I think I’ve always been cognisant of the life learning available through reading. Reading books about people’s experiences of adversity and challenge can offer opportunity to understand hardship and to discover empathy and compassion. It allows the reader to take emotional risks without any actual risk.
Recently I’ve been reading quite a lot of historical fiction. I’m really loving this genre. It gives me a fact fix, but also allows for deeper understanding, through connection with characters and their stories. I have always loved to read history. With historical fiction I can delve deep into how it may have been to live through the period of history in which the book is set.
The other thing I can’t get enough of with the books I am currently reading and want to read…they are HERstory fiction , not HIStory. Events told from the point of view of the women who experienced them. Women’s perspectives which have previously been overlooked and deemed unimportant.
Recently I have read The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, and The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. I’m currently reading The Bookbinder of Jericho, also by Pip Williams. Many of the books are set during WWI and WWII.
These books give me the chance to try to understand my grandparents and great grandparents lives. The difficulties, but also the things they found joy in. It reveals what was unavailable and impossible, the things we now take for granted. Things like education and suffrage. In the case of Burial Rites, many women were in abject poverty and had no access to unbiased legal representation. Freedom from many situations is still a dream for some women, and even men, in some places.
I’m enjoying writing memoir, at the moment. But, I think I may delve into the world of HERstorical fiction, eventually. Now, to narrow down where, when, and who to write about.
Kylie Eklund-Denman 
I’ve always preferred reading books with a female protagonist. Usually this means a female author as well. There are of course some beautiful exceptions. But to hear the female voice in herstory connects you to the story on multiple levels that feeds the soul as well as the imagination.
Totally agree. Especially when they’re characters like Esme, Peggy, Elizabeth Zott, and Agnes. However, the lovely Marie-Laure, written by Anthony Doerr, is very lovely 🥰