Book Chat with Keeya Lee-Ayre

Episode of Lit Happens with Cyd. Now I would like to welcome to the show Kia. Kia, how are you? I'm great. How are you, Sydney? I'm good. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on and chat with us. And you are a fellow book advocate lover. I love your entire Instagram page and how much you're fighting for the importance of literacy. And so before we kind of take a look at a couple of your favorite reads, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're from, and what really sparked your interest into becoming such an avid reader? Yeah, thank you so much. Big questions. Like I'm pausing here because I'm like, I, who am I? I'm a mom. I am a person who wears many hats. So I work as an ethicist. I study ethics at Oxford part-time in the US. I run a nonprofit based here in Atlanta. Like I hate free time clearly. No, but I'm a very curious person. So I'm always doing something and trying to learn something. And I think that's part of why I love books so much because I always learn something new about the human experience about a topic about someone else's perspective even if I end up hating it I feel like I learned something so I read constantly love reading now what would you say do you have like a favorite go-to genre or are you kind of like a mood reader I'm a mood reader but lately I've been reading a lot of horror I and when I talk about her so my husband is like not in right so when I'm trying to tell him about a book I love he's like please stop I love that you enjoy this I don't want to hear this um but I read a book recently that broke me a little and you know in that way that horror does when it's about really important social issues you're critiquing something it's beautiful but it's devastating and disgusting and like you're uncomfortable but that's what's amazing like I think it's amazing if you can look at words on a page and feel physically ill like that's a talent um so I think I might be in a little horror break right now but I I tend to like dive into a genre and like goodbye I read anything i read like trashy romance i read historical fiction i read literary fiction i read like multi-fantasies i just read all the dungeon crawler call books like literally i just but i think when you have a broad like reading palette is what i like to say like that really helps your brain it helps your thinking process and it's just a different way to escape everything that's kind of going on in the real world no matter what the genre is just like reading is just the place to be instead of doom scrolling read a little bit that exactly that's the main thing and so a couple of your favorite books one of them is Best Offer Wins and i actually found this at Marshall's the other day for like six bucks i was like score so tell us a little bit about what's in this story and what would you say you loved about it yeah um it's really funny i was actually DMing with the author about the book or in the comments and i feel like because i was filming this video where i was talking about how the book is insane and i was like looking up the author of the book because it felt a little too like authentic it was so well written that you believe the character and then you when it gets unhinged you're like oh okay this is a little bit kooky and then it just becomes like unhinged like the kind of unhinged that horror is unhinged and i i felt too real um and the author did it's a debut too and i think she did such a good job of making this crazy character seem real in their crimes and their delusion that i was like i mean I'm not saying it's auto fiction but let me like tell you she found that funny um no but it's like it's a book that is about I think a lot of issues people can relate to right like the housing crisis cost of living having a view of a life that you want and kind of being willing to do anything you can to get there and I think it starts out in a place that feels relatable and then yeah it becomes um not relatable because the main character is completely deranged but in a really fun way and i read because i read so much i never actually felt you know when you have like an unreliable narrator yeah don't believe it or you think it's silly like i believe that she believes it and it was really well done that's good and i like i said i found it at Marshall's and i was like wait a minute i said isn't this the one that Kia just told me about and i was like next time like you can't beat that you know so of course i had to grab it did i need it no but i was like you know you can't go wrong and then especially when it's like that unhinged like i love anything unhinged i just think it just broadens your horizons of thinking capabilities and it's like especially during spooky season like you can't go you can't go wrong and so you also like the office of historical corrections by Daniel Evans what would you say even though you love this story what would you say as a lesson you've taken away from this so i'm i'm biracial and i just i have a weird accent you're like where are you from i'm like great question so my mom's australian i grew up in Australia but I was born in Missouri my dad's black but I lived in Asia like so a lot of looking like kind of confusing and sounding confusing and moving around I think those themes manifest in interesting ways the book tackles issues of race in America in a really I think fresh way especially as someone with my kind of perspective I felt like it captured a lot of the nuance of microaggressions of identity of like belonging but the novella it has a really really good ending but it's very uh deep and hard to read and really grapples with this country in like a lot of different ways and I felt like when you were just saying we read to like escape reality i was like this book isn't that like this book is like it is very reality based um but it it's great and I love all of the short stories so there are six I believe short stories like check well there are six short stories and then the novella and they're all really great in different ways but I like to read short stories as sort of palate cleanses between novels so like I approached each of them individually and loved them but the novella at the end was just oh that ending yeah and another one of your favorites um was The Husbands which I had actually never heard about so tell me a little bit about what's involved in this story and what really drew you to it yeah um the premise is kind of crazy if I see a wacky premise I'm always like in because I want to see if they do it well or mess it up right like i just you know not every premise lands um but the premise of that book is that this woman goes into the attic so she comes home from i don't remember it's like a party she comes home there's a man in her house he's like what's wrong with you i'm your husband she's never met him before she doesn't know who he is she's freaking out she's like texting her friend looks at pictures on the wall there's pictures of them together like all of her friends know him they're like that's your husband and she's like uh what he goes into the attic for some reason and comes back and it's a different husband and like her reality has changed um and there's a different husband in her life and all her friends and family know him and they have photos and stuff so basically every time one of these men goes in the attic and comes back as a different husband so it's really grappling with like and she plays with that right like she doesn't like one she goes to you know leave and then when she does like one and they accidentally anyway it's like i think a really good way of playing with kind of sci-fi multiverse but about all the lives we could live and what we kind of want and what perfection looks like and who we could be um and it it's yeah a little existential it gets kind of philosophical so i think some folks on goodreads didn't like you know if you don't want to think i don't think it's entertaining but it you have to think when you're reading it not everyone likes that but i found it great i love that book i think i'm gonna have to add that one to my tbr because that sounds very interesting yeah yeah the ending is very uh a lot of people hated the ending but I thought it was like beautiful loved it yeah and so Kia before I let you go is there anything else that you would like to say to fellow book lovers out there especially since reading and bookstagram and book talk is so huge right now yeah I mean I love that right because folks are always constantly saying no one's reading it's like well I think there are plenty of us who tell you that's wrong like lots of people read um I just love people reading what they want to read um that's my only takeaway I think when I was younger I would feel like I had to read like smart books and intellectual books and always be I don't know reading classics and like no I read read just read if you want to read read something trashy read something fun read something whatever you know we have e-readers we fake covers if you're embarrassed that's fine but read for yourself there's no right or wrong answer exactly and if you say you don't like reading you just haven't found your favorite genre or your favorite author yet but you'll get there you'll get there in time so yeah thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with me and fellow book lovers out there we greatly appreciate it thank you so much