Top 10 Tuesday | Diverse British Fiction

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly book tag that was run by The Broke and the Bookish but has now moved to That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week she provides a different bookish theme those deep-seated desires to list! Anyone is welcome to join in on their blog, in the comments or any other way. 

– Top 10 Books Which Represent the Diversity of Britain –

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt was actually Books That Take Place in Another Country but I felt really moved to do something about my own country and its diversity. Part of this is motivated by a very long and enduring grudge that I have against the British film industry which continually perpetuates this idea of Britain as some kind of posh, white British utopia full of Keira Knightley’s and Benedict Cumberbatch’s. But my Britain is a lot less Pride and Prejudice and a lot more Kidadulthood. This is not to say that everywhere in Britain is like that, but I am from a world of estates, tracksuits and hanging around in the streets rather than big houses, tweed, and Oxbridge.

Book Review | Beyond: The Queer SFF Comic Anthology

TITLE: Beyond: The Queer Science Fiction & Fantasy Comic Anthology
AUTHOR: edited by Sfe R. Monster
SERIES: Beyond: Queer Anthology Series
RELEASED: September 2015; Beyond Press
GENRE: Science Fiction & Fantasy
FORMAT: e-Book

KEY INFO: comics, adorable fluff, queerness, family, acceptance, love and squish
REPRESENTATION: women of colour, f/f, interspecies families and romances, interracial families and romances, m/m, trans woman, polyamorous, people of colour, bisexual, trans masculine, gender fluidity, non-binary, Asian woman
CONTENT NOTICES: appropriation of two-spirit & Native American culture in ‘Twin Souled’

beyond press // goodreads

ARC Review: The Sum of Us |”We’re All Care Givers”

TITLE: The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound
AUTHOR: edited by Susan Forest & Lucas K. Law
SERIES: N/A
RELEASED: September 2017; Laksa Media Groups
GENRE: Speculative Fiction
FORMAT: e-Book

KEY INFO: disability and caregiver relationships, science fiction, diversity, anthology
REPRESENTATION: disabled, trans woman, people of colour, LGB, elderly, migrant, caregivers
CONTENT WARNINGS: grief, death, euthanasia, misgendering/misnaming of trans woman by father, chronic illness

amazon // book depository // goodreads

The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound edited by Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest starts with a fairly simple premise. We are all caregivers. Whether we’re parents, children, elderly or young, hospital staff, soldiers, siblings, personal assistants or even pets, we all care for someone in some capacity and are cared for by others.

Released on the 8th September 2017, The Sum of Us is a brilliant, dynamic and diverse speculative fiction anthology which brings caregivers to the front stage and allows us to not only experience the vast variety of voices, experiences and stories of carers but does so in such a way which encourages us to reimagine care work and caregivers. Who are caregivers? What does it mean to care? How gendered, age and species related is caregiving? How do we define quality of life? Who can care (robots, humans, animals, aliens)? Where does the caregiver end and the non-caregiver begin?