2015/07/19

Bookish Reflections: Reading Diversely and Why I Think It's Important

There's been a lot of buzz this past year about the importance of reading diversely. This topic came up on my radar when some of my favourite booktubers did the Reading Diversely Tag, and I read a book a while back, Reading the World by Ann Morgan. This sparked a small passion in me.

All my life, I have mostly read Norwegian, British and American fiction. There is always the odd one out, the one out of fifty books that happen to have been translated from another language (usually a European one). And I can't help but think how much I'm missing out on.


So, I have been making an effort this past year to read more diversely, and I've found it fun, but challenging. Because I don't just want to read the mainstream diverse fiction, if you get my meaning? The challenge is to find the books that are less known. The more known books are of course always welcome. I recently read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is a Nigerian author, and holy smokes, was I blown away.

There is of course value to reading the more mainstream of translated fiction, but to spread the love for these lesser known books, someone has to read them. It's not really reading diversely if everyone is reading the same stuff, is it?

Now, the reason I personally want to read more diverse fiction is because there is so much to learn from reading. Reading about other cultures, religions, race, gender, identity, is a wonderful way to broaden the horizon of your own mind and your own understanding. And I think this is very, very important (I think we can all agree the world would be a better place if everyone had more of an open mind and we were more understanding of one another).


So, I'm asking for a bit of help: do you have any recommendations for diverse books? I'm very interested in reading books from authors from South-America, Asia and Africa, or set anywhere outside Europe and North-America (though, of course, if you have something amazing from these places, shoot it my way).

Also, what are your views on reading diversely?

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