Trying to decide my next read...

Time to do a little traveling without leaving the office. ✈️

Friday night re-reading: featuring all the thrilling action of looking up epigraphs!

I somehow made it through life without anyone spoiling this classic for me! Definitely creepy, compelling, and naughtier than anticipated. First time reading Henry James and... who told him never to end a sentence with a prepositional phrase? A bit clunky of a prose style for me, but a great gothic tale!

Getting my weekend supply. Is it October yet?? 🌜💫🔮🎃🕸

This collection is dazzling! A truly amazing group of writers that feels like a real Who's Who of African writers I should know. Essays ranging all across the continent and across a multitude of topics, including an awesome array of essays dealing with LGBTI issues.

I really wanted to love this book. I think it had a lot of promise and some interesting characters but, honestly, I found the writing so hackneyed I just couldn't go on. Lots of characters announcing their emotions rather than feeling. Show, don't tell.

Yeah I participated in #24in48 ... If all this paper work counts! Feeling like a clerk in a Gogol story. ☠☠☠

Oh, Barbara. You just get me.

These poems are so beautiful and spare and perfect.

"Nature takes back its own. Or that's what they'd say in other places. We don't say so, because it's nonsense. Nature is not logical. You can't rely on Nature. And if you can't rely on something you'd better not build fine phrases out of it."

"I suppose [...] perhaps the best to be expected of 'a distinguished contemporary artist' is the usual number of eyes and other features and some faint likeness to the subject."

Does this book need more champions in this world? Borges existed on another plane from the rest of us--to read his work is to struggle to reach his level. When you do, even if it's only for a moment, it's sublime.

"It was a weird place in itself, but its occupants made it seem like a scene from the Seven Circles of Dante. The place was a rookery of pterodactyls."

"Often I think people ask these questions because they are afraid that there is no drive that, when pushed to its outer limits, does not invite or at least graze its extinction."

These stories are so gorgeously written, I want to wrap myself up in them. Sensuous, dark, decadent.

Great epigraph or greatest epigraph??

"Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me [...]"

I so wanted to love this combination travelogue/poetry collection but got bogged down by the 45-page intro. A few great passages also super dense. Really highlighted my ignorance of Japanese history...

"Hear ye hear ye hear ye//thuh Venus Hottentot iz dead.//There wont be inny show tuhnite."

This book is a wild ride. Not for the faint of heart, but populated with some of the most unique characters. Riveting, shocking, and so, so good.

"I will not tell you yet how the earth came into its present shape; and how its history is cut into tables of stone where anyone wise and patient enough can read."

Finally!

"It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own."

Language will keep us safe from human onslaught, will express for us our regret at being unable to supply groceries of love or peace.

Oyeyemi has another slam dunk with this collection of short stories. Like modern fairy tales with as diverse and memorable a cast of characters you could want. (Or at least, I could want).