I wiped this blog of all previous content.
Through the last few years my reading habits have changed a lot - my perspective as a person has changed too. I still like to read some of the same things, but I guess that the more you read within certain genres, the more jaded you become. You've seen it all before. Plot twists become familiar miles off. Tropes become annoying and you pick them up earlier and earlier in the book. Although I still really enjoy the sweeping kind of fantasy tales I used to love, they've become a bit like reruns of Friends: you've seen it all before -maybe that's even what makes it so comforting and enjoyable, because you know what you're getting. But the narrative never changes.
I've started to read more books by minorities within genre fiction. Women, LGBTQs, people of colour. Non-western genre novels. I can't say if they're better than the great epics I used to enjoy but what I do know is that they took me out of my comfort zone. They made me think about my preconceptions. I started reading more critically again.
The last few years I've started identifying more strongly as a feminist, among other things. Thus, it made me uncomfortable that most of my media consumption still consisted of white, western men. White, western men writing; white, western men acting; white, western men showing us the world as they interpret it. And I'm not saying that's wrong. In fact, I enjoy a lot of the stuff that comes from that. But it's the sort of privilege I struggle with in my daily life: in a way I contribute to this system by consuming what gets marketed most aggressively. So I decided to move away from these go-to-authors for my reading. It's sad that this has to be a conscious choice, but that's just how it is in today's fiction scene.
It's a fact that women struggle to get published more than men and if they do get published they get covers with confused looking heroines on the front. Authors that are not from Europe or the US struggle to find a foothold. The best way to make a change is to start buying their books, which I did. And another way is to start telling others about them. Which I will in this blog. I'm not saying it'll be all diversity, all the time, but my focus will be on books that are not from established names, starting with Victor LaValle's Big Machine and Karin Lord's Redemption in Indigo.
So hopefully I'll see you there :)
