If you are the type of person who spends the time you're not reading looking for more books to read (even though your to-be-read list or your "TBR" is already too long), then you need to be on BookTube. If you haven't discovered BookTube yet, where have you been?

BookTube is a community of content creators and consumers on YouTube, who share their reading with each other through monthly reading wrap-up videos, book reviews, and bookish tag videos ranging from children's to adult literature.

Every July the "BookTuber" Ariel Bisset hosts a readathon for people who are a part of this community in any capacity, and she calls it the BookTube-A-Thon. There are seven challenges that Bisset came up with this year for the readathon which lasted just one week from July eighteenth to the the twenty fourth, and readers were encouraged to fulfill as many or as few as they desired to. The goal was to encourage reading more than one would normally in the week.

These are the six books I was able to read for the BookTube-A-Thon:

1. "The Girl On The Train" by Paula Hawkins

This book fulfilled the "read and watch a book-to-movie adaptation" challenge, and to be totally fair this book hasn't yet been made into a movie yet, but I was almost done with it on the eighteenth so I thought I would add it to the list. I didn't really like it, and I think that's because there wasn't a character I could root for, and it wasn't quite suspenseful enough for a thriller, which made me just feel kind of sad reading it.

2. "M Train" by Patti Smith

This fulfilled the challenge to "read a book you discovered through YouTube." I enjoyed it at moments, and I really want to read her first memoir "Just Kids," but this wasn't my favorite book. This is Smith's second memoir and it mostly tells stories of her late husband and the memories she has of him, now that she is finished with that chapter of her life. I think it can be repetitive and melancholy which is, for me, something to read over a long course of time rather than in under four hours.

3. "Everything Is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer

This novel fulfills the challenge to "read a book with yellow on the cover." It was by far my favorite of the six, and will go on my shorter list of favorite books of all time. Foer is able to capture many generations of one family of Jewish people through the lenses of their youngest kin, who is also named Jonathan Safran Foer, but also through his non-Jewish, Ukranian tour guide Alex, and Alex's grandfather who doesn't speak English. It is unbelievable how this story goes from funny to devastating and back again so quickly, and often stands on the border of these things without ever feeling disrespectful. Indescribable.

4. "East Of West, Vol. 1: The Promise" by Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta, and Frank Martin

This is a graphic novel which is actually a bind-up of five issues of a comic book, and it has been on my shelf for over a year. I'm so glad I decided to read it for the "read a book only after sunset" challenge because I really enjoyed it and will be purchasing the next volume soon. A new take on the story of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, this perspective has Death himself as the protagonist. He has lost his focus on his namesake, and shifted it to his lost love, but that is only the tip of the iceberg with this story.

5. "Trillium" by Jeff Lemire

Jeff Lemire is the author of "Essex County," a Canadian graphic novel which I have always considered to be my favorite of all time. I decided to read "Trillium" for the "read a book by one of your favorite authors" challenge. Though I have read several other pieces by Lemire that were better than this one, I still enjoyed it. It's the story of two universes colliding and the two people who find love in the most unlikely circumstances. this book was touching and adventurous at the same time.

6. "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin

This was the last book that I read because I couldn't successfully finish all seven, although I have noticed that many BookTubers don't get through all of the challenges. This LGBTQ+ classic novel fulfills the challenge to "read a book that is older than you." It tells the story of two bisexual men living in Paris who find each other and decide to stay in a small room together for several months. I enjoyed it, and yet I still felt that Baldwin was afraid to get too detailed probably because of the time at which it was written, which was still a very homophobic 1950's America.