I can’t believe the Sapphic Reading Challenge 2021 is over!
In this wrap-up post, I’m announcing the winners of the giveaway and sharing the stats for the reading challenge with you. I also put together a list of the top 5 most-read books for each category.
This is the very last post of the Sapphic Reading Challenge, and it’s another big one, featuring sapphic anthologies, short story collections, and novellas! I had so much fun this year discovering all these new books and authors, and I hope you did too! If you did, I hope you will join us for next year’s reading challenge, the Sapphic Book Bingo, which will start on January 1. To make sure you don’t miss it, please subscribe to my blog. For this last category, we are focusing on shorter works: An anthology is a collection of short stories from …
Can you believe it’s already time for the very last Book Unicorn post of the Sapphic Reading Challenge? This year sure flew by!
This last category features sapphic dystopian, post-apocalyptic, or apocalyptic books. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they are actually distinct subgenres.
In an apocalyptic book, a devastating disaster or war happens that makes society as we know it collapse.
Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in the aftermath of that disaster and focuses on the individual’s struggle to survive in a devastated world.
Dystopian fiction is set in a future society that is oppressive. It usually has a political element, e.g., the fight against a government that needs to be overthrown.
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a “forced proximity” theme.
The two main characters are forced to spend time together. It could be because they are stranded somewhere, snowed in, or stuck together for some other reason that forces them to spend time together, even though they are reluctant to do so.
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a main character who works in STEM.
STEM is an acronym that stands for any job in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. The character could be a software or web developer, statistician, chemist, physicist, biologist, astronomer, or healthcare professional, etc.
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a main character who isn’t Hollywood beautiful–they don’t fit the beauty standards that Hollywood imposes on women, where only characters who are thin, toned, young, and have perfect hair are portrayed as beautiful.
For this reading list, I’ve picked books with protagonists who don’t fit those standards. They might have love handles, like Denny, the main character in Wrong Number, Right Woman, or consider their nose to big, yet they will always be beautiful in the eyes of their love interest.
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books set in the 20th century.
We had an earlier post covering sapphic historical fiction, but this category is more specific: It includes only books that take place between the years 1901-2000.
In my recommended books list below, I picked one or several books set in each decade of the 20th century, starting with the 1900s and wrapping up with the 1990s.
For this month’s Book Unicorn category, read a book with a main character who’s a sapphic trans woman.
Generally, the term “trans” (short for “transgender”) can be used in two different ways:
Trans or transgender is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of gender identities. It includes everyone whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Many nonbinary people consider themselves trans since they don’t (exclusively) identify as male or female.
Trans or transgender can also be used for a more specific identity under that umbrella. Trans women are women who were assigned male at birth. They may or may not have surgery and/or take hormones to bring their bodies into alignment with their gender identity.
Since books about nonbinary characters were already covered in an earlier post, pick a book with a protagonist who fits the latter definition of trans for this category of the Sapphic Reading Challenge: a book featuring a trans woman.
While there are many books with trans supporting characters such as my novel Wrong Number, Right Woman, make sure you choose a book in which the trans character is the main character. Ideally, pick a book written by a trans woman.
It’s time for another special category of the Sapphic Reading Challenge. For this one, I’d like you to read a novel by an author who’s completely new to you. You might have come across their name several times or seen their books recommended, but it has to be an author from whom you’ve never read anything before.
Here are some tips on where to discover a new-to-you author!
This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books in which the main character is a business owner.
The character can be the CEO of a big, successful company, or she can own a small business without any employees.
The business she owns could be a major part of the plot, so we see the character at work a lot, or it can play only a minor role.