Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish that other bloggers are welcome to join in, to create Top Ten lists on varying topics. This week it’s Ten Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters (example: features minority/religious minority, socioeconomic diversity, disabled MC, neurotypical character, LGBTQ etc etc.)

Paein

 

1 Lover at Last

by J.R. Ward

I could have filled this list with ‘gay romance’ but I didn’t want to, that’s not very diverse! I love reading about people and how relationships form and this is a pretty good one. Their story doesn’t start in this book (indeed this is number 11 in the series) and as you can probably tell by the title, if you didn’t already know, it takes them some time to get to where they are. I really want to read the next one in the series to see how they’re getting on. This was a last addition to the list, I have to be honest, originally I had  The Darkest Part Of The Forest by Holly Black in this spot, which is terribly cute, but I mention that all the time so I brought this one back on the scene.

2 Boy meets Boy

by David Levithan

This one is different than the one above because it falls into LGBTQ, pretty much covering it all and featuring the LGBTQ community too. It contains my first Transgender character and I loved her. Another contender for this spot was ASH by malinda lo, a Cinderella story where she fell in love with the princess, because apparently lesbian is different to gay, it can’t just be labeled love.

3 The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

Set in the 1960′s in America with a title like this, this book can only be about racism (which I think is an incorrect term considering we’re all the human race and it should therefore be called Characteristicism, but I digress…). I’m intolerant of intolerance, which means I don’t tend to read books like this too often. I forget why I read this, possibly because it was being turned into a film, possibly because I wanted to know more about the subject, possibly because I wanted to say that I had, but to be honest, I can’t even remember it’s my workplace that we’re packing up NOT home and that this means the pizza cutter is not in a box…Let alone why I chose to read a book 4 years ago (and I didn’t review it so that gives me no clue) But I seemed to have liked it, so that’s all that matters.

4 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

I found it hard to find a book I’d read that would fit into this category. The MC is a young man with high functioning autism, or Aspergers and it’s written in first person which is something I have no experience of and therefore I was able to enjoy it. I deal with ASD daily and I’ve struggled to read fictional books with autistic people in because of assumptions made by the author or the MC or because of things that have been miss-represented (‘cures’ for example, but that’s a whole rant in and of itself). I’m by no means an expert, but observing it every day and having some very insightful training makes me want people to understand properly.

5 The Will of The Empress 

By Tamora Pierce

I’ve chosen this as my last book because the Emelan world is pretty diverse, but only slightly more so than the Tortall world, (that certainly has more cultures and skintones the further you get into the storyline and in it’s novellas). But not only do Tamora’s books cover the minority groupings of religion and skintone (as well as same sex couples), but they also include red-heads and curly haired individuals! You may not think this a diverse grouping, but as a girl with curls, I’m yet to read a book with a curly girl properly represented. Often their hair is frizzy and horrible and they hate it, to be pretty it must be straight. OR, almost worse, they comb their hair/it’s ‘brushed into shining waves’. If you brush hair with any kind of texture, waves, curls, coils, you’ll resemble a tumbleweed. Just. Don’t. Do. It.
(another minority group are those MC’s, mostly girls, who are comfortable with themselves.) More curly girls please, book world.

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Ms4Tune

  

6 Me Before You

by Jojo Moyes

I’ve only recently read this and totally loved it. I don’t think I have had so many emotions, while reading a book! The whole story revolves around Will Traynor, a quadriplegic who has to rely on everyone else to do the everyday things that we probably take too much for granted. I can’t promise that you won’t cry while reading this but I would say this is definitely one of my favourite Jojo Moyes books.

7 Girl at Midnight

by Melissa Grey

The Girl at Midnight had some amazingly unique fantasy creatures which could count as a diverse aspect in itself but I have chosen this book because of the really cute gay romance between Dorian and Jasper. Jasper is a very confident and obviously gay Avicen but Dorian is still ‘in the closet’. It was obvious he was gay because he had intense feelings for Caius and was trying to hide it but Jasper wouldn’t let Dorian hide. He kept trying to draw him in. I can’t wait to see what will happen next between them.

8 Nina Won’t Tell

by Katherine Applegate

Making out has Ben a Blind-from-birth character. Nina Won’t Tell is the third book in the Making Out series, and I chose this one specifically because its the best and concentrates a lot on Ben.  I read this when I was a tiny teen but it’s stuck with me. Nina was the little sister of Claire. Claire had loads of issues and so was constantly the center of attention but Nina had hidden secrets that were so much darker and deserved so much more attention than Claire’s stupid self-centered problems. In comes Ben. Ben is blind and used to date Claire. He’s always loved Claire but Claire only really cares about herself so when he’s heartbroken he starts to talk to Nina. Ben finds out all of Nina’s secrets and falls for her and wants to look after her.

9 V is for Virgin

by Kelly Oram

I hope this one counts. I chose it because Val Jensen has chosen to stay a Virgin till she is married. I really enjoyed this book. I loved that she stuck to her puritan beliefs even with everyone laughing at her and making her a youtube sensation out of spite.

10 The Farm

by Emily McKay

The Farm was a really interesting paranormal dystopian. Lily and Mel are captives in one of the Vampire Farms. Lily always looks after Mel because Mel is Autistic, or this is what we are led to believe anyway. I have my doubts just because I didn’t think it was the best representation of Autism. There were inconsistencies and oddities that didn’t really fit but perhaps Mel was more gifted than autistic. I need to read book two to find out. It was a good story though, full of tension.

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