Category Archives: up for discussion

Reframing my commitment to read diversely

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I read a blog post this morning that made me stop and think, stop and consider myself and my own actions. It was Committing to Diversity When You’re White: a Primer. I happen to be white (white, middle class, cis-gendered, able and average bodied and basically straight) and interested in committing to diversity. In fact, before today, I’d have said I was committed.

Committing to Diversity

The post is a down and dirty list of things white people can do to promote literary diversity. I’d paraphrase, but that might discourage reading it yourself and it is worth reading. One of the primary suggestions, though, is to ensure you READ books, not only ABOUT but also BY people who are not white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied representations of the majority. The author, for example, set a goal of making sure 1/3 the books read this year are by people of color.

It’s this particular point that made me stop and wonder what my average looks like. I mean, I consider myself fairly aware of the biases in the modern western world and I make an effort every day to put good out into the world and improve the lives of those around me. But I wanted an understanding of whether I am succeeding in walking my talk in the reading department. After all, I may not have a lot of impact in the reading community, but I do have a platform.

What followed was several hours on Goodreads, in which I read the biography of each of the 260+ books I’ve read this year.

books read, as of Aug 2016

Yes, that’s 260+ books. There is some overlap, as I have read more than one book by the same author. But I still looked at the bios of over 200 authors and took an informal survey of their demographics. I looked predominantly at gender, race (white or POC based on author photo) and if the bio mentioned the author being LGBTQI+—items I thought might be available in an author bio.

Obviously, this information was not always available. Authors have no obligation to provide readers any personal or identifying details and obviously there is a large margin for error when making judgements based on pictures and small self-descriptions. But I felt it was enough to garner an understanding of my own unconscious behaviors.

hatch marks

What I found was in some ways not surprising, but horridly disappointing in others. The books I’ve read so far this year, have been overwhelmingly written by straight, white women. That’s not a surprise, really. I read a lot of PNR and M/M romance, both genres written largely by straight, white women. But even as a person who thinks of herself as someone who makes an effort to be inclusive and seeks out diverse reads, I failed miserably in reading authors of color.

When I finished, I thought surely I had missed a batch of books somewhere. In fact, in the beginning, I thought I might just survey a sample of the books read, but I kept going hoping my numbers would average out. They never did.

I could pass off blame for this to publishers; they’re not publishing books by non-white or majority authors. But that ignores the fact that it’s my own responsibility to seek those authors out and a lackadaisical, “I want to read more non-majority authors” isn’t enough.

Kelly, the author of the initial post, says, “Here is the thing with this, though: you can’t pride yourself on being open and aware of who you’re reading.” And while I think she’s meaning don’t get all puffed up and proud because you’re doing something that you should be doing anyway. There’s no extra credit for being a decent human being. I also think the point can be stretched to remind readers that engaging diversity is not something that happens passively. I just proved this to myself.

I have good intentions, everyday I do and I’m proud of that. But that has not translated into measurable actions and without those, all my good feelings about myself and my place in the social justice arena are fairly hollow. Had someone else done this survey of my reading, I think they’d be within their rights to call me a naive hypocrite; thinking myself more ‘woke’ than I actually am.

And while I don’t want to come across all, “Hey look at me. I’m doing something. Aren’t I special and deserving of praise? ” I want to take an opportunity to put myself on alert, to acknowledge that I am failing and make a concrete effort to improve. There are four months left in the year and I think I can reasonably double the number of books by people of color I’ve read. This is both a testament to my desire to do better and how few I’ve read to begin with.

If this is an area you are interested in, I suggest giving Kelly’s post over at Stacked Books a read and then taking a critical look at the books you’re reading. Unless you are already making a concerted effort, they may not turn out to be as inclusive as you think. Mine sure didn’t.

Why can’t book one mean book one anymore?

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This isn’t a review. I’m stating that up front. But I’m going to take a moment and use this as launching point to have a little rant. As with other such rants, this is my opinion. I’m claiming no authority beyond that. But I am a reader, a voracious reader and when I encounter the same things irritating me over and over I need a place to vent.

Prophecy: Blood Moon Madelynne Ellis‘ book Prophecy: Blood Moon was supposed to be the fifth book in my Blood Moon Reading Challenge.  It was the book I had the highest hopes for in the list of seven I planned to read. Which is saying something; I have found an imperfect, but perceptible correlation between books with common names and common, uninspiring stories. This means when I set out to read seven books with essentially the same title, I knew some would be flops. But I held out hope for this one.

And based on the writing, I may have been right. It seemed fine. Unfortunately, I only made it 15% in before I decided not to finish it. And if you knew how bad the last two Blood Moon books I read were, but still finished, you would understand this is not something I do easily or happily. So, if I’m willing to slog through poor plotting and bad writing to finish a challenge, why did I give up on this one? Because I had no idea what was happening.

Screen Shot 2016-05-15 at 10.38.05 AMHere’s the thing, this is very clearly labeled as book one, but it’s not the beginning of the story. There is a prequel called Broken Angel available in a compilation titled Possession. Anyone who has read many of my reviews has probably hit at least one in which I’ve stated loudly how much I hate this trend toward teaser prequels. I hate picking up a story and reaching the end without followed any sort of complete arc. It leaves me feeling cheated.

Here we have just the opposite problem. Apparently, Broken Angel, rather than being a little teaser about the characters, or an extra side story IS THE BEGINNING of the story being told in Prophecy. So, without having read Broken Angel I can only scramble along and try to keep up with the goings on of Prophecy, ignoring all references to things I don’t know. This makes for a very poor reading experience.

And it’s not just prequels that cause this problem. Anyone who has followed my twitter lately might think I’m a little obsessed with complaining about spin-off series.

I felt burned because two books (No Boundaries and Dragon Fall) in a row, despite being labeled #1, first in a series, turned out to be the first in a spin-off series and neither stood alone well. You were very obviously meant to have read the books in the previous series to fully engage in the new series. As with the second tweet, how could that not be the case? No matter how conscientious the author is, there is simply no way to integrate the knowledge and information of 10 previous books into one new one.

So, I started thinking. Why do authors or publishers do this? I’m not in the publishing industry, as I said, I’m a reader. So, my guess may not be correct, but it will be indicative of what these actions on the part of authors and publishers feel like for readers. And here’s my guess, it’s all to trick you into buying more books.

The simple fact of the matter is that I can no longer go to the book store or library, scan the shelves, pick up something that’s numbered one, buy it and trust that I’ll be able to sit down and read it. These days there is a better than average chance that I’ll need to either also have bought a prequel or the previous series the book is based on.

Because let’s be logical. When a publisher puts out a book that is number eleven in a series, there is a limited audience: predominantly those who are following the series and read the previous ten books. I don’t think I’m the only one who would be wary about putting money out for a book ten volumes into a storyline. But, oh, if they call it a spin-off and label it number one, a certain number of uniformed buyers won’t realize it’s part of a larger series and buy the book when you wouldn’t if it was labeled (what I’d deem) more accurately. Make sense?

I feel the same way about prequels generally and the fact that they’re often free doesn’t negate the feeling of being manipulated for me. Often you read a prequel and it’s only part of a story. You have to buy the next book to finish it. Or in the case of Prophecy, you need to have bought the prequel in order to read book one in the series.

It’s not the spending of money that is an issue. I have a limited book budget, but I have no qualms supporting artists by paying for their work. It’s the attempt to entrap me, trick me, manipulate me into buying something I wouldn’t have otherwise that infuriates me. Not to mention that all of this is chipping away at my reading enjoyment. The number of books I’m reading that are unsatisfying because they are only part of a story that an author/publisher decided to break up or number in some artificial manner to make more money is steadily increasing.

It brings less-than-cordial utterances like these out of me.

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Tell me honestly authors; are those the emotions you want to be bringing out in your readers? I ask because, as the industry moves farther and farther in this direction, I feel like this more and more. I could fill pages with reviews in which I’ve been spitting mad about only reading part of a story and then expected to pay again to get the ending (or beginning).

And yes, I understand what a serial is. But they are OFTEN not accurately labeled as such and so readers are not fairly warned beforehand that they are in fact buying a serial. Take for example the review I wrote of Fated Nights:

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Three serial starters in one book and not one accurately labeled. Because to do so would discourage people form buying it. That’s not an allegation against any one author, but against the industry that’s making tricking the reader the new norm. And I am getting madder and madder.

I haven’t the slightest idea what to do about it. I’m just one reader and maybe I’m the only one so bothered by the situation. New readers probably don’t even remember a time when they could trust the label on a book to be accurate. But I thought I just might bust if I didn’t give myself the chance to cry foul.

11 Things I Learned About Being a Bookworm by Living With a ‘Not-a-Reader’

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I organized my bookshelves this weekend. For me this is big time drama. There are so many decisions to make. What order to put them in? Which have earned the right to prominence on the actual shelves and which have to be consigned to hidden niches among the dust bunnies and dog fur? Which to get rid of? When to read the ones that have to go, because giving away an unread book is a sin in my world. The struggle is real, people.

books

And I can’t even with my children’s shelves. OMG, I can feel the twitches coming on just thinking about it. I order them; they disorder them. I order them; they disorder them. This is a pretty regular cycle in our world. Maybe I shouldn’t buy them so many books. *<.< side-eyes that idea*

Children's shelves

But when my husband later asked what I’d done with my day and I proudly answered, “I organized the bookshelf” (Notice how now it’s the bookshelf, not my bookshelf? This is a small dishonesty I allow him to believe. It’ a form of kindness.) and he was devastatingly unimpressed, I had a revelation. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea why this lights me up and makes me happy. (Because drama and decisions be damned, I love playing with my books.)

So, what makes him different, I asked myself… what makes me different? Well, I am an unrepentant bookworm. He is not. I don’t mean he doesn’t read. He does occasionally. I think he maybe even enjoys it, on those rare occasions he dedicates himself, over months, to finishing a book. But it holds the same place of importance in his world as, say, swimming. Which he does with the kiddos a couple times a summer, or playing computer games. Which he loves in theory but almost never gets around to doing.

I however live to read.  It is THE primary (non-chore) activity in my day-to-day life. I would (and often do) forgo almost every other activity in order to finish the book I started that morning. And until I began living with someone who didn’t live this way, it seemed absolutely normal. On further consideration, I realized that there are a number of things I learned about my perception of self by comparison to him, a normal non-obsessive-reader person.

I considered making this post a fictional account from the perspective of the non-reader—11 Things I Learned Living With a Bookworm—but that wouldn’t really have been me, so it’s 11 Things I Learned About Being a Bookworm by  Living With a Not-a-Reader.

  1. Hoarding books is not the norm? Apparently, non-bookworms don’t cherish every page they own, even if they didn’t like the book. They think nothing of tossing the text when they’re finished, or even (gods forbid) if they didn’t.
  2. Having marked off over half the books in Emma Beare’s 5011419462 Must-Read Books isn’t considered impressive? Aiming to read them all eventually is just a random, shrug-worthy goal. Keeping this book for years, just for the occasional joy of marking a book out of the index is weird and maybe obsessive. Planning to get a new version when your done, because new books have probably made the list since you bought your copy in 2007, garners an eye-roll from the non-reader, normal person.
  3. Not-a-readers don’t care what order their books are on a shelf? Apparently, a bookworm’s need to have an understandable system, even if it changes regularly, is odd. They also obviously aren’t driven bat-shit crazy by random stuff, like tangled headphones or unopened mail, that gets tossed on them as if they are any other openly available flat surface.
  4. Books aren’t decorations in the not-a-bookworm’s world and a bookworm’s desire to decorate with them is often unfathomable.
  5. The ability to sit in sloth-like stillness for hours, while entire worlds unfurl in your mind is not an admirable skill? It’s, like, lazy or something.
  6. A book isn’t meant to be read cover-to-cover in as short amount of time as possible, preferably one day, so that there are no interruptions in the experience? Apparently, this is something only bookworms feel is important and not-reader, normal people think is gluttonous.
  7. reading goal as of 4/7/16Reading 300 or so pages in a day is not a reasonable expectation, nor is 300 books in a year? Not-obsessive-reader people often find these numbers shocking.
  8. Coming to the table for meals and discussing something other than the characters or subplots of the book you’re reading is considered good manners? A bookworm’s need to share what they’ve just spent six hours immersed in is somewhat off-putting to the not-a reader, normal person.
  9. Forgoing human interactions and declining social invitations in order to finish a book is considered rude? Some bookworms are apparently seen as antisocial in the non-literary world.
  10. Reading a book quickly and being able to pull out and discuss themes, genre expectations and tropes are apparently, under non-bookworm conditions, considered anathema?
  11. I never, ever want to have to live as a normal, not-a-reader person. Being a bookworm, for me, is important and gratifying. It is a way of life that I choose.

It’s this last point that was brought home to me most saliently. I could choose to not be a bookworm, which conversely means I choose to be one. I have an uncle in his late 60s, who I would characterize as a reader, maybe even a mild bookworm. He is loosing his eyesight. He’s facing the question of bothering to learn braille or if audiobooks will be enough to sustain him. He is living my nightmare, but it seems to me he is also facing the choice of whether to remain a bookworm or to move on to other forms of self-identity.

Bookworm is a way of life. Perhaps there are better names for it, but this is the one I decided on. This is the label I choose for myself. No matter what the normal, not-a-bookworm person thinks of me (us), no matter how odd or off-putting they find some of my (our) habits, I find it something to be proud of. I don’t want to live in a world where books have no order, or can sit partially read for months on end, or where going to a movie is preferable to snuggling up with a book. I don’t want to be a not-a-reader, normal person. I live at one end of the reader extreme and I plan to stay here.

Tere is a certain freeing aspect to recognizing this. I am a bookworm and if you’ve finished this post, you probably are too. Welcome to the community.

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