For the 2023 return of Lattes with Ladies I spoke to Ashlee Desrosiers, the blogger behind Books Are 42 and one of the co-hosts of the TBR Tackle Challenge, a bookstagram community and reading challenge page which I’ve become a part of! Ashlee shares how she got into reading more indie authors during the last couple of years and the welcoming book blogging community. You can follow Ashlee in several places online but particularly organizing the Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Awards in the coming weeks.
HPL: What have you been reading lately?
AD: I should say, what have I not been reading? Right now I am reading A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson. That is a YA mystery. It’s quite good. Before that, I read Daisy Darker by Alex Feeney, which was a thriller that is Agatha Christie inspired. And then… I’ve read four books this year already, so what else did I read? Oh, Exes and O’s by Amy Lea, which is a romance. Whatever the other book must not have been that memorable because off the top of my head I don’t remember?
HPL: Wow! You’re off to a great start. Aside from romances you seem to be reading a lot of mysteries and thrillers. Are these the genres you typically reach for?
AD: Yeah, those are probably my two biggest. I go between them. Sometimes I like to break it up. Depending, murder is too dark, romance is too fluffy.
HPL: How did you get started on bookstagram and has it changed how you read? I find those are two genres that are particularly popular on the platform.
AD: I started on there probably six years ago, though that’s not so much my primary platform now. I have my blog, but bookstagram was introduced to me by Shanice. She told me “Oh, bookstagram is this thing. And people post about books and stuff.” And that did a lot of putting recommendations out there for me because you go to the bookstore and it’s just a little bit overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re looking for or you’re looking for something new. So, if I saw lots of people are reading this book, I’d think let me look into it. It kind of spirals out from there.
HPL: Do you keep track of the trending books? Do you like to read the ones everyone else is reading?
AD: Not so much anymore. For a while I was, but now it’s more so I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. If it’s a romance and the trope is, oh, I don’t know, it’s a heavy love triangle thing. I don’t usually like this, so I’m not going to jump on it.
HPL: Did you find the pandemic impacted your choices in what you’re reading or not?
AD: Because I was off of work from the beginning of March until the end of July, in that time I got more into the blogging community as opposed to Instagram, which led me to a lot of indie books. I read a lot more and did blog tours. That’s expanded to me posting on my blog for a long time now and pretty consistently.
But I had time, so that led to let’s try for a blog tour, try this fantasy, or a little bit more outside my usual. And I like indie authors.
HPL: That’s awesome. Congrats! As someone who occasionally, blogs, being really consistent is very impressive. Clearly, you’re an avid reader. Would you say that you were always an avid reader from a child?
AD: It’s kind of ebbed and flowed. When I was younger with picture books and those beginner chapter books, I liked a lot for a couple of years in elementary school. In that weird transition between when they want you to start reading older, more mature books. It dropped off a bit in high school because they give you so much homework in high school. But then I read more now because there’s more time now. I’ve always liked reading, but it was I have to do this and I have to do this and I have to do this or I have to read this for class. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for books you want to read.
HPL: Do you remember then what was the very first book that really made you fall in love with reading?
AD: I know that when I was little, I was obsessed with this picture book. It was called Pickle Things by Marc Brown, the guy who created Arthur. I was obsessed with it.
HPL: You mentioned having more time now, but it takes a lot of time to run your blog, do all this reading, and also of course run the TBR Tackle Challenge. What led you to start that and what really inspired you?
AD: I don’t really know what gave me the idea. Probably, a new year idea because I think this is now the third year of it. You know, it’s the time of year, everyone’s posting about let’s get rid of the TBR or tackle the TBR.
At the time, I thought let’s just do something like this because I hadn’t really seen anything like it on Instagram. There were lots of big posts or, but nothing that was dedicated to it like that. So, I started it and messaged Shanice and to ask, “Hey, do you want to help me with this?” And then it went from there.
It’s now been a while and I’m surprised it’s gone on. It’s one of those things where you start something, thinking let’s see how it goes. Then suddenly we did the first year and the second, and now we’re onto the third.
HPL: What would you say is the book you’re most excited about this year?
AD: There aren’t a lot of new releases that I can think of that are piquing my interest, so I have been trying to avoid those lists of what’s coming out.
I think what I’m most, I dunno if it’s excited, but I’m hoping to achieve, is I’ve been working my way through all the Poirot books and I have 18 of them left. I’ve been doing one a month for the past 30 of them, so I’m going to try to finish those off this year.
HPL: What’s your favourite Poirot mystery?
AD: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Some of them are eh. I like her style and, it’s cozy in the sense that, oh, someone’s murdered, but you know, it’s going to wrap up in the end. But that one book is really twisty and exciting.
HPL: What else do you have going on this year?
AD: There’s this indie book award: the Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA), which I am somehow now in the upper level of organizing! It’s going into its fourth year this year. The authors submit their books. There’s a panelist of bloggers who read the first round which is a 2K word extract, and then for the books that make it to the second round, you get a 10K extract. Then for the final 15, bloggers read the full books. It’s great.
Most of it is self-published. We do allow some small publishers, but it’s kind of hard to find the line between a small publisher that’s indie indie and one that’s more mid-tier.
But usually, it’s the ones that are quite small. In my mind though—this isn’t really an official stance of BBNYA—a lot of it depends on how much the author has to do for pushing their book. Some of the other publishers have marketing teams, but these small ones, it’s more like they’re publishing your book, but you’re very involved in the process because they don’t have the manpower.
HPL: Is there a certain kind of genre that you lean into with indie publishers as well?
AD: There’s a lot of fantasy out there, so I usually end up reading fantasy. I like a good urban fantasy because I’m picky with it. Like if we start getting to the medieval too much, sword fighting and stuff, I can’t follow it. Fantasy that takes place in our world but has magical elements, I’m a fan of that.