Simone and Her Books

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Tag: amwriting

  • You don’t have to write diverse books

    The other night, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. She’s an aspiring writer and doing research on books where the story is written by an Asian author but doesn’t have Asian characters. We were meeting for drinks because it’s been a while and she mentioned wanting some recommendations. “I want to write a…

  • Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

    I honestly am so happy that a book like this exists. Shortly after being told I had OCD, I tried to search the book world for fiction stories featuring characters with similar traits. I was a little surprised to find out that the world’s exposure to OCD was only As Good As It Gets with…

  • Banned Books Week: Be Proud to be Banned

    Today, I’d like to highlight one of my favorite authors: Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison’s work to me has been these haunting tales of loneliness, sacrifice, desperation, and turmoil. Set during some of the most difficult times for black Americans, Toni Morrison has this incredible way of making you feel and understand what it must have…

  • Welcome to Banned Books Week!

    Happy Banned Books Week and it’s going to be a good one. This year’s theme is “the freedom to read,” which feels oddly relevant given that everyone has been talking about. Censorship is always around us telling us what to do and what to think and how to say things. It’s the faceless folks that…

  • You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan

    For my second YA novel of this month, I chose You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan. I picked this book up last year in hopes of learning more about sexual identity and preference. It was way before I started reading diverse books, but even then I was curious as to stories like…

  • Little and Lion by Brandy Colbert

    Imagine you’re in high school. Now imagine you’re in high school coming to terms with your sexual preference, your decisions for school, your religious identity. Now imagine that you have a brother who is bipolar and you love him to death and you want to make sure he’s okay. LITTLE AND LION by Brandy Colbert…

  • Eight celebrities who love to read

    I love it when I find out that a celebrity is a book reader. Something happens to me where I light up and almost feel closer to that person even though I’ve never met them in real life. I do hope that one day that I do, but for now I can only dream. Perhaps…

  • Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

    TRIGGER WARNING: This book contains themes related to childlessness and child loss. Please proceed with caution if you are sensitive to this type of material. This is most definitely the year of diverse reads. I’ve read so many great novels in the past eight months about other cultures, other people, other gender identities, and everything…

  • Things that Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini

    “California girls, we’re undeniable. Fun, fresh, fierce, we’ve got it on lock.” – Katy Perry When you think of California, you think of that easy breezy place where everyone surfs and eats vegan and worries more about how they’re composting than how people in the middle of the country are starving. However, California has its…

  • The importance of sharing diverse novels

    This world is huge. Massive. There are so many cultures of people represented on this speck in the sky and all of them have their traditions and heritages and lifestyle. They also struggle. They all struggle. And struggle for some reason brings us a host of stories. There’s this famous quote that writers all around…