A guide for readers who finish the book before forming the opinion.
What You're Reading
The Reading Chair is an independent guide to women's non-fiction — memoir and essay, women and power, class and country, criticism, and the reading life. It covers the books I think reward serious attention, written the way I think they deserve to be written about: with an opinion formed after the last page, not before it.
The focus is deliberate. There is a whole category of writing by women — reported, argued, personal, structural, often some impossible combination of all four — that gets reviewed too quickly, praised too vaguely, or filed under the wrong heading altogether. A book about poverty gets called "moving" when it is also rigorous. A book about rage gets called brave when it is also a historical argument. The label flattens the work. This guide tries not to let that happen.
Who Writes It
My name is Nell Ashby. I read slowly, I take notes in the margins, and I am more interested in what a book is doing than in whether I liked it. Those are not the same question. I am not a neutral reader — I bring a point of view — but I try to be a fair one, which means earning a verdict rather than arriving with one.
I am not a neutral reader — I bring a point of view — but I try to be a fair one, which means earning a verdict rather than arriving with one.
I do not receive advance copies in exchange for coverage, I do not run affiliate links or retailer buttons, and I do not accept payment for placement. What appears here appears because I thought it was worth writing about. Sometimes that means praising a book; sometimes it means disagreeing with one; occasionally it means both in the same piece.
How the Reviews Are Made
Every piece is written after I have finished the book. Some take longer than others — the short pieces are often harder than the long ones, because the discipline required is different. I aim for precision over coverage, argument over summary. If a piece does not have a position, I do not publish it.
The guide also runs occasional essays on the reading life itself: on reading slowly, on annotation, on the uncomfortable position most of us are in when we read books about lives unlike our own. Those pieces are not reviews. They are part of the same conversation.
The Reading Chair is published independently. Nothing here is sponsored.