Innovation and Youth Affairs, and founder Nadia's Book Club. PHOTO| POOL
What you need to know:
What you need to know:
- The idea behind Nadia’s book club is to help people keep their mental health in check during this Covid-19 pandemic.
- Also, to reinstall back the reading culture and to help young people socialise and network with different minded people
Book Reading: What Happened to You by Bruce D. Perry PHD and Oprah Winfrey
Growing up, my family used to shower me with books (from Nursery Ryhmes, to Hardy Boys, to Goose Bumps, To Nancy Drew all the way to Danielle Steel). However, as I got to my teens I lost interest in reading and gained more in writing, but as I got to university, I regained interest in reading. Now, both reading and writing keeps my mental health in check.
My book club is called Nadia’s Book Club and the idea behind it is to help people keep their mental health in check during this Covid-19 pandemic, reinstall back the reading culture and to help young people socialise and network with different minded people. I started the book club last month.
Getting members has not been easy. I remember running a poll on IG asking whether people would be interested in the book club and the response was immense. However, the day I rolled our registration, only 25 individuals came on board with the majority being male.
Because of the risk of contracting coronavirus, the book club is presently virtual. As such, we don’t have a solid membership because interests dictate how many people will attend my Instagram live sessions to discuss the book we are reading. Besides going live on Instagram, I also intend to include virtual discussions through platforms such as Zoom and allow people to discuss and network.
My current read is the new book that just hit the market called, “What Happened to You” by Bruce D. Perry PHD and Oprah Winfrey. I picked this book partly because it is mental health awareness month but mainly because I wanted to know more about trauma, healing and how to be better for myself. Oprah Winfrey is one of my idols so I need to know how she got through all the hurdles and became mentally strong as a public figure.
So far, my take home is that we all have a reason why we behave the way we do and it has a lot to do with our childhood. To fix issues, we have to start from there.
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