September 19th | #diveseathon & #slowathon wrap up

Hello, friends, to readathon heaven. I mean, I'd prefer back to back but all at once is also fine. (And while diverseathon and slowathon are over - Tackle Your TBR still has a week left, readathons are my jam).

I have a lot of feelings that this last week promoted - about reading diversely and my privilege as a white person, which I have been aware of before and tried my hardest to... be aware of it and use it correctly, I think that's the best wording I can get. I feel like I've always been aware of the privilege I have, and don't have, but only the last few years have I realized that I can use it.

Anyway - all of my thoughts just aren't coming together. The other thing I wanted to talk about was reading diversely, what this whole week was about. Only the last few years have I purposely tried to read diversely, realized I should - even then, I know I'm not doing as well as I could be. And I'm sure there's a ton of reasons, but one of the reasons is when I'm not in a normal reading schedule - aka: a reading slump, to me - then I just want to read fluffy things. Easy to read things.

And I say this with a lot of love, but normally (mainstream) diverse books are dealing with issues - which I understand, obviously. And it is something I love and look for in diverse books, but I have to be in the right headspace for it - and normally my reading slumps coincide with my 'down times' as I've been calling them, and I just can't. I can't do it.

I'm going to try and be more firm about it because there are books that aren't "issue books," and since I've gotten my kindle paperwhite, I can actually stand to read ebooks for long periods of time. And I know a lot of diverse books are self published because of various reasons - particularly diverse romance because romance is a giant and well selling thing in the industry - and try to be more conscious about not just buying diverse books, but actually reading them.

There's also the fact where I gravitate towards some diverse books more then other - LGBTQIA+ being the most usual for me - and so there are definitely weaknesses in my diverse reading, that I really want to try and fix.

Now - onto what I read this week, and what I'm still actively working on at the moment.

Reading: (finished this week and actively currently-reading)
Mostly Void, Partially Stars (Night Vale Scripts #1) by Joseph Fink, Jeffery Cranor  (5/5)
I've been listening to this podcast for years now - sometime towards the end of their first year of episodes - and I'm still listening. (Did you listen to the new episode this week? Someone got a binural microphone and it was awesome). Anyway - I loved this. There's a few of the older ones I relisten to but most I don't, so it was a lot of fun to relisten by reading. And catching on smaller things I didn't before or forgot. I highly recommend this podcast and everything related to it (also Alice Isn't Dead. I've only listened to a little of Within in the Wires so I can't say I'd recommend it, but what I have heard was awesome)

Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indigenous LGBT SciFi Anthology (5/5)
I found this kind of by accident, just looking through the "people also bought" thing on Amazon, and I saw this and was like - that, that's something I want to read. And, going in having heard nothing, I definitely don't regret it. Some of the stories I liked less the others, but there weren't any I didn't like, nothing below 3 stars (which is kind of - it was okay for me, but doesn't mean I didn't like it at all). I'd definitely recommend this - and if anyone has recs of books, fiction and nonfiction, about indigenous characters being two-spritied, I'd love to read them, I seriously want to learn/read more about this. Have found one that seems to be legends retold without those parts cut out, but I'm not sure how good it is so - if you know any.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankin (5/5)
This wasn't a comfortable reading experience, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't suppose to be. It's very real and very just out there with all of it. I follow sports 0%, so all the stuff with Selena William's surprised me a little, I didn't know any of that. I kind of think everyone should read this, especially if it's going to make you uncomfortable, because it might make you think. It definitely made me think. Besides that - I'm still not sure how to put my thoughts together about this? There's a lot there.

Ash by Malinda Lo (5/5)
All I knew going into this was: f/f retelling of Cinderella. And I was just like: hell yes, take my fucking money. And then I didn't get around to it at first, as I do with a lot of books for some unknown reason with my brain. I'm a little angry at it, though, about this one - this book as incredible. I'd heard Malinda talk - at a LeakyCon lit panel, multiple ones - and so I knew I liked her then, and she definitely sold me on her books, but I just got around to one. I own Adaption, and am now hoping to get to that one soon because - this book. It had all these fairy tale elements and was just amazing - read this book immediately, and then follow me in reading all of Malinda's books. All of them.

Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O'Neill (5/5)
This was so cute - it was only about 50 pages, but I would of read like a whole series with them having adventures and such. They're both adorable and there's a unicorn, and teaching an ogre how to dance - so cute, I can't handle it.

The Dark Wife by S.E. Diemer (4/5)
Okay. This was way more adorable then I thought it'd be for a Persephone/Hades retelling, even one that's a f/f one. (Sidenote: if anyone knows of more queer myth retellings - please let me know). It was... not slow, but it also wasn't fast paced. That's just the way it was, though, I super enjoyed it. Loved the characters of Persephone and Hades, and also Pallas - all the ladies were awesome, pretty much, and Hermes. Definitely check this one out.

Currently-reading:
The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archives #1) by Brandon Sanderson
This is a reread and I just - it's so good? Like I remember I was completely in love with it, but... I guess I forgot what that meant, how much I was in love with it. I'm definitely not rushing this one. (Mostly because I don't want to but also because tiny print).

Duma Key by Stephen King
I accidentally started continuing my reread of this - it's September, I have to crochet and this was my current audiobook - and I didn't realize, at first, that it could count towards diverseathon considering Edgar's missing an arm and his hips fucked. And while King didn't get hurt that bad, this did stem from a bad as hell accident he was in. It's one of my favorites

(I said this on Litsy but there's a few King books I read when I was very young - 11 - and they're my favorites and I will reread them over and over until I do. For instance: Duma Key, Dreamcatcher, Bag of Bones. Most importantly: IT. I'll probably reread IT soon just because of the recent movie (remake) hype, cannot wait).

Stuff:
More thoughts on diverseathon here, I wanted to talk about the other stuff up top because it felt very important to my reading. I didn't end up really getting to any of the twitter chats, though I popped in a few times while cooking dinner because priorities (priorities being the food, sorry twitter). However, overall, I think it's just such a great and needed idea.

I think more people will participate if it's planned earlier, because while it felt like there was a good amount, I'm sure some people were put off by the last minute part (I also didn't do it because my heart was so set on slowathon, but I have been trying to focus part of my reading on The Way of Kings because I'd been planning that).

Mostly I think this was a good kick in the ass for me, to remind me I have all of these diverse books I want to read, I own them, they're right there, I've just got to read them. And I talked about this up above, of course, but I'm just saying it again, mostly to remind myself.

There's no shortage of diverse books - POC authors, characters, MC's with different backgrounds, religions, genders, sexualities - as long as you're looking for them, they are there. And after the last week, I have found so many that sound interesting and I'll definitely be looking into - if you've got any books you love by authors of color, and about POC, then please leave them in the comments or let me know somehow. I may have a ton of new recs, but you can never really have enough, can you?

Right now, the end of this week, I've been feeling that: I own so many books I want to read, and there are so many I don't own yet. I want to read like 100 books next week. Which, I guess, is a good feeling but also a stressful one because, obviously, I cannot read 100 books next week. I have enjoyed the slowathon, as well, and slowing down my reading this week - though, honestly, I was too tired to do anything else. Particularly with The Way of Kings, which I read a year ago and remembered the basic things but definitely forgot smaller things, and most of the medium sized things. Cannot wait to inch my way through it more.

Tackle Your TBR still has a week left, so that's what my week wrap up next week will be about - stats and page counts for both week, but I also want to put this ones info here because I don't feel like I've wrapped up a readathon unless I have

Books Read: 4
Graphic Novels/such Read: 1
Pages Read: 1,178 (+ 4 hours, 36 minutes listening to Duma Key)
Time Spent Reading(+ some listening): 15 hours, 16 minutes

(Side note, wow this post is a long one: I also wasn't sure, after writing up my rec posts, about posting them - but I did. Mostly unsure because I didn't feel like there as anything new there, they were pretty well known books. But it is hard to know everything, so maybe someone say something knew. Or didn't realize something was diverse in whatever way. And, hopefully, next time I'll have most and different books to recommend, depending on how soon)

On the blog:

#DiverseAThon | September 12th - 19th 

#DiverseAThon | POC 

#DiverseAThon | LGBTQIA+

#DiverseAThon | MC's with physical disabilites + MC's with mental health issues

#DiverseAThon | September 12th - 19th

I'm not going to talk about the reason why this readathon came about, the point is that it did. And it's awesome. I've been wanting to post about diversity and how important it is, but I just wasn't sure how to do it.

I'm also not sure if I can put it into words or explain why diversity is important to me. It's important to me personally for a mess of reasons that I'm just not comfortable going into - personal and also health related.

However, saying that, all types of diversity and representation are important to me. And if you've got an diverse books - POC, LGBTQIA+, physical disabilities, mental health, or other - then feel free to drop them in the comics, I'm always looking.

I started by having some recommendations and then a list of books I wanted to read - not a TBR because there's too many, just a general list because why not, someone might be looking for a book that one of the ones on my endless TBR fits. However, I realized how long the post was getting. I was originally going to jam them all into one post but apparently theres's a lot of books I love so I guess I'm going to have to cut them into a few posts because whew, so man damn good books.

Those posts will be up through the week and I'll link them at the bottom of this post as they go up, hopefully I remember. I'll be updating my reading progress throughout the week on twitter, instagram, and goodreads - and doing a final wrap up here. This week is always the beginning of #slowathon (one week) and tackle your TBR (#tackletbr - two weeks). Basically: heaven (I am a readathon junkie).

I have a giant stack of diverse books in my apartment I'd like to get to this week - I'll probably only get to a few (I do have 3 that are pretty damn short, 2 of which I've heard amazing things about). So onto the books I will possibly be reading this week but don't hold me to any of them (and also please leave recommendations in the comment because, really, there's no such thing as too many books)

• Citizen by Claudia Rankin (I have the audio of this, I am... not prepared. Am predicting being a sobbing mess on the ground?)
• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (I am also not prepared but more excited, mostly because I don't predict it was leave me a sobbing mess. Hopefully not...? I can only take so much emotionally)
• Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indigenous LGBT SciFi Anthology (oh yeah. you read that right. indigenous LGBT scifi anthology. I stumbled upon this on amazon, has great reviews, know nothing else.)
• Welcome to Night Vale scripts - Volumes 1 & 2 (I wouldn't normally be counting these, even though main relationship is m/m, and Carlos - a gay character of color - is voiced by a gay person of color. I just don't know, but these guys are incredible in trying to do the thing right. Mostly, I got these and am almost done with volume 1 but not quite so, really, they have to go on the list because I'm not going to put them aside)
• Lightspeed #73 - People of Colo(u)r Destory SciFi (I've been reading this forever. Well, I put it aside, but I want to get back into it. The stories I have read are amazing, but my attention span with short story collections isn't great. Still. Want to finish so badly, all of the ones so far are 4 or 5 stars).
• Crush by Richard Silken (I've been putting this on readathon TBR after readathon TBR, I have to read it at some point. Silken is gay and I've seen his poems pretty much all over tumblr, I might as well actually sit down and read them. Maybe I will this week, maybe I won't).
• Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (a reread, but I really want to reread this one. I remember loving it but remember like... maybe 25% of it? My memory isn't great about, well, anything so that isn't surprising but still).
• Ash by Malinda Lo (gay Cinderalla. What more could you want to know? Nothing. Well, I don't, I've heard amazing things, and I've heard Malinda talk and she's fantastic. So excited)
• Brooklyn Burning by Steve Brezenoff (no idea what to expect, it's queer in some way. And I love New York in books, and real life, which will be evident in my book rec posts later this week).
• We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson (I only know the vague synopsis of this, it's faded from memory. I'm pretty sure this came in a book riot quarterly box, though, and that's really all I need to know). (LGBTQIA+)

Those are just some that I have near me, there's a ton that I pulled off my shelves to consider (and this picture will show you some more), but there are even more then that in this apartment. It's honestly impressive how many books I have in my studio apartment, probably almost 2,000. You can imagine hat it looks like (just picture books everywhere and you've got it, that's what it looks like).

Anyway - if you're participating in this readathon, let me know. If you're just hearing about it - eh, jump in, anyway. Even if you only read one diverse book this week, there will be discussions happening over on twitter, I believe every day, using the #DiverseAThon hashtag. Take part, see what others are reading, tweet/instagram/blog out your favorite diverse reads. Let me know in the comments.

And, most importantly, be kind to each other. If you don't want to read diversely this week because you've already got plans, or because you're in the mood for a certain kind of book/author and you don't own one in that feeling that's diverse - don't sweat it. Just know that it is important, diversity in literature, television, movies - pop culture in general. To kids, to teenagers, to adults, to people over sixty. It's important. 

Let me know what you're reading this week, though, if you are planning on getting some diverse reads in. Or your most recent diverse read, whatever it was or had to do ith, I'd love to hear about it.

Happy read(athon)ing!

(Note: obviously I am still taking part in #slowathon and #tackleTBR, as well, just for this week I'm going to try and be very deliberate in my books. And, in the future, remember to be as well. It shouldn't be too hard with how many diverse books I own. However, I am still going to start my reread of The Way of Kings because my heart was set on that for my #slowathon goal, though it's definitely going to take damn longer then just a week, that's for sure).