The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.

Let’s start with some business:

Birthday + Data: If you haven’t completed our reader poll, and you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday, THIS IS THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT I WANT.  Yes, today is my birthday and I WANT YOUR DATA, PLEASE AND THANK YOU.  I’m even asking (mostly) nicely, unlike social media and your phone being sneaky with it.  The poll is still open for a few more days, and we’d love to hear from you!  If you’re reading this, your opinion matters!  If you love data, please give us some of that love for my birthday!  Thanks to our dear readers who’ve already completed it.

Virtual Book Club Part Trois is coming to a screen near you on Friday, August 7 at 7:30 p.m. CST.  We’ll be discussing The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray.  The Kindle edition of this title is still on sale for $2.99!  If you’re interested, registration is open here.  

And a new invitation: We are still working through, one day at a time, Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy and encourage others to join us.  Thanks to my friend who helps me find amazing titles by people who look differently than me (and an occasional thriller), I learned about ReadaBookwithKara, immediately signed up, purchased Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and sent Ashley the link.  To quote Kara’s recap: “because stories help you not be an asshole and it’s important to know what you’re talking about.”  If you too would like to Read a Book! With Kara, check out the details here, put the August 1 livestream discussion on your calendar, and then read some of Kara’s work here.   

Now, for your reading pleasure, here is what you can expect to see at Heart.Wants.Books this July as we continue to have a #lemonadesummer.

We’re changing things up, more than before.  Readers, we’re aware, thanks to some fabulous voices in our lives, that we tend to read books written by white women.  Because this is not news to us, we’ve been working to infuse different voices into our lives through the various media we consume (books, podcasts, and television/movies).  While we didn’t bring a diverse voice to the blog until May, we did try to shake up the genres a bit starting in March because we noticed, and that is the first step.  In case you missed our intro last month, we are both planners and don’t respond well to a fruit basket turnover, so we were baby stepping.  Then the world became such that the fruit basket turnover felt right, so we did it, and we struggled, and now we are more ready than before. 

In July, we are introducing a new reading and blogging goal: read and post about more diverse books.  Are going to fix all the diversity challenges of publishing?  Nope.  Are we going to make a conscious effort to increase the diversity of the books we read and of the books we bring you?  100%.  Now, let’s be clear what we mean by diversity.  We mean diverse authors, topics, and characters.  Are we going to miss this goal some months?  It’s likely.  We have some plans for themed months later in the year that may prove challenging for this goal (and yes, we’re already looking for such titles).  We’re not perfect, but we are working to be better.  That doesn’t mean our love of classic literature (typically written by white people) is going to fade, but it does mean we’re going to be looking for great books by authors who are Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) more purposefully than we have previously.  If you’re looking to add more diverse books to your reading life, check out Read Diverse Books.

~Nikki

Blah blah what is coming in July?  Right, so here goes.

July 9
The Address Book by Deirdre Mask
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

July 16
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

July 23
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

July 30
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

And for book clubs we’ll be reading (don’t worry, you’ll get posts about these in August):

August 1 –  ReadaBookwithKara
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

August 7 – Heart.Wants.Books VBC Part Trois
The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

Besides needing to wish my book buddy a very Happy Cake Day, I want to share with you some gifts from the Amazon gods in the form of digital books we’ve posted about and perchance some books you might be seeing in the future…(Prices are as of Sunday 5 July 2020)

• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin  for $2.99
• March by Geraldine Brooks for $1.99
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood for $2.99
• The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams for $1.99
• Meg and Jo by Virginia Kantra for $2.99
• The Wondering Years by Knox McCoy for $4.99
• The Betrothed by Kiera Cass for $3.99
• The Bride Test by Helen Hoang for $1.99

~Ashley