#read the world

[ya-world-challenge]

Alright, I made a challenge! If anyone wants to read globally with me, I made a little list of prompts, neatly divisible by 12 months, plus a bonus. If you want to track your progress, I set it up on Storygraph, too - the link is below.

Tag your posts with "#ya world challenge" ! You don't have to read YA, but I want to see all your posts. :D Also please reblog to spread the word.

YA World Challenge 2023 prompts

By a Caribbean author

Features a religion not your own

Historical/contemporary fiction in a country not your own

Set in Latin America

European book in translation

Features a minority group in your country

Desi lead character, or set on the Indian subcontinent

By an Australian or New Zealand author

A non-Western sci-fi or fantasy world

Set in Asia

By an African author

Minority or non-US disabled character

LGBTQIA+ book in translation

About immigrants or refugees

Set in the Middle East

By an indigenous author

Diversity jackpot! Team of characters of varying cultures

By a Pacific Islander author

Set somewhere you'd like to travel

Non-Western mythology or fairy tale

Memoir of someone outside your cultural group

A country you heard about on the news

Focus on environment or climate

Eastern European or Slavic book

Bonus! Roll a random number and read a book for that country (my personal method, see instructions below)

Storygraph challenge link is here

Roll a random number and read a book for that country

Go to random.org and generate a number from 8 to 215.

Go to my spreadsheet here, and find your number. Use my picks or find your own!

Goodreads lists or this group are helpful for finding books. (If I'm having trouble, I'll allow myself a culturally relevant fantasy world as substitute. Or you can reroll if you get a particularly difficult country!)

If you don't want to include the territories from my list, an "official" list of 195 is here, enter 1 to 195 in the randomizer.

[themoonphoenix]

Books set in Poland • Reading Challenge May 2023

April Country: Thailand I will read: Home Is Nearby by Magdalena McGuire 1980: The beginning of the polish crisis. Brought up in a small village, country-girl Ania arrives in the university city of Wroclaw to pursue her career as a sculptor. Here she falls in love with Dominik, an enigmatic write at the center of a group of bohemians and avant-garde artists who throw wild parties. When martial…

[inkskinned]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[historyandmemes]

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report Thursday by the U.N. and other agencies that highlights the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The extent of the population’s hunger eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report. The report warned that the risk of famine is “increasing each day,” blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza. “It doesn’t get any worse,’’ said Arif Husain, chief economist for the U.N.’s World Food Program. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.” ... At the start of the war, Israel stopped all deliveries of food, water, medicine and fuel into the territory. After U.S. pressure, it allowed a trickle of aid in through Egypt. But U.N. agencies say only 10% of Gaza’s food needs has been entering for weeks. (Dec. 21, 2023 | Source)

DON'T LOOK AWAY.

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[missydurdenknowsbest]

“The day-to-day struggle of an oppressed people had briefly ignited the interest of the world, until that interest was extinguished by the turnover of the next news cycle. I had little faith that people who were not here would remember those thousand-strong street prayers in a few months’ time.”

“Enter Ghost” — Isabella Hammad

5 ⭐️ read, highly recommended.

[embraceyourdestiny]

to any americans who feel "paralyzed" and "dont know what to do" to help with gaza:

reading a fucking book. i beg of you.

in a time of knowledge suppression is it your duty to arm yourself with knowledge.

read about americas occupations in the middle east.

read about 9/11 from outside of america and see how they inflicted senseless harm and violence to countless amounts of people and have been suppressing your rights for the past 2 fucking decades.

read about any of the countless wars from the past 30 years. especially from a civilian's. and the victims and survivors' perspective. listen to the horror stories and do not plug your fucking ears as to what your country is doing.

and read about fucking gaza and palestine and keep up with what is happening no matter how "sad" or "uncountable" you might get.

dont look away from this.

you dont have the right to be comfortable during countless active genocides.

if you're knowledgeable, you're powerful, and our current state doesnt fucking want that.

you have the power to change things if you open your eyes and scream to the world.

wake the fuck up.

Edit: please check the reblogs there are readings and ways to help

[read-alert]

Figured that now that I've got a bookblr, I should make a post about the Read the World Challenge I'm doing! I'm reading a book primarily set in every country, doing my best to focus on authors from said country, though I will read diaspora authors if that's not feasible. Also some of the books from early on were from diaspora authors because I was pulling from books I had already read; I'll likely read more books from those countries in the future if I can. I've got 52 countries so far, and I'll list the titles and countries under the cut

USA- Kindred by Octavia Butler- 5⭐️

Canada- The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline- 5⭐️

Trinidad and Tobago- The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull- 3⭐️

Brazil- Where We Go From Here by Lucas Rocha trans by Larissa Helena- 5⭐️

Argentina- Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica trans by Sarah Moses- 5⭐️

South Africa- The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden- 3⭐️

Nigeria- Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor- 4⭐️

Liberia- Dream Country by Shannon Gibney 5⭐️

France- Romance in Marseilles by Claude McKay- 2⭐️

UK- Watership Down by Richard Adams- 5⭐️

Ireland- Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen- 4⭐️

Qatar- Love from A to Z by SK Ali- 4⭐️

Iran- Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram- 4⭐️

China- The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu trans by Ken Liu- 5⭐️

Taiwan- Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen- 4⭐️

Japan- Confessions by Kanae Minato trans by Stephen Snyder- 3.5⭐️

Norway- Survival Kit by AH Haga- 4.5⭐️

Germany- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak- 4.5⭐️

India- The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi- 4⭐️

South Korea- The Mermaid from Jeju by Sumi Hahn- 4⭐️

Columbia- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez trans by Gregory Rabassa- 4⭐️

Ghana- Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey- 4⭐️

Turkey- 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak- 4⭐️

Russia- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy trans by Louise Maude- 4⭐️

Sierra Leone- The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna- 4⭐️

Austria- The Wall by Marlen Haushofer trans by Shaun Whiteside- 5⭐️

Zimbabwe- Nervous Conditions by Tsiti Dangarembga- 5⭐️

Venezuela- It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo trans by Elizabeth Bryer- 4⭐️

Chile- The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende trans by Magda Bogin- 5⭐️

Sri Lanka- Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai- 4⭐️

Singapore- How We Dissappeared by Jing-Jing Lee- 4.5⭐️

Malaysia- Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf- 3.5⭐️

Egypt- A Master of Djinn by P Djèlí Clark- 4.5⭐️

Sudan- Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas- 4.5⭐️

Antigua and Barbuda- At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid- 4⭐️

Ukraine- The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh- 5⭐️

Bahamas- Learning to Breathe by Janice Lynn Mather- 4⭐️

Cuba- The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala trans by Anna Kushner- 4⭐️

Dominica- The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid- 3⭐️

Bangladesh- Djinn City by Saad Z Hossain- 4⭐️

Mexico- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia- 4⭐️

Jamaica- Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn- 4⭐️

Vietnam- Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai- 4.5⭐️

Australia- Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko- 4⭐️

Israel- Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa- 4.5⭐️

Palestine- Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa- 5⭐️

Costa Rica- Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias- 4.5⭐️

Uruguay- Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis- 5⭐️

Dominican Republic- Tentacle by Rita Indiana trans by Achy Obejas- 2.5⭐️

Republic of the Congo- Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou trans by Helen Stevenson- 2⭐️

Czech Republic- The Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař- 2.5⭐️

Honduras- Turtles of the Midnight Moon by María José Fitzgerald- 4.5⭐️

[ya-world-challenge]

Half-year wrap-up and 1 Year Anniversary!

I posted the first review for my YA World Challenge reading project on June 24 last year, so I just realized it's my 1 year anniversary!

So far I have finished 40 countries/regions! Including 2 trilogies and 1 duology that makes 45 books, at a rate of almost 4 per month. I'm pretty happy with that progress! I finished 20 books in 2023 so far.

I'm also happy that I'm still enjoying this project. Sticking to genres I like has helped, and I'm amazed by the diversity of new YA releases coming out lately, which has made it easy to pick up new books (thanks, Netgalley!!)

Challenge progress:

40 of 208 countries/regions (newly added in bold)

🇦🇫 Afghanistan - One Half from the East, Nadia Hashimi

🇦🇷 Argentina - Furia, Yamile Saied Méndez

🇦🇿 Azerbaijan - The Orphan Sky, Ella Leya

🇧🇸 Bahamas - Facing the Sun, Janice Lynn Mathers

🇧🇴 Bolivia - Woven in Moonlight + Written in Starlight, Isabel Ibañez

🇧🇼 Botswana - Entwined, Cheryl S. Ntumy

🇨🇦 Canada - This House is Not a Home, Katłıà

🇨🇫 Central African Republic - Beasts of Prey, Ayana Gray*

🇨🇳 China - Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Sue Lynn Tan

🇨🇿 Czech Republic - Torch, Lyn Miller-Lachmann

🇪🇪 Estonia - The Man Who Spoke Snakish, Andrus Kivirähk

🇫🇯 Fiji - The Wild Ones, Nafiza Azad

🇫🇷 France - Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, Faïza Guène

🇬🇷 Greece - Tina’s Web, Alki Zei

🇬🇱 Greenland - Last Night in Nuuk, Niviaq Korneliussen

🇬🇩 Grenada - Sugar Money, Jane Harris

🇮🇳 India - Lioness of Punjab, Anita Jari Kharbanda

🇮🇶 Iraq - Yazidi!, Aurélien Ducoudray & Mini Ludvin

🇮🇪 Ireland - All Our Hidden Gifts, Caroline O'Donoghue

🇯🇵 Japan - Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Mizuki Tsujimura

🇱🇹 Lithuania - Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepatys

🇲🇾 Malaysia - The Weight of Our Sky, Hanna Alkaf

🇲🇽 Mexico - Secret of the Moon Conch - David Bowles; Guadalupe García McCall

🇲🇦 Morocco - Thorn, Intisar Khanani*

🇳🇬 Nigeria - An Ordinary Wonder, Buki Papillon

🇲🇰 North Macedonia - A Spare Life, Lidija Dimkovska

🇵🇸 Palestine - Travellers Along the Way, Aminah Mae Safi

🇵🇱 Poland - When the Angels Left the Old Country, Sacha Lamb

🇵🇹 Portugal - Mariana, Katherine Vaz

🇵🇷 Puerto Rico - The Wicked Bargain, Gabe Cole Novoa

🇷🇴 Romania - And I Darken (trilogy), Kiersten White

🇷🇺 Russia - Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko

🇼🇸 Samoa - Telesā: The Covenant Keeper, Lani Wendt Young

🇬🇧 Scotland - The Library of the Dead, T.L. Huchu

🇸🇬 Singapore - Sofia and the Utopia Machine, Judith Huang

🇸🇪 Sweden - The Circle (Engelsfors trilogy), Sara Elfgren & Mats Strandberg

🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago - When the Vibe is Right, Sarah Dass

🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates - Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson*

🇺🇸 United States - Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe - All That It Ever Meant, Blessing Musariri

*inspired fantasy world

Currently reading:

🇱🇰 Sri Lanka - I Am Kavi, Thushanthi Ponweera 🇨🇺 Cuba - A Tall Dark Trouble, Vanessa Montalban

[themoonphoenix]

A Bánh Mì for Two • Review

Author: Trinity Nguyen Title: A Bánh Mì for Two Saga: Standalone Published:  August 20, 2024 Genre: YA Contemporary Setting: Saigon, Vietnam, 2024 REVIEW: But what a beautiful debut, with lots of food, and a cute romance, between two girls looking for where they belong. It has two points of view, Lan, a foodie who lives in Sai Gon, has a blog where she writes about street food and…

[sailor-moon-moon]

Happy Amok Time Day, friendly reminder that Theodore Sturgeon, the writer of the episode, is credited with the first positive portrayal of homosexuality in science fiction with his short story The World Well Lost (1953), 14 years before Amok Time aired. Which could mean nothing.

[violenceenthusiast]

the third edition of Julia Serano's foundational and ever-relevant Whipping Girl (the book in which the term 'transmisogyny' was coined!!) just came out, with a new afterword on the current anti-trans backlash and you can order a copy directly from her publisher using the code SERANO20 for 20% off through the end of march

[coddda]

I wish we could have met in some other way.

Lawlight Week Day 2: Soulmates

If you saw me repost and re-edit this several times uh No you didn't </3

Still frames/Individual gifs:

If you know what every frame is from you get a free cookie. by the way

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[radioducky]

Casino-DressCode

Excited for the Casino Party in the upcoming chapter “Of Saints and Sinners” by @morningstarwrites 🫶

It was meant to be a sketch…