Welcome Back, Booklovers! I hope everyone had a Happy Holidays! December makes it 3 years since I've been regularly blogging. And while it was a slow first few months I had no idea what was in store for 2020 and how my audience would pick up. And I still enjoy sharing my reviews on here with all of you.
I wasn't sure what to write for my first blog post of 2023 but I feel like a reflection and goal is fitting. 2022 was not my most busy reading year but I still read a significant amount of books. So many of the books I read I didn't have strong feelings of love or hate for. Most of my reads were right in the middle which makes for more forgettable reads. This year I want to find more books I adore and want to constantly recommend.
After letting go of the Black trauma vs Black Joy dichotomy in 2020 I started noticing a trend with many of the Black books publisher's were heavily promoting to "prove" they care about diversity. Especially the ones being promoted for young adults. Blackness is so much more than trauma vs joy when we equally experience both pain and happiness throughout our lives. There's a way to tell stories dealing with more difficult topics without making the main character just a tool to showcase hardship. And I noticed fewer to no happy moments in the lauded books I was picking up. I wasn't feeling any type of connection to some of these main characters because I didn't know anything about them besides they were Black and barely surviving. I was reading fantasies that felt like non stop violence against Black bodies. I didn't like the messaging in some of these stories that were basically saying that to be Black is to live a life of unnecessary hardships.
So this year I decided I need to explore more books outside of traditional publishing's formulas where despite calls for originality want Black writers to write very similar stories. As a fantasy lover I'm looking for more stories with less real world issues and more magic. I love a good contemporary story but I want the magic to be ingrained in a fantasy. If I can remove the magic from the book entirely and it still reads the same then why are we calling it a fantasy? I'm seeing more Black authors making moves. Those fun stories I'm looking for seem to be there.
I have also accumulated a decent amount of Kindle romance thanks to some giveaways and this year is the year that I read more of those.
One of my 2023 goals is to put together more recommendation lists on here. Because I do read a lot of great books with stories that people are looking for but might have trouble finding. And people have asked me for lists in the past.
But my overall goal for 2023 is to keep reading feeling fun instead of having it feel like a chore or an obligation.
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