In case you're not caught-up on all the goings-on of the bookish online community, let me briefly summarise:
- Some people questioned authors about the lack of diversity in their books (no matter you're opinion on this, those people had the right to ask the questions.) This resulted in trolling.
- There was a video on BookTube (the bookish portion of YouTube,) by a horrible person who sees diversity as a dirty word, and is generally a bigoted jerk. She then took offence when it turned out a lot of people didn't agree with her.
- White supremacist & Nazi trolls decided to spread their racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, etc. hatred by trolling members of the online bookish community. Most of these people were also Trump supporters.
- A US library magazine called VOYA showed some of the worst customer service you can imagine in their response to criticism of their apparently bi-phobic reviewing.
...I think that covers most of it. It was an... interesting month.
But we, as a community, are pulling through this... I hope.
As far as my blogging stats go this month, things have been good :)
I discovered an acronym for my blog which had been staring me in the face the whole time - DORA. Which I will now be using when Diary of a Reading Addict is too long-winded.
I passed 30k page-views for the first time (!!!!) and now see between 100 and 300 page-views on a typical day :)
I also noticed something in terms of my Twitter followers, which kind of upset me.
Whenever I tweet about anything to do with LGBTQ+ issues, I lose 2-3 followers; that's per tweet where I mention queer issues, characters, books, etc.
At first I thought it was just coincidence - but after that it became too regular, and I couldn't believe it was coincidence any more.
It's not like I tweet about LGBTQ+ an excessively large amount... is it? I don't think I do.
Anyway, I figure I'm better off without followers like that. As upsetting as that is.
But I just want to thank all the people who do read this blog, like and RT my tweets, comment on my posts, and continue to follow me.
I love you. Each of you is worth 1000 of those homophobic a*sholes.
In a month of trolls, bigotry, and bad news, there were two high-points - my birthday, and you guys.
So, to the books I reviewed this month:
Young Adult
As I Descended by Robin Talley - Ghost story, Horror, LGBTQ+
Adult
The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer - Contemporary
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Classics, Crime
Comics
The Sun Dragon's Song #1 - Kids, Fantasy