Bookstagram, a portmanteau of “book Instagram,” refers to a tightly-knit online sphere of avid readers and book influencers who share their ever-evolving ideas around new literary works.
Similar to years past, in 2024 bookstagram came with no shortage of releases that sparked strong opinions within the community. Among UNC students specifically, there were a few notable trends relating to books that were widely loved and acclaimed, along with ones that fell short of expectations.
UNC’s Difficult Women Book Club is a group of students on campus who read and analyze primarily female-authored novels. In terms of content diversity, Natalie Pena-Galvis, head of the DWBC, has seen a trend of messy female protagonists who do not always fit the stereotypical mold of who women should be.
“I feel like in literature and in the media in general, women are so very rarely offered space to just be a person, because people are not always perfect,” Pena-Galvis said.
An example of one of these books, which she cited as a favorite read this year, is “Violeta” by Isabel Allende, which the DWBC read during the fall semester. The story follows a Latin-American woman whose life spans 100 years, telling an account of the social strife that occurred in her home country, Chile.
Max Howell, a first-year newcomer to the club and a media and journalism major, also noted a large resurgence of romance and fiction books. Especially since the 2020 pandemic, they believe that a lot of people have chosen to spend time with the stories that make them feel hope as a way to temporarily block out aspects of reality.
“I think definitely people are more into more of an escapist reading experience, if that makes sense, I think that also may be why memoirs and essays are falling out. Because people don't want to read about all the bad stuff that's happening,” Howell said.
Although important strides have been made this year in uplifting diverse, real-life perspectives, there is still substantial progress to be made in telling more of these stories. Pena-Galvis said that she would like to see more stories centered around marginalized people where their identity is only a small part of their story, and not their whole character arc.
Deeya Majeed, a first-year biology major, is in the midst of building her own bookstagram page named @mediacriticdeeya. Her top reads of 2024 include “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, “And The Mountains Echoed” by Khaled Hosseini and “All the Lonely People” by Mike Gayle. Although she tends to lean toward realistic fiction, bookstagram has widely expanded the types of books she can access, be it comedic stories or more emotional novels.
