Books I Want To Read More Of This Year (2021)

Hey pals!

We all know I’m trying to get through as many books I already own as possible in 2021, but there are a selection of books that I want to read more of this year. This post is all about the kinds of books I want to make some space for on my TBR’s this year. Obviously, we know I love diversity and diverse books/authors of all kinds, so that is a given! BUT I want to specify certain aspects of diversity that I’m really looking to expand when reading. Reading a lot of old books has lead to my reading repertoire being a lot of white, cis, straight, non-disabled writers and stories, and whilst they can be entertaining I feel like I’m seriously lacking in relatable content and interesting takes and spins on old tropes. We already know the writers and books I DON’T want to read, let’s see what I do.

Don’t forget to check out my recent video All the Book Series I Want To Read This Year

If you would like to support me and indie bookshops then please use my affiliate link to the BookShop! I have tried to link all the book titles so you can purchase them super easily.

Fat characters and authors with Fat positive stories:

I bought Dumplin’ recently and read Leah On The Off Beat in 2019, but these are some others on my radar: Get it right, Speak for yourself, Fattily Ever After, I’ll Be the One, Undead Girl Gang, One Last Stop, Happy Fat. I’ve chosen to read more literature about fat people and main characters but especially women, because I’ve seen people recently take their first steps into experiencing fat main characters who don’t hate themselves and finding strength from this representation. I could do with a bit more body love, if I’m being honest, and I think these books will help.

LGBTQ+ Characters and Authors, mainly Bisexuals (or generally multi-gender attracted people) trans and nonbinary people are top priority:

Felix Ever After, Red White and Royal Blue, I Wish You All The Best, A Lake Of Feathers and Moonbeams, The Chosen and the Beautiful, Love is For Losers, Camp, The Gravity of Us, The Witch King, Out Of Salem. I did create a list a while back about all the Sapphic books I was interested in, which is a long list with details of each book’s plot, some will overlap with this list.

Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, authors and main characters:

The Black Kids is a book I bought recently, I’ve had Want by Cindy Pon for a while and Crazy Rich Asians too, other books I want to read are: Running With Lions, I Love You So Mochi, Ace of Spades, Catherine House, How We Fall Apart, Parachutes, Wicked Fox, Patron Saints of Nothing, and one coming in 2022 is If You Could See The Sun about selling secrets to pay for schooling! I’ve seen a lot of people (white people) reading stories about BIPOC suffering, and while yes there are struggles that come with being BIPOC (just like there are struggles with being queer, trans, fat, disabled…) it is not the only experience. I wanted to try to find stories that weren’t soley about someone’s race and suffering because of racism. The Black Kids is about racism. Want is more about the Sci-Fi world, Running with Lions is about being queer and playing football, Ace of Spades and Catherine House are about the academic pressures and mysteries, and some of the other books are about connecting with family and their culture. I wanted to read a mixture of stories and not fall into the default of a white reader only reading stories of BIPOC suffering rather than euphoria. I hope I’ve explained that right…

Disabled/Chronically ill, Neuro-Divergent, Mentally ill characters/authors:

I’ve had the ebook of Human Enough for a while so I will be making time to read that as it has an autistic main character (I spoke about this one in my ‘Books I’m Most Excited To Read’ post) other books I want to purchase and read include: Sick Kids in Love, Disability Visibility, How to be Autistic, The Pretty One. Shona Louise talked about Disability Visibility and The Pretty One on her Top Ten Books of 2020 post.

There are some genres/themes in general that I want to read more of, some have been included in the above categories but I wanted to add this section for a mixture of Dark Academia, Thrillers/Mysteries and Magical stories that either don’t meet the above criteria, or I am unsure if/how it fits. Honestly, these categories often merge together too!

Ninth House, People Like Us, When We Were Magic, Magic of Liars, These Witches Don’t Burn, I Am Out With Lanterns, Sawkill Girls.

Poetry: most of these would fit an above criteria, but I wanted to keep poetry separate.

the princess saves herself in this one & the mermaid’s voice returns in this one by Amanda Lovelace. I read the witches don’t burn in this one in 2019. Moonflower, homie by Danez Smith, I Would Leave Me If I Could by Halsey, salt by nayyirah waheed (I have only seen this available on Amazon for a lot of money, I wanted to read this writer’s work because I read somewhere that she inspired Rupi Kaur but didn’t take off as much?) I did also have Swimming Lessons by Lili Reinhart on my list until recently when I watched a Poetry critic YouTuber and… found that I agreed with the critiques and the poems discussed were… flat. So, sorry Lili but I took the book off my list.

Full list of the above books can be found here, I couldn’t find all of them unfortunately.

I hope you liked this list and might find some new books for you to search out and try. I’ll be keeping my blog, instagram, and youtube channel updated with what I’m reading so keep an eye out! I’m currently working on reading as many pre-owned books as possible and I’m nearly at 10 books read in January alone thanks to my 32 Short Reads post! I’ll be posting a video on that too as well as another manga reading marathon! Let me know if there’s anything in particular you would like to see more of from me!

~ Artie

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