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Tag: Helen Oyeyemi

Review: Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi

Ordinarily I would start a review by describing the book’s premise, but Helen Oyeyemi’s Peaces, like so many of her books, resists the idea of a “premise.” As time goes on and Helen Oyeyemi approaches a Helen Oyeyemi singularity, it becomes harder and harder to encapsulate her books into anything as mundane as a “premise.” There is a train; some newlyweds and their pet mongoose are traveling on the train; things go a bit wrong. Former Oyeyemi premises include: A male author writes a lot of female deaths; things go a bit wrong. Twins live in a haunted house; things…

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Making Fun of Bret Easton Ellis: A Links Round-Up

Tired: Making fun of Franzen Wired: Making fun of Bret Easton Ellis Just kidding! Those things are both incredible! So I’m kicking off this links round-up with Isaac Chotiner’s very magical interview with Bret Easton Ellis, as well as a review of the “old man yells at cloud” book Ellis has, apparently, written. Be blessed. “It felt hidden, like I said a magic word and there was Prague.” An interview with Helen Oyeyemi. The rise of publicly thirsty women. Some thoughts on cultural appropriation, rules, and self-censorship, from Jeannette Ng. An extremely normal and fine profile of Carmen Maria Machado.…

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PODCAST, Ep. 116 – Our Oldest and Newest Books, and Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread

Springtime pollen is sapping both our brains, but fortunately this podcast was never very serious to start with, and we’re hoping you won’t notice. We do “hoping you won’t notice a thing” by loudly and repeatedly talking about the thing. Our transparency is part of our charm, we dearly hope. This podcast, we’re chatting about some of the oldest and newest books we possess, and then Whiskey Jenny breaks her Helen Oyeyemi tie by falling in total love with Gingerbread. (Yay!) You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you…

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Diverse Books Tag

The marvelous Sharlene at Olduvai Reads tagged me for the Diverse Books Tag. The Diverse Books Tag is a bit like a scavenger hunt. I will task you to find a book that fits a specific criteria and you will have to show us a book you have read or want to read. If you can’t think of a book that fits the specific category, then I encourage you to go look for one. A quick Google search will provide you with many books that will fit the bill. (Also, Goodreads lists are your friends.) Find one you are genuinely interested in reading and move on…

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#BBAW: Introduce Yourself!

The time has come! The time is now! After a few years of lying fallow, Book Blogger Appreciation Week has returned! Huge, huge thanks to my co-hosts Heather, Andi, and Ana, and thanks to everyone who’s participating. Day 1: Introduce yourself by telling us about five books that represent you as a person or your interests/lifestyle. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte I’m starting with an unoriginal one, I know! But Jane Eyre was the first book where I ever read the end before I read the middle. It gave me a taste for romance, for gothic novels, for crazypants plots where…

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Boy, Snow, Bird, Helen Oyeyemi

Note: I received this ebook from the publisher via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. The beginning: That’s the first line of Boy Snow Bird, and doesn’t it remind you of how much you’ve missed Helen Oyeyemi? In her newest book, a girl named Boy runs away from her abusive father, a rat-catcher, to a small town called Flax Hill. There she meets a man called Arturo Whitman, and maybe she falls in love with him, and she…

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Giving up

Okay, I can’t do it, I’ve read too many books and not reviewed them and then I can’t remember anything about them. So whatever. I’m doing little bitty ones here. I’m declaring bloggy bankruptcy and giving myself a clean slate. Have to. Here are a series of cranky little reviewlets. Mr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi Liked it a lot! I went to see Helen Oyeyemi talk at McNally Jackson, and she said that writing Mr. Fox was just fun, that she was just enjoying every minute of writing it. It shows when you’re reading the book. Mr. Fox plays with ideas…

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Review: White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

In White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi has done the thing I was afraid she wasn’t going to manage, which is to become EVEN BETTER YET in her third book than she was in her second.  She can’t keep this up much longer, right?  I mean she has to plateau at some point, right?  Helen Oyeyemi!  What will you do to stagger and amaze us next? White is for Witching is about a set of twins, Eliot and Miranda, who live in a haunted house.  Miranda has pica, and the house hates foreigners.  As the book goes on, we come…

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Review: The Opposite House, Helen Oyeyemi

When I do not expect to enjoy a book all that much, but I need to get it read so I can return it to the library, I leave it in my loo and read it in tiny increments when I am cleaning my teeth and contact lenses, or waiting for the hot water to heat up (my hot water acts like it’s ready to go and then turns from a gush to a trickle; you have to wait SO LONG to get it going properly.  Many lukewarm showers before I figured it out).  If the book turns out better…

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