I really need to start reading more of my owned books… 61% is so good!

@ThoughtsOnTomes

7 ай бұрын

thank you :)

I look forward to your goals videos every year! The 24 in 24 POC challenge is such a great idea

Great year Sam! I love your reflexion videos. I personally set a goal of 50 books but managed to read 39 (although it does not bother me a lot). I normally use The StoryGraph stats (I am not very good at making stats myself). As a interesting detail of this year, I have read more audiobooks than anything else. I have several goals this year but I want to read more physical books, to try and finish my TBR (which is huge). I do not know if one day I'll be able to reduce it as you are doing, but I wish you great reads in 2024! Lots of hugs!

Commenting solely to acknowledge and appreciate the seamless kitty cat entrance. 🐈💜

Yay best video of the year 🎉🎉🎉

I'm pretty happy with my reading for last year (65 books) but am hoping to bump it up this year. I have goals for the amount of non-fiction, classics and BIPOC authors I want to read, and so far this year I've read 8 books so I feel good about achieving my goals 😊

I finished approximately 36 books in 2023, which is way down from my normal 80-100. I'm not getting down on myself about it, but reviewing that data and reflecting on what took my time instead has been very useful for me. I also just had a BIG dnf year. I think I was just trying to push myself to finish stuff I wasn't actually interested in and that made me slow down overall. My big goal that I am almost done with that I started in 2024 was reading all of Sherrilyn Kenyons works because I was gifted like 15 of her books or something ridiculous like that :) so I've almost made it through those!

I use both None and N/A! None is for fiction that genuinely doesn't have any rep OR memoirs, N/A is for nonfiction about a topic, as you say.

@ThoughtsOnTomes

7 ай бұрын

yeah I definitely think I'll be switching to that

I always love your January wrap up videos. The infographics were so useful to look at.

@ThoughtsOnTomes

7 ай бұрын

yay I'm so glad :)

Love to see all the breakdowns - genres, series etc

i track rep in my nonfiction reads as "n/a"! that way, my "none" is reserved for fiction only that doesn't include any rep whatsoever. i sometimes also use "n/a" for poetry or other types of books where a rep tracking simply isn't applicable. i hope your 24 in 24 poc challenge works out! i'm going to try to read more non-usa books this year, 'cause that always ends up being 75% of my chart lol

I think you read the novels and novellas for the Hugos, right? Then there would've also been C.L. Polk and Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the list! I know that doesn't affect your stats, just wanted to shout them out in addition to Nghi Vo.

@ThoughtsOnTomes

6 ай бұрын

Ah yes I forgot SMG was a part of the Hugos this year since I read her book last year when it came out.

The Hugos also had Silvia Moreno-Garcia as an author of color this year.

@ThoughtsOnTomes

7 ай бұрын

Ah yes I totally forgot that book was included since I read it in 2022!

Since you mentioned witchy books, I was wondering: any recommendations for finding witchy communities online (other rhan facebook)? Me resding year went rather poorly, partially due to a lot of professional and other real life stuff.

@ThoughtsOnTomes

7 ай бұрын

I don't tend to have a lot of luck with online communities and prefer to meet people in person. It's better to get a read on people in person. I've been to a few witchcraft shop events that help but I happened to stumble across my in person community through a friend of a friend so I just got really lucky.

I really love your channel and the content you put out, so i don’t want you to read this as any sort of attack on you specifically. I think your ‘representation’ measurement is a little flawed, and for reasons you were pointing out: the majority of the rep youre tracking is written by white authors. Of course white authors can do a good job and poc shouldn’t only exist to make a point about race, but based off of some of the reading i do, a lot of those ‘diverse’ casts written by white people aren’t great rep. A lot of the time its just white characters in brown skin so they can check off a box for inclusion. I’m not sure how to fix this! As a white person, i definitely understand you not being in a position to say something is good or bad rep. By my own standards, though, I typically reserve the label of ‘diverse’ for books with a poc lead, a main cast of 50% or more poc characters, or representation that addresses/goes out of its way to engage with culture or issues related to being nonwhite. Anyway, sorry that was so long! Just some thoughts I’ve been having surrounding the publishing industry and its sort of checklist attitude towards poc. They only seem to love us when we can be used as a marketing strat for white authors. I think the 24 in 24 thing you’re doing is great, and its really sick to see a white creator truly dedicated to diversifying their reading.

@ThoughtsOnTomes

7 ай бұрын

Thank you! I really appreciate the time you took to leave this comment. I absolutely agree with you that there should be a standard for "rep" in this case. I looked back on my stats from last year, and thankfully all of the books that had just POC rep that I marked were books by POC authors. There were some that I marked as having multiple rep though where maybe the POC rep was a bit more shaky. I'm definitely never counting it as rep if there's just a random side character or anything but I think your standard of the main cast being 50% or more POC or the representation engages with culture or issues around being non-white is a good marker to have that I will also be adopting. I do think that this year's challenge will help me be more intentional about this!