#diversify your reading

[futchbookslut]

I promised a part 2 a while back, so here it is! It was a gigantic pain in the ass because canva is sucking more and more by the day. I included a bunch of different genres, both YA and Adult, as well as some on the more erotic side. Something for everyone, I hope.

Disclaimers:

I haven't read all these and can't personally recommend them. You can decide for yourself what sounds interesting.

All authors are people of color and, if there are two mcs, at least one is a person of color.

All MCs are sapphic of some nature. That does not mean all of these center a sapphic romance. Queer stories can focus on more than just romance.

I threw in an essay collection and a poetry collection. I WILL get at least one person into Yrsa Daley-Ward, even if it kills me.

I don't have the time to research every author in this post. Do your own research when deciding whether you want to support a particular author.

If I messed up and accidentally included an author who doesn't fit the criteria, please let me know! (I did mess up at least one - The Seep - on account of my own misremembering of details. I'll see if I can edit the image)

Books included:

Image 1:

Hammajang Luck - Makana Yamamoto

Songs of Irie - Asha Ashanti Bromfield

The Jasmine Throne - Tasha Suri

Can't Let Her Go - Kianna Alexander

Heat and Run - Adriana Herrera

House of Frank - Kay Synclaire

Nothing Burns as Bright as You - Ashley Woodfolk

Honey Girl - Morgan Rogers

Image 2:

A Wolf Steps in Blood - Tamara Jerée

The Duchess's Bodyguard - Drea C

The Balance of Fates - Raquel Raelynn

Last Night at the Telegraph Club - Malinda Lo

Cinderella is Dead - Kalynn Bayron

We Came to Welcome You - Vincent Tirado

The Seep - Chana Porter (EDIT: Nope! Fucked up here, sorry!)

Consecrated Ground - Virginia Black

Lez Talk: a Collection of Black Lesbian Short Fiction - Edited by Stephanie Andrea Allen

Image 3:

House of Hunger - Alexis Henderson

Black Water Sister - Zen Cho

The Wicked and the Willing - Lianyu Tan

Unwieldy Creatures - Addie Tsoi

Burn Down, Rise Up - Vincent Tirado

The Relationship Mechanic - Karmen Lee

Flirting Lessons - Jasmine Guillory

Bone - Yrsa Daley-Ward

An Island Princess Starts a Scandel - Adriana Herrera

[fanfictalkdotcom]

Happy International Women's Day!

Looking for some stories that honor women? We have some book recommendations for you to diversify your shelves & broaden your perspectives. Don't see your favorite here? Drop the title or author name below, so we can add it to our endless TBR!

[chariot-to-somewhere]

2024 Reading Wrap-Up

75 books total

(Yes, I lowered my goal. First, it went down to 70, then up to 75)

That book slump is so visible on the last chart 😅. But hey, it happens.

Octavia Butler and Rick Riordan are actually tied for the most read author this year. Both at 8 books.

I couldn't make a good chart for it, but my biggest goal for this year was met. I've been intentionally diversifying my reading. My goal was to increase the percentage of books written by non-white authors from last year's 37%. I'm ending 2024 with 52%.

Goals for 2025 haven't fully been set, but I'm going to keep intentionally reading diversely.

[indigo-sodapop]

Snippets from Substack, people kept complaining that all the essays sounded the same and it pissed me off because that's an algorithm issue which makes it a YOU issue. I keep my typos in for authenticity.

[bookaddict24-7]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Helen Oyeyemi﹒

Eight Books Written By this Author:

Boy, Snow, Bird

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Gingerbread

White is for Witching

Mr. Fox

The Icarus Girl

Peaces

The Opposite House

___

Happy reading!

[separatist-apologist]

what are your thoughts on this booktok drama https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/1i1i05p/your_thoughts_on_kallmekris_booktok_drama/ a lot of people were offended by the video (it was removed from this person's youtube channel, but internet is forever and someone uploaded the 37min video on tiktok). i get why people were upset, especially since this creator used clips of people without asking for permission and i think the OG title was T'hese Viral TikTok Smut Books Are Really Gross' which pissed off a lot of people. i just don't know if people are being overly sensitive or not to the content of the video.

yeah she makes fun of some of these popular booktok books, but people do that all the time. trash gets published so much in the guise of spicy romances so i'm not quite sure if people are conflating this creator talking shit about the books with her talking shit about them or maybe i missed something and she actually did talk shit about them. i know you have hatersbookclub (which i love, i find your commentary super funny) so i was wondering if you had a take on this drama since it's been blowing up all over tiktok and now reddit.

Okay I'm gonna be real and upfront- I'm not gonna watch the video because I don't want to be pushed anymore booktok content. However I do have general thoughts about the culture, which I am, once again, putting under the cut. blah blah blah read at your own discretion

Obligatory not all of booktok.

Without watching the video (so I lack context), one of the things I find wildly frustrating about booktok is the performative outrage. The CONSTANT performative outrage about EVERYTHING. Maybe the video was offensive but I'm betting it was a mild, but mostly fair, criticism of the culture over there and they are allergic to any nuance, and take even constructive criticism as a personal attack.

The anti-intellectualism floating around the space is deeply frustrating. "I just read for the vibes" "its a brain off read for me" "its not that deep" "let people like things" "no one ever says men are consuming too much porn" ""good" is subjective" alongside the weaponization of like, feminism and other progressive language to silence ANY critique is exhausting.

No one is saying you shouldn't be allowed to brain off read 700 books written in an hour that aren't edited and actively uphold the very patriarchal, white supremacist culture you swear you want to dismantle (only when it's time to cancel someone, though, and never when its time to do the uncomfortable internal work that forces you to ask why you only consume books in which women are referred to as "females" and are subservient to men in overtly domineering roles, though).

What people are often saying is that its frustrating the way these POORLY written (not subjective- thats an objective, measurable standard), copy cat books are peddled and often shielded from criticism under the guise of "feminism means you can never criticize anything women enjoy ever" or how if you're offering up book recs, a deluge of "Is there spice" floods the comments. Books are being marketed on fanfiction tropes rather than a PLOT, of which there very often is very little to none of.

I've seen people GENTLY try and discuss, like, the lack of media literacy and booktok is always there arguing why any reading is good reading, wholly ignoring that, often by their own admission, they ARENT reading (brain off reading means....what? You didn't absorb any of it? I don't even know what that means and I honestly don't want to), or that its good for your brain to actually pay attention to what you're reading and then THINK about it. Even your dark romance trash is saying SOMETHING.

Booktok is addicted to their own victimization.

[fisheito]

this line made me laughbark in the middle of some tense prose😆 i am trawling through 27 pages of yakumo fic as foretold anbd i am finding some SERIOUSLY fascinating nuggets Poetic Justice by Anonymous (kuya fic) published in 2022!!! unbelievable!! what else have my careless eyes missed?!

[pettydemon]

so funny how it says 'SOMEHOW none of these' like jdksafjdfs ok maybe i am a hater idk. genuinely dgaf about most of those. and the ones i like i’m not even passionate about. ABSTAINING FROM VOTING‼️‼️‼️

[crwbannwen]

My friend caught on that my special interest character rants have shifted to new characters recently.

I had to inform them that I was indeed cursed by a mutual with a new chronic hyperfixation.

(Please continue cursing me, I not-very-secretly enjoy it)

[chussyracing]

I have been in different fandoms before, although none of them had such a split-up fan base. But of course, for sports this is normal, I guess. I have been part of fandoms of tv shows and movies. Of course fandoms like these work completely differently than rpf.

And no, I don’t follow blogs who post about drivers that I don’t care about. Like you said yourself as a fan you gravitate to people who support the same believe (or person) as you. For example, I would never follow someone who supports stroll, because he is my least fav driver, but if I follow someone who supports Charles and Stroll and I find the Charles content interesting, then I will not block them, just because I don’t like stroll. Same goes for shipping.

My point was more like that if I am confronted with opinions that I don’t like or even find stupid I will not block them, (I only block bots) because if you block everything that you don’t want to see you get a false feeling of how the fandom as a whole thinks. And you will get the false feeling that everyone thinks like you, and if an opinion, that you don’t agree with, slips through even though you blocked so many people, you will get even more irritated than you maybe normally would, because you are so used to only seeing things you agree with. I am generalizing here tho.

Honestly, at the end of the day everyone is allowed to do exactly that. I think what made me go to your inbox was your tag: we could have been friends. (I guess you were at least half joking) but I already have strong opinions of blocking people, just because you don’t agree with them on certain things, so now here we are. Just to be clear, I understand blocking to a certain level when a blog only posts hate or always has the complete opposite opinion, but I get a bit sensitive when it happens just because you don’t agree with them on one thing and you don’t want to be confronted with anything that doesn’t align with your believe system.

Fuck that was way too long…

ah don't apologise, it was a nice read and i asked for it to understand your perspective a bit better!! it's interesting because we clearly view fandom and blocking completely differently.

i will try to keep this brief as my mobile data are STRUGGLING to keep me connected here.

i don't come here to exercise the use of fallacies in arguments and practice objectivity and comparison to others and the views of others, the aim is to get the validation and sometimes even agreement on consciously untrue or incomplete piece of information. i come here for the shits and giggles and having fun at something that doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. if i wanted to confront my views with valid critique and different point of view, i'd never do that on tumblr, i'd focus back on academic environment, i'd hand in the essay on the underlying motif of misogyny in the greek mythology inspired poem i read a few years ago to the literacy journal like i wanted to do years back

and finally blocking has nothing to do with the person, rather their blog and i am separating the two here ALTHOUGH i can easily imagine situation where i go click that button due to a specific user rather than their posts. it's so easy for a reason, someone posts too much in the main F1 tag and you are bothered by it? make your experience easier, go and block that blog. they hate a driver you love or love the driver you hate? just hit that button and you never have to see it again. they have an icon that bothers you when you see it in the tag, open their blog and block it.

[bookaddict24-7]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Kimberly Lemming﹒

Four Books Written By this Author:

That Time I Got Drunk & Saved A Demon

That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf

That Time I Got Drunk And Saved a Human

I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com

___

Happy reading!

[nadacwriter]

'Inudstry plant's is like the cotton candy of music criticism; it'll get the job done in a pinch, but it isn't really a great idea and it isn't anything close to food.

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

Honestly the issue should be that the books involved are generally just so horrifically bad in terms of quality that it gets to the point where if you read nothing but it it sometimes seems it affects your ability to read anything else.

Like some on booktok are apparently going viral because they even struggle with YA fiction of all things after reading nothing but booktok books for years. But there shouldn’t be some weird morality play about adults reading porn.

there’s absolutely something to be said about ‘booktok’ books being largely wattpad quality written erotica i’m certainly not reading them however having seen a guy on tiktok make a video like ‘all the women in your life are READING PORN’ about a book he picked up and read in his FEMALE FRIEND’S HOUSE in a tone of scandalised horror and disgust i actually don’t think men should be making those criticisms. he said he picked it up expecting a romance and was horrified it was GOONER SHIT he said specifically like ‘who are you getting your pussy wet FOR??’ in a tone of revulsion. idk man im not sure shes the weird one. i kind of wish you were dead

[misskamelie]

On a similar note, this reminds me that it's so so important to surround yourself with people that you like and admire. Mainly because I appreciate the occasional reminder of "oh, I can just. Learn that, uh."

[antimonyantigone]

duolingo's new music course might not really be anything but as somebody who cannot read music or notes...it might be something

[bookaddict24-7]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Toshikazu Kawaguchi﹒

Five Books Written By this Author:

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Tales from the Café

Before Your Memory Fades

Before We Say Goodbye

Before We Forget Kindness

___

Happy reading!