Go ahead and grab the June theme card to share it on your blog, on Twitter, Instagram, etc. We’d love to get the word out, so more people who’re interested in weekly rather than daily themes can join us.

Balance can mean a great many things. When it comes to the books I read, I like variety. While I do read a lot of young adult fiction, I also read general fiction, the occasional classic or play, as well as a myriad of non-fiction books. Balancing between entertainment and learning keeps things interesting and reading across genres ensures I don’t get bored by more of the same.

Diversity is so multi-faceted in what it asks of literature and yet it’s only in recent years that it’s been gaining more acceptance. Growing up, I didn’t come across any books featuring multi-racial characters. That lack of representation made people like me invisible to readers. Only in the mid-2000s did such books start to gain traction, alongside books dealing with mental health. Books with LGBTQ themes followed suit beginning 2010s.

It’s been raining incessantly over the past week, so the sun hasn’t been out all that much. On the upside, that means temperatures have been more moderate at 25 to 27°C. Thankfully, the sun still shines through the clouds every now and then, adding some much needed cheer.

In honour of Mother’s Day, this week’s book photo challenge theme is Mother’s Love. The first book that came to my mind as representative of this is The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton. It’s been more than a year since I read it but what has left an impression on is the focus on women from three generations — Ava, her mother and her grandmother. It traces Ava’s present day as well as the magical history that preceded her through her mother and her mother’s mother.