What is Ashley Ream reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Ashley Ream, author of Losing Clementine.

Her entry begins:

We’re alike, you and I. Yep, you there on the other side of the screen. We read a lot. Nearly everything. Not quite everything because neither of us is going in for fifty shades of anything, but we’re down for nearly anything else. That does make it hard when you’re asked to write about what you read because you can’t just type “damn near everything” and walk away. It makes people testy. So here are a few books I’ve enjoyed recently, one from each category of reading I do. (That’s right. Category. I put thought into this, dammit.)

The Oh-My-God-I-Will-Never-Be-This-Good Book

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Some writers just knock my socks off. They knock them off and pick them up and slap me about the face with them. Groff is one of those, and Arcadia is her best book, which is saying something. The story follows Bit Stone, the first child born to Arcadia, a hippie commune in rural New York state, from the 1960s into a quasi-dystopian near future. Whether her character is a small child, a teenager or a grown man, Groff still gets the voice just exactly right. The setting is vivid, and the plot is powerful. It’s the sort of book that...[read on]

About Losing Clementine, from the publisher:

In thirty days Clementine Pritchard will be finished with her last painting and her life.

World-renowned artist and sharp-tongued wit Clementine Pritchard has decided that she's done. After flushing away a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions, she gives herself thirty days to tie up loose ends—finish one last painting, make nice with her ex-husband, and find a home for her cat. Clementine plans to spend the month she has left in a swirl of art-world parties, manic work sessions, and outrageous acts—but what she doesn't expect is to uncover secrets surrounding the tragedy that befell her mother and sister. In an ending no one sees coming, will we lose Clementine or will we find her?

A bold debut from an exciting new voice, Losing Clementine is a wonderfully entertaining and poignant novel about unanticipated self-discovery that features one of the most irresistible, if deeply flawed, characters to grace contemporary fiction in years.

Learn more about the book and author at Ashley Ream's website.

Writers Read: Ashley Ream.

--Marshal Zeringue