Booktube

Back in October I discovered something wonderful and addicting. I was looking for YouTube videos about NaNoWriMo, as that time of the year was approaching, and I stumbled upon Katytastic's YouTube channel. She talked a lot about NaNoWriMo, and about writing, but also a lot about books, and her videos were addicting and fun to watch. I'm pretty sure I have watched every single one she made. And I wanted more, so I took some key words and phrases, like 'book haul' and 'bookshelf tour' and 'reading tag', and I went looking for more.

And I discovered a fairly large community of readers who post videos about their reading and books and bookshelves and generally spread their love of books to other people through their upbeat videos. These people are not ashamed to say they bought a lot of books, not ashamed to show their craziness to the world. They obsess over how their books look on their shelves, obsess over books coming out soon, create reading challenges for each other, and most of all, they read. A lot.

Finding this online community was like finding where I belonged. There were more people like me who were unapologetic about how many books they bought and read, who were a little bit crazy and hyper about books and not afraid to show it. In my career field, these kinds of people are rare. You are more likely to find video gamers and Magic the Gathering players than readers, at least not at the same level I'm at. And not noly that, most of this community I've found read the same kind of books I do. The intelligent conversations about books I have been unconsciously craving for years had finally been found.

Here's a quick, basic list of some of my favorites:
Katytastic
Jesse the Reader
Poland Bananas Books
Ariel Bissett
Bookables
Little Book Owl
The Gwendolyn Reading Method
And many more. I think I'm following about 30 booktubers right now, and always on the lookout for more.

These people rekindled my desire to read like I used to. Like I've said before, the internet stole away most of my time after I discovered it, but now thanks to these awesome people I'm reading again, almost as voraciously as I did as a child and teenager.

And most of all, their influence makes me want to make booktube videos like they do. Even as I struggle with my self-image and my shyness, I want to join their video community so that I too can influence someone to read more, and so I can have a group of friends to talk to about the books I love.

So despite my misgivings about showing my face and crazy weird personality to the world, I'm going to be attempting this new, scary thing, with the hope that someday I can be the reason someone started reading again, or started reading more.

Have you ever done something scary because you thought it would help someone in the future? Tell me about it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!