#ReadWomenMonth 2017

So a few days ago I stumbled across the greatest idea on Twitter – Stasia of Stasia Likes Cakes has designated June as Read Women Month, complete with corresponding instagram challenge. And I am totally all about this.

One of my big goals for June is to just read. A lot. I’ve spent the last few months kind of falling back in love with fiction, and it’s reminded me how much I miss reading for fun. When I was a kid I used to go through like, three books a week every week. And then somewhere along the way as I switched to History all my reading became work-related. Which is still fun… but not quite the same kind of fun. I found myself not really reading for shits and giggles in my free time anymore. I still read a TON, but it’s rare that I just sit down and enjoy a book, from start to finish, without feeling compelled to take notes and to break out my trusty highlighter and underlining pen, or jumping from chapter to chapter, book to book, essentially turning it into research project instead of just reading (which is why I don’t log a lot of that stuff in my Goodreads account).

And so this June I’ve decided to take a bit of a break, and just read. Read fiction, read for fun, and leave the underlining pencil at home (as much as I can bring myself to, anyway). And what better way to do that than to spend some time making some conscious decisions to highlight and celebrate female writers?

So here’s the plan. I’m currently in the middle of a pretty dense book looking at the decision to attack Pearl Harbor from the Japanese side by a female historian (Japan 1941 by Eri Hotta). I’m gonna finish that up, and count it as my first book of the month before moving on to focus on fiction. Once that’s done I’ll be finishing up the Throne of Glass series (reviews are pending!) and then we’ll see where the wind takes us from there!

I don’t think I’ve ever consciously thought about the authors of the books I read in terms of gender, and so making the conscious decision to read only female authors for the month is going to be an interesting exercise in awareness for me.

Are you participating in #ReadWomenMonth? What’s on your TBR list?

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