Top 5 book recommendations - May
Terdoo's best picks. From Afrofuturism to Outer Space🚀
I’m an avid reader of fiction — children’s books, young adult, and historical alike. But I especially lean toward fantastical worlds with deeply grounded magical systems.
These are the books I turn to when I want to talk about my taste in stories. The kind that stuck with me, shaped me, and still whisper to my imagination.
The theme that shows up most in my reading? Outer space.
It’s where most of my imagination lives.
Project Hail Mary is about an interspecies bromance between the unlikeliest pairings. Andy Weir delivers the kind of nail-biting, space-operatic drama that I love and thrive on.
I didn’t used to like mystical fantasy… until I read this gem in 2014.
It was my first and brightest introduction to African fantasy and Afrofuturism. Okorafor’s descriptive storytelling (Zahrah meeting the egret? Iconic.) has lived rent-free in my head for nearly a decade.
More than that, it was my first time encountering Black-led fiction — and I’ve never looked back.
After Zahrah, I went searching for stories with the same resonance.
This one delivered. The Soninke and Tahgreb tribes gave me that familiar thrill of West African cultural touchpoints, in a world of sharp political tension and magical chaos.
This is fantasy canon.
Yes, the cast is stereotypical at times. But its language-heavy magic system is beautifully crafted from the ground up.
Like Scholomance and Babel, it pushed me to be more intentional in my own writing to build worlds that feel real, layered, and alive.
I owe my love for reading to my dad.
His shelf is where I found The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
Reading irreverent, religion-tinged books made me sit up and realise the power of writing to provoke, question, and entertain all at once.
They lit something in me. And they’ve become building blocks of who I am.
Fiction can be profound
Every book on this list expanded my mind in a new way . Even the ones “meant for kids.”
I hope one of these authors speaks to your heart the way they did mine.
And if you’re a reader too (or trying to become one again), come join our Book Club at 10.8.8 Africa
It’s one of the coolest things we’ve built — and we’re just getting started.
👉 Join here
Let’s read better, together.