The Druid Scholar

And I was disappointed in myself.

Let’s back up, shall we?

I am a librarian. It is not my job title, but it is my profession, and as such, the promotion of equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice is paramount. To some degree, this has become a key facet of my personality and interests. So when I did this audit back in September, I was surprised and dismayed to see that I wasn’t living as high up to my own values as I had hoped.

At the beginning of 2023, I had decided to just read what I was moved to read without any specific goals to read one way or another. I wanted to be able to assess my baseline habits. I took part in a few specific reading challenges throughout the year, but as a mood reader, I pretty rarely meet up with my own goals, and for the most part, that is okay. It is okay to not achieve everything you hope. The real achievement when it comes to reading is not really numbers anyway. [People who have known me for a long time may be feeling pretty shocked to hear that right now. People change, and that’s okay too.] The real achievement in reading is gaining more awareness, finding joy, creating space for the perspective of others within your life and yourself.

So when I realized my baseline was still, despite everything, primarily cis het white folks, yeah I felt a little let down by myself.

As of the middle of September 2023, I had read 78 books, and only 23 of them were by authors of color. That’s a little less than one third.

A friend of mine tried to make me feel better about that by noting that my percentage is probably closely representative of the proportion of BIPOC authors currently published, but the idea of representing the current bias in the industry doesn’t really make me feel better about my own habits.

So, I decided to join in on the 23for23 challenge. From September to the end of the year, I was going to challenge myself to read 23 MORE books by BIPOC authors by the end of 2023. I was not confident that I could make that happen, but I live by the saying I saw on old motivational poster as a child: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars

Since then, I have finished 15 more books by BIPOC authors. This table includes 2 that previously been counted in the original audit, but I decided to count my 23 from the beginning of September for simplicity’s sake

September	NDN Coping Mechanisms by Billy-Ray Belcourt: Indigenous Queer Poetry collection Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones: Indigenous Horror [my boooiiiii] Borders by Thomas King: Indigenous Graphic Novel
October	Gloom Town by Ronald L. Smith: Black Middle Grade Fantasy Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron: Black YA Queer Fairy Tale Retelling Witchlings The Golden Frog Games by Claribel A. Ortega: Latina Middle Grade Fantasy Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova: Latina YA Queer Fantasy Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley: Indigenous YA Contemporary
November	Root Magic by Eden Royce: Black Middle Grade Historical Fantasy Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis: Black Nonfiction
December	Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon [My King, My God]: Indigenous YA Queer Fantasy The Forest Demands its Due by Kosoko Jackson: Black YA Queer Fantasy Horror The Name-Bearer by Natalia Hernandez: Latina YA Queer Fantasy Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker: Black YA Queer Fantasy Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk: Black Adult Queer Historical Fantasy Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong: Intersectional Essays on Disability Bitter Root Omnibus by Chuck Brown and David F. Walker: Black Lovecraftian Horror Steampunk Graphic Novel

I’m in the middle of more, some I’ve been reading for months [it’s not a race, you can consume at your own speed]. I admit, with the information coming out of Palestine, I’ve found it more difficult to read sometimes. I read two books in total in November [though I did read FROM 4 other books in that time, 2 by BIPOC authors, and 1 a collection of essays confronting the occupation of Palestine by people from a variety of backgrounds].

Suffice it to say, I feel a lot better about my reading habits in this final third of the year. In the final quarter of 2023, 17 out of 26 finished books have been by BIPOC authors, and most of the books I read that were not were continuations on series that I had already begun. [My 2023 most read author is Bill Willingham because I determined that I really wanted to finish the Fables Graphic novel series, and I read 3 of them in September.]

It is never too late to course correct your reading habits to align with your values.

Being totally real: 38/100 total read books in a year is still not a great ratio. I’m not proud of it, but now that we have some data, we can do something about that!

As we go into 2024, determine our reading goals, and decide what challenges we want to participate in this year, it is important to me to be more intentional. I’ve joined a number of 2024 reading challenges, but the challenge that is the most vital to me is the Diverse Baseline Challenge created by @bookish.millennial & @themargherita.s [on instagram, I am a bookstagram nonbinary fae]. It’s 3 challenges a month focusing on building a habit of reading and supporting BIPOC books.

Now, I’m sure I hear you saying something along the lines of 36 books a year total by BIPOC authors is about the same ratio I already have going on, and you would be correct. In 2024, I have set my reading goal slightly lower at 75 books for the year, I have to do MORE than that baseline challenge. This does conflict slightly with the fact that I also plan on doing a lot of research into a few related fields of study I want to spend more time with, and those books [Celtic and Slavic magic, folklore, and history] are rarely written by BIPOC authors, which just means I have to be MORE intentional with my non-research reads.

My real goal for 2024 is not mere numbers, but intentional reviewing. I didn’t write many reviews for the books I read in 2023, and while that is fine for most people, it does not meet my personal or professional goals to let a book go by unexamined.

I’m still thinking about how to handle some of my other goals for this year, but my takeaway from the last half of 2023 has been pretty clear to me: Consuming with Intention is vital to creating the kind of change we want to see in the publishing industry. No more wasting time in “diverse” book clubs that still somehow manage to only read white authors for me this year!

Here’s to some excellent diverse reads in 2024, yall!