Let's Talk Bookish; Reader & Blogger Responsibilities

It's Friday and perhaps it's time for a new Let's Talk Bookish post, courtesy of Eternity Books and Literary Lion. As it was a bit of "choose your own adventure" today, I decided talking about reader and blogger responsibilities.

I'm not going to lie about the fact that when I first started book blogging a little over nine years ago, I didn't think too much about my blogger responsibilities. I just blogged for the fun of it and read whatever book that caught my fancy. It's mainly in the later years I've started to get more concious about it. That's partially due to the fact that as I'm lesbian and I suspect I'm not the only one who likes to see myself represented in books.

Don't get me wrong, I still read books written by white, straight, Christian, middle-aged dudes, but I make a concious decision to also read and blog about diverse authors and books. This year I'm hosting a 2021 Diversity Reading Challenge and next year I'm planning to only review books fitting into a diversity theme (see the reading challenge post for ideas of what to expect).

For the most part, I do enjoy being part of the book blogging community, but it does have some downsides, as it's mostly straight and white (guilty as charged on the latter as I'm Norwegian) and I sometimes don't feel like I fit in properly due to being a lesbian. Especially as I sometime blog about, you guessed it, diversity in books. Perhaps it's my background that makes me more aware about diversity and therefore at least try to take my responsibility seriously, but sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.

Another aspect of highlighting books and blogger responsibilities, I think, is to perhaps sometimes highlight lesser known books and/or authors. I do try to mix in some underrated books from time to time, as I do feel they deserve a bit more attention. There's a Norwegian book blogger with a blog called Henningbokhylle, who more or less only blog about underrated books and authors, which I think is a good thing.

I'm not saying that I demand that all book bloggers, bookstagrammers and booktokers start talking aboout diverse books/auhors only (and underrated books), but it would be nice if they talked occasionally about random books/authors that are diverse or underrated. It's not like it's going to hurt you if you read 1-5 books a year by someone whose skin colour, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation doesn't match your own.