Meet The Book Blogger!

Salaam and hello everyone! My name is Siraj Bajwa, and I’m so excited to be starting my own blog! I am a Pakistan-American Muslim teen who loves reading, but especially diverse books by people of color and Muslims! I believe that feeling represented in a book is a truly magical feeling that everyone needs to experience, as it can be so empowering. One of my main objectives with this blog is to promote and uplift authors of colors and Muslims, and their books!

Some of my favorite books include “Love From A to Z” by S.K. Ali(okay actually it’s like my favorite book ever and she’s my favorite author), “We Hunt The Flame” by Hafsah Faizal, the “An Ember In The Ashes” series by Sabaa Tahir, “The Thief Lord” by Cornelia Funke, the “Wings of Fire” middle-grade series by Tui T. Sutherland(if you’ve never read one of the WoF books, please check out “Darkstalker”, a book that will ruin you), “The Poppy War” by R.F. Kuang, “Pride and Prejudice” and its Muslim retelling “Ayesha At Last” by Uzma Jalaluddin, “Fahrenheit 451”, and “Every Soul A Star” by Wendy Mass. So ya, I love YA fantasy and contemporaries(romance especially).

Besides books, I really love animated TV shows and movies. Some of my favorites include “Avatar(Korra & Airbender)”, “Gravity Falls”, “Tangled(the series included)”, “Your Name”, “A Silent Voice”, “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood”, “Anohana”, and ‘Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse”. I also really love “Star Wars”, well, sometimes. My favorite Star Wars content includes the Rebels TV show and “The Last Jedi”.

My favorite characters are soft, kind boys who cry when they need to and strong girls who can be super powerful and super nice at the same time!

I write stories that I want to read and that I wish existed already. I can’t wait to share them with you all when they’re ready. For now, I’ll just say we got some YA contemporary romance, a YA fantasy, and a short story. I’m super bad at being motivated, so it might be a while before any of them are finished hehe.

I have a Bookstagram account where I have smaller reviews for books accompanied by aesthetics! You can find me at @bajwasiraj . My Twitter account is @Sajybakka , but that’s more of me ranting about books and other stuff. My Goodreads link should be in the blog’s header.

I also like to research and write about issues and injustices going on that I don’t see much conversation happening about, which is why I made a News page for my blog. I probably won’t write in this page regularly, but rather whenever I think I need to.

You may be wondering why my blog is called “Book Bear Bajwa Reviews”. It’s actually because I’ve seen a ton of people call themselves “book dragons”, but I felt like that term didn’t apply to me even though I did love reading. “Book bear” gave me a softer, more cozy vibe that reflected me much better!

I’m hoping for my blog to be a fun place for people to read reviews and discussions about books, as well as a platform for uplifting marginalized voices! I’d really appreciate if you followed my blog. Thank you for reading!