Whether you use our BINGO challenge or are looking for the right beach read, we always recommend reading widely and intentionally seeking out diverse voices. Jenny Colvin, one of our Outreach librarians, created a PRIDE version of the Summer BINGO challenge as one example:

Read a book… with pride themes…

B	I	N	G	O
Published the year you were born	Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison	The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune	Pet by Akwaeke Emezi	[At the same time as a friend]
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall	Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin	Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli	Hild by Nicola Griffith	[You started and never finished]
Black Wave by Michelle Tea	Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir	FREE SPACE	No One in the World by E. Lynn Harris	Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn
[Recommended to you]	The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld	Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis	Related to your major*	The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney
­­The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein	A Year in Arcadia by Augustus	Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman	The Price of Salt by [Patricia Highsmith]	Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

*Some recs for majors

Anthropology – Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers by Anne Balay
Biology – Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Business – Buying Gay by David Johnson
English – The Unpunished Vice by Edmund White
Health Science – So Lucky by Nicola Griffith
Japanese Studies – Memorial by Bryan Washington
Music – David Bowie Made Me Gay by Darryl W. Bullock
Politics and International Affairs –Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride
Public Health – Clinician’s Guide to Gender-Affirming Care by Sand C. Chang
Religion – Sinner in Mecca by Parvez Sharma
Spanish – Mean by Myriam Gurba
Theatre Arts – Looking for Lorraine by Imani Perry

Perhaps you are interested in other ways of diversifying your reading. Here are a few resources to help you along the way:

50 Must-Read Books by Women in Translation
Posted in 2018 for Women in Translation month, so it’s not going to have the most recent stuff, but it’s still solid!

50 Must-Read Short Books in Translation
A low-risk escape into a translated work!

100 Must-Read Novels About Religion
Maybe it’s time to read about someone else’s old time religion!

Anti-Racist Reading List from Ibram X. Kendi
This is a very recent list posted in May 2020 because of violent acts, and has been referred to often in the past year or so. All books are non-fiction – memoir, biography, social justice.

Books from the Border
There are a lot of lists out there of books to read “instead of American Dirt” but I picked this one because it’s from a Texas newspaper.

Over the Rainbow Booklists
The final bibliographies generated each year by the American Library Association’s Over the Rainbow committee include books that are by authors who are LGBTQ+ and whose book contents contain a significant focus on LGBTQ+ characters, issues, etc. This is all books for adults; if you are more of a YA (Young Adult) reader, check out the Rainbow Booklists.

We Need Diverse Books – Where to Find Diverse Books
Links to sites with links based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and more. Focus on younger readers but there is quite a bit for the rest of us too.

The Zora Canon
100 best books written by black female authors, 1850-present

And as always, let us know what you are reading! And check out our BINGO post for our challenge rules.