About the Author
About Zebra Reads
My name is Brandy. I am a 40-something, divorced mom of three amazingly beautiful children, and recently remarried to and old friend. We live in Southwest Michigan. I am actually a science teacher, but I have always loved to read. This page has been many years in coming and has evolved many times over. It is currently in a form that I believe is viable. It is a labor of love, and a way to have an outlet for a passion. I hope it can be interesting and useful for others as well.
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To be clear, I will not shy away from books or topics that are socially, culturally, or politically charged. I will always support the cause of equity across the boards, and I strongly support social reform. I do not tolerate bigotry. The one thing that I hope might come from this website is the reaching out to authors who work beyond our own limited worldviews. Perhaps through reading the stories of others, we can all work to understand them better and be kinder. And despite my efforts here, I think we will find that we are still reading lots of books by white males. I do not preclude those on this page because part of understanding is recognizing just how much power white males have in telling their stories. And many of those stories should be heard. But, we must also make time for other voices. I hope to be able to do that here. And we must start encouraging other voices to tell their own stories. They are also are worth hearing.
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I welcome comments on these pages. If you have read a book and you disagree with my assessment of it, please let us know. It is those differences that we share that might encourage someone else to read it as well.
There is a saying in the medical field: If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. It means that when someone presents with a particular symptom, always diagnose with the most common and logical choice (horses are more common than zebras). However, I think this statement can also apply to our reading habits.
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I am now, and have always been, a voracious reader. I often told myself (and other people) that I would read anything, anyone sat in front of me. By the time my children were starting to branch out in their reading, I was encouraging them to read everything. And I especially encouraged them to read books outside of our own white, middle class culture.
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Then it hit me (and it hit hard and fast, and it really hurt). Almost every book I read is written by a white male. Sometimes a female slips in. Once in awhile I'll grab a book written by a non-white author. I had gotten into a predictable pattern of reading. I stuck with my tried and true authors and my favorite genres. I judged every book by its cover and I read only the ones that "fit me." I was reading all of the horses, and ignoring the zebras. I realized that if I wanted my children to appreciate the immense amount of diversity in literature, I also needed to appreciate the immense amount of diversity in literature. Our literature contains so much more than horses. And so was born Zebra Reads. I decided that when I went into a bookstore or a library, I would find the end of the fiction stacks and pick a book from the next author in reverse alphabetical order. I started with Zola and have been working my way forward to the A's (I am only just getting to the Y's as of the beginning of this website, so I have a long way to go). I was going to read one book by every author I came to. No judging covers. No sticking to sub-genres. I also decided that every few visits I would pick out a book from a genre I would normally not read (Western, Romance, Biography).
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This blog is about that adventure. But, I also wanted it to be more. I want other people to read these books, too. Even if I didn't love one or the other, someone else will. So, each entry is about the book (no spoilers), both from my own sense of it, and a review that might let others know if they'd possibly want to pick it up as well.
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In the end, my goal is to encourage others to grab a book they might not normally read, to find new authors to love, and to expand our libraries so that they celebrate the diversity of our world.