Books in January
Feb. 7th, 2016 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarWhoa...yikes. It seems I keep setting a standard in January that I can't possibly keep meeting through the rest of the year!
...Last January, I read 10 books. This January, I read 12 books.
Sure, several were YA books that were fun, quick reads, books I took home because I want to keep up at least a bit on what we have in the library and what the kids I work with are interested in, books I was able to knock back in a single day. But some were serious "grown-up" books, too.
Also: At the start of last year, I decided to pay attention to the diversity of the books I read - especially in terms of reading books by people of color. (There are endless ways to look at diversity, of course, and all are important – gender, race, nationality/ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability/disability/differently abled, neurodiversity... But this is what I want to focus on right now. Because I'm great at reading books by both women and men, but a lot of them tend to be by white people, generally either American or British.)
So last year, I started pushing myself to notice these questions of diversity in terms of the authors I choose to read, and to actively seek out more writers of color. I definitely want to keep doing that this year.
Then at the start of this year, I had an additional idea: What if - just for the month of January - I instituted a "moratorium" on straight white cis men? Don't misunderstand me: I have nothing against straight white cis men, as human beings or as writers! (The old lame joke...some of my best friends are white men!) But people who fit that particular demographic have tended to have the lion's share of the say through most of the history of Western literature, and I thought putting them entirely on pause, just for a month, sounded like an intriguing experiment.
And it totally was! So, in the month of January, I read 12 books; almost all of them were by women, and a third of them were by people of color (both women and men). One white dude did slip in there (E. M. Forster, because his "Aspects of the Novel" was the very first book I read this year, before this experiment had occurred to me) but luckily for me and my statistical purposes...Forster was gay. Heh.
Now it's February and I'm back to reading everybody-including-white-dudes, but I think it's going to be fun to keep playing around with my reading selections. I want to make sure I read some books in translation/books that weren't originally written in English, too. (For example, I finally tracked down a classic by a Senegalese author that I'd been meaning to read for ages – "So Long a Letter" by Mariama Bâ, translated from the French – and really liked it!)
Here's to many more reading adventures this year...
...Last January, I read 10 books. This January, I read 12 books.
Sure, several were YA books that were fun, quick reads, books I took home because I want to keep up at least a bit on what we have in the library and what the kids I work with are interested in, books I was able to knock back in a single day. But some were serious "grown-up" books, too.
Also: At the start of last year, I decided to pay attention to the diversity of the books I read - especially in terms of reading books by people of color. (There are endless ways to look at diversity, of course, and all are important – gender, race, nationality/ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability/disability/differently abled, neurodiversity... But this is what I want to focus on right now. Because I'm great at reading books by both women and men, but a lot of them tend to be by white people, generally either American or British.)
So last year, I started pushing myself to notice these questions of diversity in terms of the authors I choose to read, and to actively seek out more writers of color. I definitely want to keep doing that this year.
Then at the start of this year, I had an additional idea: What if - just for the month of January - I instituted a "moratorium" on straight white cis men? Don't misunderstand me: I have nothing against straight white cis men, as human beings or as writers! (The old lame joke...some of my best friends are white men!) But people who fit that particular demographic have tended to have the lion's share of the say through most of the history of Western literature, and I thought putting them entirely on pause, just for a month, sounded like an intriguing experiment.
And it totally was! So, in the month of January, I read 12 books; almost all of them were by women, and a third of them were by people of color (both women and men). One white dude did slip in there (E. M. Forster, because his "Aspects of the Novel" was the very first book I read this year, before this experiment had occurred to me) but luckily for me and my statistical purposes...Forster was gay. Heh.
Now it's February and I'm back to reading everybody-including-white-dudes, but I think it's going to be fun to keep playing around with my reading selections. I want to make sure I read some books in translation/books that weren't originally written in English, too. (For example, I finally tracked down a classic by a Senegalese author that I'd been meaning to read for ages – "So Long a Letter" by Mariama Bâ, translated from the French – and really liked it!)
Here's to many more reading adventures this year...
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no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 03:16 am (UTC)I've honestly never thought about tracking author diversity in my reading in and of itself; I sometimes keep an eye on the types of books I'm reading, trying for a mix of exposure to different types of content (often non-fiction), but this is definitely something to think about.
Unfortunately, these days when I try reading fiction, I'm usually craving brain-candy. :P
no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 11:51 pm (UTC)So the fun thing is that "more diverse books" doesn't have to mean "depressing books about Heavy Issues." It can also be light-hearted YA reads...that happen to feature people of color as the main characters! e.g., I recently read "Everything, Everything" by Nicola Yoon, and I loved it for that: The main character happens to be a girl who's half black, half Japanese-American. It's not a big deal, it's not a book About Issues of Race – it's just a book, about a girl, and that happens to be who she is. :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 04:34 am (UTC)I really enjoy reading about your literary adventures.
Maybe as the year progresses, with some planning ahead, you can have more themed reading months - maybe not just types of authors but types of books or even particular cultures or time periods.
Whatever you decide, please keep posting the reviews.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 11:58 pm (UTC)I'm not sure whether I would do entirely themed months; I think it might start feeling a little too much like an assignment, rather than pleasure reading... And anyway, the themes tend to crop up more or less naturally, because one book inspires the reading of another. I'll see if any cool ideas strike, though. :-)
And no worries, I'll keep writing about books! Honestly, I'm not sure I could stop at this point...
(btw, I may *occasionally* post something book-related behind a friends-lock, because I recently started a new job at a school, and I'm wary of even the slightest possibility of fandom-life and work-life crossing over. Feel free to friend if you want! But these types of post, the ones where I just reflect on books I've read, without any real life context to them, will always be public. :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-02-09 08:31 pm (UTC)Yay I signed up! You can friend me too but my journal is not very exciting these days, sadly.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-09 11:16 pm (UTC)