2016 Challenges: Diverse Reads Book Challenge hosted by Read Sleep Repeat!!

Hello there guys!

Here I am with yet another reading challenge for 2016 and this is my fifth one!! I feel like I'm getting myself into trouble with so many challenges to keep track of, but I'm hoping I can do decently well at this!

The moment I saw Shelly from Read Sleep Repeat talking about this challenge I knew I'd be joining it! The 2016 Diverse Reads Book Challenge is hosted by Read Sleep Repeat and Chasing Faerytales and it's a way to help us read more diverse books!

I'm gonna be copy-pasting all the relevant info for the challenge so I can keep it handy on my blog, but HERE is Shelly's original post, where you can also sign up for the challenge!!


The Rules:

• Read books that are diverse.
• The MC must be part of a diverse group*

Defined by We Need Diverse Books: We recognize all diverse experiences, including (but not limited to) LGBTQIA, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities*, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.
*We subscribe to a broad definition of disability, which includes but is not limited to physical, sensory, cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities, chronic conditions, and mental illnesses (this may also include addiction). Furthermore, we subscribe to a social model of disability, which presents disability as created by barriers in the social environment, due to lack of equal access, stereotyping, and other forms of marginalization.

• The book can be set in a diverse setting, but not necessarily
• #Ownvoices stories (stories about marginalized groups written by a member of that marginalized group) are widely encouraged as well! Promoting diverse books by diverse authors is important.
• If the book is a fantasy it can be based on/inspired by a diverse mythology or folklore ( E.g. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh)
• If the book is a sci fi or dystopia, it has to be based on a dystopian country that’s not USA. ( E.g. Cinder by Marissa Meyer)
• Intersectionality is encouraged.
• The novels don’t have to be YA, but as we are YA bloggers, those are probably the novels we are more likely to read

The Logistics:

• This challenge will run from the 1st of January 2016 to the 31st of December 2016.
• You can join in anytime you want.
• This challenge is meant to be a personal goal challenge to help find more diverse novels and to read more diversely.
• There are no levels/points! You can read as much or as little as you’d like, this is a personal goal and is mainly individualized
• To join the challenge, add your sign up post to the link up at the bottom of the post. You can include your TBR for the challenge if you want, but it’s not a requirement. Your sign up post can be a separate post or a part of a giant list of all your 2016 reading challenges. Anything is fine.

My personal goal is going to be to read at least 24 diverse books, 2 per month! Since I can combine this with my other challenges for the year, I'm thinking it'll be rather manageable, but at the very least I plan to read 12, one per month!!

How to choose what books to read when is usually a bit complicated for me, so I'm gonna be following the guidelines & themes that they have as a sort of guide for each couple of months!:

• January-March: Ethnic diversity
• April-June: LGBTQIA+ diversity
• July-September: Religious diversity
• October-December: Mental and physical health and disabilities.               

I already have one book ready to be read in my TBR pile for this month that fits the Ethnic diversity suggestion, so I just need to check my list for another and I'll be set!

Are you joining this challenge? What books would you recommend that have ethnic diversity?