As technology and the Internet become more and more prevalent in our lives, there is a drastic drop in generational desires to read. As it is, a lot of people don’t even purchase physical books anymore; they rely on devices like Kindles and Nooks, flipping pages with swiping fingers rather than feeling the sheets of paper as they flick their wrists to turn them. For most, there isn’t a love of “new book smell."
So many millennials hate to read. They would rather skim SparkNotes or beg each other for potential quiz answers rather than take the time to read their assigned readings. They have a hard time suffering through long articles, getting bored and skimming through the bulk of the text that is only hundreds of words long, never mind hundreds of pages.
On YouTube, though, there is a community that is doing what it can to change that: BookTube. YouTubers like polandbananasBOOKS (Christine Riccio), Tashapolis (Natasha Polis), Katytastic (Kat O’Keeffe), and jessethereader (Jesse George) are only some of the community members. The BookTube community strays beyond the YouTube platform with iterations like Bookstagram and GoodReads, but on YouTube is definitely where this community calls home.
With countless BookTubers in this community, the videos posted are varied. There are different focuses within literature, though a lot of them are related to YA fiction. There are collaborations, tags that get circulated, games played, reviews, book hauls and book swag…. This community has so much, and in that variety, it is easy for anyone who stumbles upon this community in the black hole that is YouTube to find their niche.
With such variety and so much content, there is so much discussion. People searching for summaries of books can easily stumble upon a BookTube video. Watching it, the viewer may become aware of a theme that they missed, or an idea they never thought of. This is how books linger in our memory: through thought and association. These videos help to give an appreciation for reading as well as for literature in general. They encourage conversation as well as thinking beyond the words themselves to question overall meaning. They encourage healthy reading habits as well as a desire to read in order to further discuss with this welcoming community.
There are even events within the BookTube community that are meant to embrace the members that are not YouTubers or content creators themselves. BookTubers attend events like VidCon, YallFest, and BookCon, where fans can meet them and they can further bond over books. PolandbananasBOOKS, Katytastic and jessethereader run BookSplosion, choosing a book to read each month and then having an interactive live stream for anyone who read the book at the end of the month. It’s essentially an online book club, able to connect readers from all sorts of places and walks of life with a particular book being their connection to one another.
In an age where reading is seen as a chore rather than something to do for enjoyment, it is so important for the world of literature to have books and writing integrated into the ever-expanding world of the internet and of technology. This connection keeps supports the old tradition and keeps it alive as millenials break the connection with the world of their parents and embark on their own adventures into what the future will hold and how past traditions will play into the lives of the generation that follows them, that they raise. Communities like BookTube and its counterparts are giving literature a chance, when so few people are willing to, and that is what reading needs to stay alive.
