Ashley’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2016)

Ashley’s comments from the CPL's Book a Week Challenge group.

I am listening to Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. I loooove their podcast My Favorite Murder, so I was excited to check out their book. I am only an hour into it, and I love it!

Reddit! I am addicted to reading all sorts of things on Reddit - everything from relationship advice to funny stories to book/author related drama. I will usually scroll Reddit on my phone right before bed, so my boyfriend made me a shirt that says, "Reddit and Bed It," haha.

I used curbside for the first time last week! It is a great service to be able to provide, but please stay safe! Library workers' health is the most important thing here.

I checked out seasons 9-11 of Doctor Who, so I can finally catch up on one of my favorite shows.

I just finished reading an advanced copy of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and wow! I think it is going to be a hit when it is released. It is about a young woman in early 18th century France who makes a Faustian deal to get out of an unwanted marriage. She asks to be free and untethered so she can really live. Since she is dealing with a dark god, she gets more than she bargains for. She becomes immortal, but every time someone turns away from her, they forget she exists. She is free because she can never be remembered. She cannot speak her own name or write anything lasting. This all changes three hundred years later when a guy working in a book store remembers her... This book was amazing, and I look forward to its release so I can see what other people think about it.

I am now reading a book about getting through procrastination and writer's block, hoping it will inspire me to get back to writing.

Joanna wrote: Funny you should mention Vesperia... my roommate just got a Yuri figure so that and her art print of him went up last night. And one of my first photo shoots with her was an alternate costume Judith. She is a huge Tales fan (and, when you live with one, you end up becoming one yourself, lol).

I am having so much fun with Vesperia!! I tried another Tales game a while ago (Zesteria, I believe), and ended up getting distracted by other things, but this one has been very enjoyable. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as it is the game that consistently came up when I looked up games similar to my all-time favorite - Eternal Sonata. Have you or your roommate played that one? It is the most beautiful video game I have ever played, and I still routinely replay it because I just love it so much.

I think I'd like a figure of Estelle, Judith, and Rita. I do love strong, powerful women! :-)

I've always been a big nerd, but it was something that I was made to feel badly about for a long time, so I never fully embraced it until recently. I am now perfectly content allowing myself to enjoy all the nerd things.

Being quarantined with the biggest nerd I know has been amazing. We've watched several anime series (including the newest season of My Hero Academia, whose season finale had me trying to hide the fact that I was crying from my boyfriend, who I think was also shedding a tear or two, haha) and game a ton. I ran through of a bunch of walking sims - my favorites being What Remains of Edith Finch and The Painscreek Killings. We are playing World of Warcraft together, and I am playing Tales of Vesperia on my Switch - both of which have been loads of fun. My boyfriend is a big Magic the Gathering player. I play too, but I enjoy the social aspect of going to the game store and hanging out with people, so playing online usually is lacking something for me. Yesterday, though, we got on Discord with several of our Magic buddies and played together. I came in third place out of eight people, and it was great to hear everyone and catch up.

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking and baking. I don't particularly love the process, but I love the outcome! So far, I'd say the best meals I've made are chicken lettuce wraps, shepherd's pie, and bourbon chicken. I've baked many loaves of banana bread and more brownies than I'd like to count (...because I ate most of them, ha!).

I've been in a big mood to watch Doctor Who lately, but I cannot find anywhere to stream it online. I was hoping to do a full rewatch up to where I abandoned it (around season 9) and then finally catch up. I also wanted to watch Torchwood again - the first two seasons are some of my favorite material out of the DW universe.

I am trying to write creatively in my spare time, but I haven't been super inspired lately. Between work, anime, and obscene amounts of gaming, I am easily filling my days.

I am trying to be more mindful about reading books that are written by diverse authors, especially when it comes to YA. I am currently rereading The Hate U Give for a book club that my work is running, and I am loving it as much as I did the first time I read it. Slay is another great YA read. It features a strong STEM female lead, and plays to my heart by revolving around an MMO-RPG. Tiny Pretty Things is cowritten by two WOC, and two of the three main characters are diverse. I never thought I'd enjoy a book about the cutthroat world of ballet, but that one did it for me!

I am currently listening to The Princess and the Fangirl. It is super cute. I'm rooting for everyone to get their guy or girl in the end! I didn't think I was going to like these nerdy fairytale retellings as much as I do, but I'd be happy to keep reading about the Starfield fandom.

As for Valentine's Day, this will be my second one with my partner. We completely ignored it last year. This year we will be doing what we do every Friday - hanging out at our local game store playing Magic the Gathering and talking about video games and anime with a bunch of like-minded nerds. I'll leave the romance and candlelit dinners for those who truly enjoy it!

Top reads are a little too hard for me. I was just looking through my list and found so many that were good! I would say that the two that surprised me most with being top reads for me were Exit, Pursued by a Bear and Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. They were both just super stellar contemporary YA books.



As for duds, there were two very disappointing ones. They both have mostly positive reviews, and I knew people who were very hyped on them. Bone Gap and Carry On were massive disappointments for me. The former bored me to tears, and the latter was just too on-the-nose with the "let's make this as close to Harry Potter fanfiction as possible" bit.

I am finally watching Star Wars (for the first time ever, sadly), so I just clicked on Queen's Shadow and saw that it is written by E.K. Johnston. She wrote an amazing YA novel called Exit, Pursued by a Bear, which was an amazing book - definitely different from a Star Wars book, though!

I am currently reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. I need to hurry up and finish it because I only have two days left and there are a lot of people on hold for it, but I am not digging it much so far. As of now, the main character is incredibly unlikable. I have pretty much only heard good things, though, so I am going to try and power through it.

I have a whole shelf of DNFs. I have finally gotten to the point in my life where I stop reading if I am not enjoying it. The most disappointing DNF for me was Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. I have liked all of her other stuff, and I actually read over 400 pages of this book before I just couldn't take anymore and stopped.

When I was in 11th grade, we were given a list of books by our English teacher. We had to pick any of the books and do a research paper on any topic related to the book. I randomly picked Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War (which I ended up loving!). After researching, I decided to write my paper on censorship and banning books. From there, I decided I was going to try and read as many of the books on the list of top 100 banned books as I could.

That venture led to one of my all-time favorite authors - Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five is on the list of 100 most frequently challenged or banned books, and it is somewhere on my top 3 absolute favorite books.

I remember in the early days of social media, I spent a lot of time on LiveJournal. I used it to journal my daily life, but I also got heavily involved in the 'fandoms' of books, television, and films that I loved.

One thing that was always big was fancasting. Usually before a book-to-film's actors were announced (or after they were announced and fans were disappointed), people would create their ideal casts.

What is your fancast? Is there an actor that you can just envision in the role of your favorite book? Is there an actor that you feel was perfectly suited - or completely wrong - for the role in which they were cast?

I am always torn with the Harry Potter adults. While I love most of the actors who played the adults, I felt like they were far too old for what canon stated. James and Lily were twenty-one when Harry was born, so Snape, Lupin, Sirius, etc. should have been in their thirties. As much as I love Alan Rickman, he was definitely not a thirty-something when those films came out. Although I know J.K. Rowling was insistent on an all-British cast, I always imagined Trent Reznor as Snape.

So, tell me about your dream fancast!

Good Monday morning, everyone! I hope everyone had a good weekend.

I want to talk book endings. I am going to be fairly vague for most of mine, but be aware that there may be spoilers for books in here!

Which endings do you love? Which left you feeling unsatisfied?

I really love the ending to Ian McEwan's Atonement. It was not a totally unexpected twist, as I had seen the film beforehand, but I thought it was handled so well. My mother, on the other hand, was upset. She felt as though the book essentially lied and misled her all the way to the end.

The last line of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorite lines in literature. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." It may not have wrapped everything up neatly, but it is beautiful. In the same vein, I love the last line of Orwell's 1984. "He loved Big Brother." It is not a happy ending, but it is a powerful one.

As for endings I didn't like, I would have to say the epilogue to JKR's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and the epilogue to Suzanne Collins's Mockingjay. I realize that both of the epilogues were written with the intention of wrapping up the series and providing a concrete ending, but I was unsatisfied with both. I felt like the Harry Potter one was not needed and should have been left out, and I feel like the Mockingjay epilogue ruined Katniss. She took and strong and empowered female character and destroyed basically all of the character-building she had done for three books.

So - talk to me about the end!

When I was a kid, I used to read in the bathtub. All was well until I inevitably dropped a book into the water. It was a library book, of course, so my mother and I frantically tried to dry it out before it warped and wrinkled. If memory serves me correctly, I believe we even put it in the toaster oven on low heat for a few minutes. Once it was dry, we put weight on it so it wouldn't wrinkle. Amazingly, we were successful. (Although, now that I am a librarian, I think back to that and hope it didn't get moldy once returned!)

Oh! I have seen those on Facebook. I had no idea there were full graphic novels. I will definitely have to check that out.

Happy Monday!

I've been reading a novel that is partially set during WWII and features a lot of descriptions of the Holocaust. That was getting heavy, so I set it aside and picked up some fluff.

Now, I mean no disrespect when I call a novel fluff. These authors are extremely talented writers, and I very much enjoy their novels. They just typically tend towards more lighthearted plots. The drama is not too dramatic, and it gives me the warm and fuzzies. When I spend so much time reading heavy books, I turn to these for a break.

My go-to lighthearted author is Sophie Kinsella. Her Shopaholic series is so much fun. I also enjoyed Can You Keep a Secret?, Remember Me?, and The Undomestic Goddess.

What are books or authors do you turn to when you need something lighthearted?

Hello all!

Apologies for running behind. I have been under the weather, and it is taking me a while to get caught up with everything.

I am not a huge reader of fantasy, but I have read enough to know that I love the magical creatures authors dream up.

If you could have any magical creature from any fictional work, what would you have? Personally, I love the idea of dæmons from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. They are the physical manifestation of a person's inner-self in the form of an animal. They have human intelligence and communication skills. I would love to have my own dæmon.

I would like to think that mine would be a duck or a cat, seeing as those are my two favorite animals, but if the dæmon was truly an expression of my inner-self, it would probably be a sloth or an Eeyore-style donkey.

So, any magical animal/creature from any novel - what would you choose?

Happy Monday, all! I was very happy to feel weather that wasn't going to melt the skin off me when I stepped outside today. I hope we continue on the moderate side of hot for a while.

I may be in the minority, but I love plays. Now, I don't necessarily enjoy reading the script of a play. They were always meant to be seen and not just read.

That is why I am a die-hard Shakespeare fangirl. It is true that his plays are tough to read, but when you see them on stage, it suddenly becomes so understandable. These are themes that are still perfectly relevant today - love, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, mischief, appearance versus reality, corruption, ambition, and so much more. I was lucky enough to see Twelfth Night at a theatre in London, and it was just brilliant to see the mistaken identities and various shenanigans play out right in front of me (sometimes literally; at one point Stephen Fry playing Malvolio ran up the audience seating to run out of the back door and was within inches of me).

I realize that I am probably in the minority with my Shakespeare love, but what other plays do you all like? I actually enjoyed reading the script for Arthur Miller's The Crucible when I was in high school. I have also adored Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest - both in print and on stage.

So, this week, the play's the thing! (Thanks for that line, Mr. Shakespeare!) Tell me which plays you have enjoyed, whether you read the script or saw it on stage.

"Back door! Back door!"

Good afternoon, all! Let's just pretend that I posted this Monday like I had every intention of doing...

This coming Sunday is Father's Day. My dad will hopefully be coming into town from his cabin in the woods so I can buy him brunch and listen to him fuss about all of the normal dad things such as traffic and taxes.

As with anything else in life, there are good dads and bad dads. In so many novels, the character's personal development revolves around the lack of parental figures or poor parental figures in his or her life. While this may be the case in books and in real life for some, unfortunately, I want to take a moment to celebrate the good dads.

Who is your favorite book dad? I know I bring up Harry Potter in nearly all of my threads, but I present the Best Book Dad award to Arthur Weasley. He is hardworking, caring, inquisitive, loyal, and very brave. He would do anything for his family. He brings Harry into the Weasley family without hesitation and shows Harry the same love and kindness that he shows all of his own children. There were other father figures who were in Harry's life (such as Sirius and Lupin), but I still believe Arthur is the best book dad. Plus, who can resist his endearing, insatiable curiosity for all things Muggle?

Let's hear about your favorite book dads or book father figures!