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Ashley Hill

@afixation

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New to this whole social media thing. Expect pictures of my books, old movie stars, ancient Rome, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
Tacoma, WA.

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How is everone's summer reading going?
I have discovered a new author: Zora Neale Hurston, and it feels like a portal into a new dimension!
In my latest video, I go through the books I read in July, and what I am reading in August.
Link to channel is in my bio!!🤗
QOTD: What is your favorite summer read so far?
#zoranealehurston #thegobetween #classicliterature #bookwormsofinstagram #summerbooks

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Explore my TBR shelves with me! 🔎 I’m highlighting some of my unread books in a series of #tenonmytbr posts, alphabetically by author. ✨ Join me!

Here are ten books written by authors with H names. Plus hydrangeas. 📸 I’m looking forward to reading all of these, except one. Can you guess which one that is? 🤷🏼‍♀️

⚾️ The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. A baseball book doesn’t appeal to me, but everyone says this is terrific.

🧑🏼‍🦲 Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley has been on my radar for a while. I recently read a review by one of my booksta buddies. Was it you?

👩🏼‍🐰‍👩🏻 The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

🌅 True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway, posthumously published “fictional memoir.”

🕵🏻‍♂️ A Blunt Instrument by Georgette Heyer

👰🏻🤵🏼 Wellness by Nathan Hill. I loved The Nix so I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to read this one.

🐚 A Change for the Better by Susan Hill appeals to me all the more now that I figured out it’s not a mystery.

🪶 A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines, a bookstagram favorite.

🐘🏰 Elephant and Castle by R.C. Hutchinson. This random book has been on on my TBR shelf since high school in the early 80s. I have a few others from then, but this could be the book that has been on my unread shelf the longest. 😳 Swipe to see details.

🏝️ Island by Aldous Huxley

Please follow me through my home library exploration. 💕 And if this looks fun to you, play along with the books on your shelves! Alter the challenge to fit your circumstances — reduce the number, combine letters, go by title instead of author, whatever. Please tag me so I see and can share your posts. 📚🔤

#TBR #backlistbooks #rosecityreader #bookstagramchallenge

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Staring at my NYRB books! These are the ones I haven't read yet. The only one I am planning to read soon is Valentino & Sagittarius. Any other ones I should prioritize??
#classicliterature #nyrb #nyrbsummer #sundayshelfie #literaryfiction

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𝑃𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑠

I’ve been saving this one for my birthday, which is today! Let’s go do a book haul now & then eat some cake! 🧁📚🎉

#bookishbirthday #birthdaygirl #summerbaby #pantonebirthchartbookrecs #bookrecs

I have no idea if the multiple captions thing will actually work for me. 😬

Solar Gold

- The Iliad: Professor Wilson is 🙌 & I heard the audiobook is too.
- Middlemarch: There’s so much drama in a small provincial life.
- Eugene Onegin: Read this & then go see the ballet.

Quiet Eucalyptus

- Little Women: My heart still breaks over Beth… & Laurie tbh.
- The Silm: I needed to draw up a character chart for this one.
- Flower Fables: Read this in a garden in springtime.

Marigold Flash

- Mrs. Dalloway: Stream of consciousness read this with a 🍸
- The Housekeeper and the Professor: It’s precious please love it 🥺😢
- Orlando Furioso: I defy you not to fall hard for Bradamante.

Pearl Blush

- Wuthering Heights: The situation sucks & no one is likeable. Must read.
- Emma: Austen’s masterpiece & worst fmc (but there’s character growth).
- Pablo Neruda’s Love Poems: 𝑇𝑒 𝑎𝑚𝑜 𝑠𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑎𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑜, 𝑛𝑖 𝑐𝑢á𝑛𝑑𝑜…

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The Known World, by Edward P Jones
**REVIEW**
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Some books exude such a strong sense of place, such a powerful impression of witnessing Fate, that the reader cannot help but feel a certain awe, like they are in the presence of a masterpiece.
"The Known World" is such a book.
The story focuses on the fictional Manchester County in Virginia, during slavery times. There is a plantation but the master is a black man.
The story travels between the future and the past, to slowly paint a detailed portrait of each character.
The local sheriff sees himself as a good Christian, but the Law itself is like an evil character that allows human beings to be treated like property, and who can speak of fairness in such a world?
We meet the slaves and find out their struggles. The overseer who forces a pregnant woman in pain to go to the fields, the devoted husband who carves toys out of wood for his children because he has nothing else to give them, the children who have only known life on the plantation.
In addition to the overt racism, there are all the subtle assumptions, the turns of phrases, the omissions, and sometimes these hurt even more.
For anyone who wants to understand the roots of American culture, and for anyone who longs for a book that holds a kernel of empathy at its core, this is essential reading.
#edwardpjones #pulitzerprizewinner #bookrecommendations #booksbooksbooks #literaryfiction

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‘What was Leonora like? A piece of Meissen without flaw? It would be an amusing game to liken one’s friends and acquaintances to antiques.’

Leonora Eyre is an elegant, sophisticated, immaculately-manicured middle-aged woman. She has never been married, never even been in love, but it suits her: she has plenty of doting admirers to take her to delicious dinners and the theatre and gallery openings and flower shows. She is coolly satisfied.

She is also self-satisfied, always silently passing judgement and lacking a certain self-awareness, never quite noticing the similarities between herself and those she judges. She is outwardly at least, everlastingly agreeable.

When she meets handsome young James and his widowed uncle Humphrey at a book auction, a love triangle of sorts begins: Humphrey is understandably taken with Leonora while Leonora is far more interested in James. It’s all gifts of expensive Victoriana and browsing the Sotheby’s catalogue and having one’s favorite liqueur on hand in case one drops by.

And then James meets the bohemian Phoebe, and the casually cruel Ned, and one triangle becomes two, becomes three. Leonora remains unruffled, she is cool, composed, in control; she is a master chesswoman, deftly making her moves with precision. She will not be usurped, she will emerge victorious. But what if she doesn’t?

Barbara Pym has a reputation for ‘coziness’, as though she’s all cups of tea and only capable of an almost mundane quaintness. It’s a lazy and obtuse take on her. There is remarkable nuance to her writing; what she leaves unsaid is always just as important as what she reveals. There is so much emotion, often bubbling just under the surface of the placid facade her characters outwardly present: jealousy and disappointment and loneliness and disillusion and fear — fear of aging, of no longer being desirable, of being cast off. Her bone-dry humor also makes me laugh, which is no small feat. She is, frankly, the best.

And reading it with fellow Pym super fan Ashley @afixation? Well it doesn’t get much better than that. Every book I read with her is made better because of it.

Book number six for #NYRBSummer.

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Edwin Frank, the longtime/forever editor of NYRB put together a fantastic survey of twentieth century literature, Stranger than Fiction, or, to me, A Shopping List.

I have only read a handful of the books Frank officially discusses (and he discusses dozens more unofficially) but that didn’t hinder my enjoyment of his work. I actually found the sections on books I hadn’t read more compelling than those I had read. He summarizes efficiently and effectively and ties books together through the course of the century. It was fun to reprioritize my reading list based on his thoughts (and to add to my collection— Svevo, Stein, Lawrence, so much Gide.)

To add to the fun of this book, I read it with @afixation who brought the intelligence and insightfulness to the partnership. Thanks for being a great reading buddy, Ashley! Here’s to overwhelming ourselves with even more books to read!

I’m a sucker for books about books and this is a great one to pick up if you are too.

Pictured are just a few of the books and authors mentioned (or deeply discussed) by Frank.

I have a lot of reading to do.

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✨ CLOSED - TWO BOOKS GIVEAWAY ✨

Ali Smith’s GLYPH finally comes out in the U.S. tomorrow!! The good people at Pantheon and Vintage were kind enough to send me the new gorgeous hardback, as well as the paperback copy of GLIFF, but since I already have the UK editions, I’m giving both copies away to anyone living in the U.S.!

1. Follow me at @mybookhunter.
2. Like this post and tag a bookish friend in the comments. Each tag counts as one entry.
3. Share the giveaway in your stories (counts as 5 entries)!

I’ll pick a winner this Friday, May 22, 2026!

GLIFF:
Two things that I had never seen so deliberately kneaded together in one book: a chilling warning about where things are headed when the state decides what you are and where you belong AND a blazing embrace of (and stubborn belief in) hope in the face of tyranny.
A novel so radical, so intelligent, so clear-eyed in its depiction of a fasc**t world that it left me bee-stung and reeling.
A novel so inventive, so playful, so unapologetic in its portrait of exactly why said world will fail that it gave me all the light I needed to push forward in this moment.
A masterpiece.

GLYPH:
If “Gliff” was the first movement of this symphony, all brisk, thriller-esque and dramatic, “Glyph” is the second movement, all introspective, musical and melancholy.
If this text is played in a slightly different key, slower and more diffuse, its universe remains engrossing. Ali Smith does it again. She’ll have you eating straight out of her hand.
Sisters. Daughters. Mothers. Fathers. Adopted daughters. Ghosts. Imagined and real. Strangers. Past and present. Histories. Stories. Passed down from generation to generation, whispered, forgotten, rekindled and reshaped. From fact to fable to myth. War. Soldiers. Resistance fighters.
An enchantment.

🐴🐴🐴

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This is a story in which I go book shopping immediately before an NHL game and then have to go through a special security line in order to bring a bag of books into an arena and the very strange look from the security lady as if no one had ever brought a book plus five to a Seattle Kraken game before. Which is still fewer books than Ottawa goals 🥶

It’s also a story in which I went back to a favorite store @arundelbooks and then two new-to-me shops Mercer Street Books and Long Brothers Fine and Rare Books this weekend in Seattle. Mercer Street was the huge winner of the weekend. I would have bought at least three more if it were for said sports event.

I tagged a few people who inspired these purchases, for better or worse.

Happy weekend! I hope you bought a book.

#seattlebookstore #bookhaul #newdirectionspublishing #nyrb #22monthswithmuriel

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I saw that @afixation did a post about her favorite NYRBs, apparently prompted by @thewrittenroute , and so here we are!!🤗
I had to join in!!!
I am cheating because I don't own the NYRB edition of "A month in the country" but just pretend the cover is pink!!
As for my copy of Stoner, I stuck a Cézanne postcard on the front so I am showing the spine in the second photo so you can recognize it!!🤣
I vote for Three Summers as the prettiest cover!!!
There are several others on my tbr that I am looking forward to reading, like Katalin Street and Hard Rain Falling!!
Happy Reading everyone!!📚
#bookstagram # classicliterature #nyrbooks #literaryfiction #booksbooksbooks

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three books i would re-read in a heartbeat, just to re-live and feel that feeling for the ‘first time’ all over again

patrick radden keefe has a new book coming out this year called ‘london falling’ on april 7th - gosh gosh gosh!

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tagging a few accounts - please share your 3 favourite(s) x inspiration coded

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