Twenty Things I've Read #5

My new (hopefully weekly!) links recap format continues! 

As mentioned in week 1, there are some sites which could quite conceivably fill this list between them EVERY WEEK as they constantly produce amazing posts - and I find it way too hard to single them out! So instead, I will just list them at the start of each post. If you're not reading the following, you are REALLY missing out.

Safe Space
Media Diversified
LGBTQ Reads
The Pool
Teen Vogue 

The Twenty:

Book Riot's Troy L Wiggins posted a fabulous list of black comic writers you should know a few months ago, I somehow only just saw it - so many amazing-looking books by people on this list!

The Daily Beast have a fantastic interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda!

I love this Booktrust list of books to encourage kindness, compassion and empathy.

I'm still reading, and loving, The Good Immigrant, the essay collection edited by Nikesh Shukla. There's a great piece about it on the Guardian website.

Speaking of Nikesh, he has a Twitter thread dedicated to spreading the word about opportunities for BAME people in publishing.

I'm excited to read Difficult Women, the new Roxane Gay short story collection, soon. There's a great interview with her over at The Rumpus.

Wonderful site Disability in Kid Lit is taking a well-deserved break soon. It's sad to see them go (I really hope it's only temporary) but they have done an amazing amount - don't miss their round-up of 2016.

Twitter has been AMAZING recently (I mean, there's also been a lot of awful stuff, but so many of the incredible people I follow have been sharing stunning threads.)

I loved this one from Chris Hadfield looking at the positives of 2016.

Following on from the excellent post last week about General Organa, @astridoverthere wrote a great Twitter essay about how much Princess Leia meant to her.

Speaking of Twitter, awesome piece from Anil Dash giving advice on how to fix the issues that DO exist there.

I think I want to start 2017 off with a rec thread, so gonna do this in the morning! pic.twitter.com/dIvmw3gjMn

— Jim (@Yayeahyeah) December 31, 2016

I posted the above tweet, expecting to get about 30 likes. Not only did I get over 100, but it also got picked up on by some of my favourite people on Twitter, who did INCREDIBLE threads of their own. I especially loved Dahlia Adler's and Ashley Blake's! (Click on my tweet to see mine, by the way.)

Other great threads of book recommendations included Ava Jae's, of books from trans authors, @dailyjulianne's favourites of 2016, and Samantha Randolph's diverse recommendations.



I'm currently reading Love Beyond Body, Space and Time: An LGBT and two-spirit sci-fi anthology, which is AMAZING. The main reason I bought it was because Deb Reese had recommended it; you should definitely check out her Storify of her tweets while reading the book.

Louise O'Neill is, as ever, wonderful here talking about social media.

Vox posted explaining about a book deal which has gone down badly with most people I follow on Twitter, and pointing out why boycotting the publisher may not be the best thing to do.

Over on Reader of Fictions, Christina posted a brilliant 2016 round-up.

And finally The Millions have an awesome preview of upcoming books in 2017.

News and Things:

After reading this thread from Mariam about the amount of UKYA from BAME authors in 2017 (it was a short thread as there's sadly nowhere near as much as I'd like to see being published) then it was brilliant to get great news on Wednesday morning as Stripes announced they'll be publishing A Change Is Gonna Come, featuring some brilliant authors! Check out The Bookseller piece on the book and if you're a BAME writer or aspiring editor there are great opportunities connected to the book, with an editor being able to shadow commissioning editor Ruth Bennett and unpublished and unagented authors being able to submit their stories for consideration for inclusion. For more details on both of those, check out the Stripes website.

My Posts:

I took part in the Perpetual Page-Turner's awesome End of Year Survey.

I debuted my Shorts on Sunday feature!

I posted about some of my favourite films in 2016.

For Top Ten Tuesday, I posted about 10 2017 debuts I'm excited for.

Wednesday was National Trivia Day, so I wrote a piece about My Life In Ten Pub Quizzes (And What I've Learned From Them)