To start off, we wanted to give you more detail about how Heart.Wants.Books came to be, and even before that, how we came to be reading together. Our regular posts will begin later this fall, and we hope you’ll join us here twice a week to talk about what the heart wants, which is, of course, more books.

In the beginning the world didn’t end with a Y2K apocalypse and Ashley and Nikki continued to attend high school in a city minutes from Nashville, trading TRN recommendations and speaking in halting, terrible Franglish. They were also the most awesomest of nerds who played academic trivia before bars made trivia competitions super cool. Nikki went off to college in Chattanooga and Ashley followed the following year where they were both members of the University Honors program and continued that trivia life.

During Ashley’s fifth year of undergrad, Nikki was in her master’s program, they were both long-distance-dating their Adams, and enjoying the college life of sharing Chili’s Bottomless Chips and Salsa, Molten Chocolate Cake, and 2-for-1 margaritas on the regular, while speaking considerably better Franglish.

In the middle, there was the almost apocalyptic Great Recession and the hard to describe years following. Ashley and Nikki both moved ‘home’ to the Nashville area, married their Adams, started (and sometimes re-started) careers, created homes, and grew their families. Ashley helped her Canadian Adam get settled into American life while figuring out her real estate career path and adopting a couple of purr-children, Medusa and Nox. They bought an adorable historic house, Ashley became a Realtor, then Adam got a job offer in Los Angeles so they moved across the country for an adventure, and then had enough adventure and moved back. Nikki moved around the city in a circle while finding which part of town fit her family best and starting a career in the nonprofit sector.  She and her Adam adopted a fur-baby, Casey Jayne, bought a newer home, then one in need of cosmetic love, and had a couple of boys to round out the family.  Now she and the boys have a weekly library trip and delight in being able to go where everyone knows our reading tastes. 

In this new beginning, Ashley and Nikki want to upgrade their awesome nerdiness and bring their particular brand to the world via Heart.Wants.Books. Besides their reading lives they might also share a bit of their other pursuits: TV, movies, travel, and family life, but always (Always.) connected to that bookish life.

Thank you for joining us on this adventure, we’re glad you’re here. We hope you’ll find something to inspire the readers in your life and that you’ll agree that the heart wants what the heart wants, and the heart.wants.books.

~Ashley & Nikki