When someone goes to YouTube, there's an overwhelming amount of content to watch. From documentaries, to how to videos, skits from Saturday Night Live and funny cat videos. While I do watch funny videos and am also subscribed to vlogbrothers channel, there's one particular community of Youtubers I find myself visiting more than any other: Booktubers.

Booktube is a community of Youtubers whose channels are dedicated to books. Their videos consist of book reviews (spoiler and non-spoiler reviews), book hauls (showing off books they recently bought), book tags and many other kinds of videos. It's a place where people make content to express their passion for books.

I first discovered Booktube back in 2014, near the end of my sophomore year of high school. At this point, I had been an avid reader for about five years. I was never teased or bullied for liking books, in fact, a good number of my peers praised my ability to read so many books in a single month, even week when most of them hadn't picked up a book for pleasure in years. I was also lucky to have a few friends who also loved some of the same books as me.Yet, since it was just the few of us in our little bubble, it felt like it was just us against the world full of people who either thought reading was lame or couldn't be bothered to even open a book.

Then one day, when I was on YouTube, I stumbled upon a channel called 'polandbannanasbooks'. I clicked on this particular video because the girl in the thumbnail (Christine) was wearing a t-shirt that referenced a book series I love. The video was titled "Book Buyer Rant." In the video, Christine talked about some frustrations she has with Barnes and Noble, like how half the time you go you never find the book you came for. She also featured two books, Beautiful Chaos and Insurgent, books that I had read. I couldn't believe it, not only was she talking about similar frustrations I felt when book shopping, she featured books part of two series I had read, but none of my friends had.

Later that night, I binged watched almost all of Christine's videos. I watched her give reviews of some books I had read, I watched her book haul videos, and her bookshelf tour. I saw books I had read, books I had heard of but hadn't read, and even books I had never heard of.

It didn't take me long to discover there were other people on YouTube, besides Christine, who posted book related content. Christine had met up with some of her BookTube friends, Ariel Bisset, Katytastic, Jessethereader and Elizziebooks, and they filmed a bookshelf scavenger hunt together at Christine's house.

Suddenly, it wasn't just one YouTuber who shared my passion, there was a whole community. I soon discovered seemingly endless other amazing BookTube channels: A Clockwork Reader, PeruseProject, Peter Likes Books and paperbackdreams, just to name a few.

BookTube is also responsible for my never ending to be read pile. I've discovered books I love, hated, laughed at, cried. If I never discovered BookTube, I wouldn't have watched Ariel's video where she talks about Radio Silence, I might not have picked it up. Now Radio Silence is one of my all time favorite books I can't imagine not having in my life.

BookTube is amazing and I'm so glad I stumbled upon Christine's book buying rant video. Whenever I feel down, watching BookTube videos always helped because I got to watch someone be passionate about books.