Hi everyone,

How was your July? This month has had its ups and downs here! Melbourne is back in lockdown. Whilst it didn’t change much for me, as I’m already WFH and wasn’t ever leaving the house anyway, the anxiety at this never ending situation is beginning to get to me. But then I started making candles this month, and it’s been so much fun, and just so relaxing to play with different scents. So a decidedly mixed month.

Reading wise though, I’ve had the joint best month of the year so far (in number of books, pages wise I’m a bit lower!) I read 9 books and 2 novellas this month, including one of my favourite books of the year so far, The Space Between Worlds! I also have something fun and exciting to talk about that I’ll be doing on this blog and my Instagram throughout August so stay tuned!

Books read

This month, I was participating in the extremely fun Pop Culture readathon! This was a readathon based on 90s movies, and I chose the Thrill Ride bingo board! I managed a couple of bingos this month! I am very ashamed that I didn’t get to the prompt for The Mummy, which was the film that made me choose this board in the first place! I have started The Bone Shard Daughter for this prompt, but I wasn’t able to finish it today!

The Space Between Worlds by Michaiah Johnson – review coming very soon (on pub day)!

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – you can read my review here!

The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke – review coming on pub day!

The Dark Tide by Alicia Jasinska – you can read my review here!

Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles – review coming next month on pub day!

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh – you can read my mini review here!

The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang – you can read my mini review here!

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge – you can read my mini review here!

The First Sister by Linden A Lewis – review coming very soon (on pub day)!

Slay by Brittney Morris – review to come

These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling – review to come

Books bought/borrowed/gifted/approved for

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson (a side note to say this is the book I’m most excited for in this month’s new books, it’s one of my most anticipated books of the year, and it sounds SO SCARY!!!)

Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

The First Sister by Linden A Lewis

The Midnight Bargain by C.L Polk

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe

August TBR

After a fairly strict set TBR in July for the Pop Culture readathon, I’m going to do the exact opposite in August and only mood read! I’m also trying to focus on books on my physical TBR, which are beginning to stack up, I need to stop distracting myself with more library books! Here’s a few of the books I’ve been wanting to read soon, but who knows, my mood might be totally different tomorrow, we’ll see at the end of the month if I do actually read them!

The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad

Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis

Cherry Beach by Laura McPhee-Browne

The Empire of Gold by S.A Chakraborty

The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling by Wai Chim

August SFF extravangza!

And with that, we’re onto my super exciting annoucement! If you’re a big reader of SFF, you may have seen the recent abuse allegations which revealed a horrific cycle of abuse in the community, with many of the abusers very powerful cishet men with large followings (and who probably provide the publishing industry with a hell of a lot of money).

Now, I’d already pretty much given up reading fantasy by cishet men (I just do not have time for the high level of sexual violence and utter lack of diversity in most of them). So I decided this month to create a series of posts all about the amazing, diverse books you could be reading and supporting instead of the same old fantasies by cishet (usually white) men with histories of abuse in the community. For the next 5 weeks, every Thursday, I will be posting a large list of diverse books you can support for 5 different segments of the SFF genre: adult fantasy, adult sci fi, horror (YA + adult combined), YA fantasy and YA sci-fi!

Alongside these posts, I’ll also be posting every day on my Instagram, featuring my favourite diverse books from each of the above segments – there will be one week’s worth of posts on each segment, matching the blog post for that week! I feel like I very much overcomplicated this explanation, but basically: if you would like to support marginalised authors doing their damn best to give us the most amazing diverse SFF, or would like some recommendations for great books in the genre, check out my blog and Instagram over the next 5 weeks, and you’ll hopefully come away with a ton of new books to read!

I hope everyone has a great August!