วีดีโอ

I really enjoyed this but I wish you’d commented more on how gothic fiction was an offshoot of romanticism which was a reaction to the reason of the enlightenment era- hence its focus on individualism and subjective experience as well. This also lends to the mystery and supernatural elements of the gothic genre and really paints a strong picture of why gothic horror is like that.

Not sure if ur big on illustrations but there is this artist, François Baranger, that is slowly illustrating Lovecraft's work. As far as I know, he already did 3 books (The horror of Dunwich, The call of Ctulhu, and Mountain of Madness). I only need the Dunwich's book to finish the collection ;p

Loved your analysis and genuinely laughed out loud at your final points about Dorian. Kisses from Brazil xx

Never thought i'd see the day that reading basically became fast fashion.

calm down chica!!

Every type of content is over saturated,so I think we need more influencers like Luigi with his pewpew saying byebye to the CEO 🥰 those are the people we should be getting “influenced” by. class consciousness is what’s missing for the world to be better. We need to take care of EVERYONE.

Real. Crazy how mental health issues , depression and anxiety massively so, are on the rise when life is easier and more convenient than ever (in terms of advancement)... all the time we save in our day-to-day tasks with our advanced technology is instead spent living a super isolated, super stressful, and expensive life with super high screen times... everyone needs to stop but idk if it's possible especially post quarantine. culture has changed.

Finally, someone who has a genuine feeling of disgust on these low lvl human who treats reading as porn. You don't have any idea how many people on my country who buys in online auction losses their mind whenever the seller put a fucking spicy emoji on the book, it could be any random book and just put a spicy emoji on it and people will go wild just to get it, they look pathetic as fuck. I don't even want to be a part of any book community anymore because whenever I do, all they talk about is spicy stuff or new releases book with minimal to none depth on it, people bites it because of the theme that was advertised to them which usually are ROMANCE, FANTASY even LGBT that has the most wattpadish imagination written on the book and even looks like the author is reliving his teenage fantasy they had in highschool YES COLLEN HOOVER, I actually feel bad about mentioning her because I know that she truly just wants to be a writer but I can't believe that people ate whatever she cooked and think it was a fucking art (yes, I read 1 book of her and 2 chapters in, I put it down already and mind you this was the time when I wasn't even aware of her reputation online). She isn't a genius writer, she puts out junks and y'all low level minded ppl ate it then asked for more.

Another very insightful discussion. I don't think it's a peculiarity of free market capitalism which moves us into work. There has never been a strata of people, bibulous monarchs excepted, which has not had to earn their subsistence. Like you, I am appalled that our generation will be the first to be materially worse off than our parents, and hate everyone's apparent inability to have worthwhile conversations on this topic. But we do not need to anarchically dismantle capitalism to fix this, we just need to work on our methods of redistribution; levying taxes on the broadest financial shoulders. Thanks for contributing to the debate!

Need the list of book reviewers you follow ❤

This sounds so random, but you look like a mix of Ana Neu and Brielle writes...!!

I very much sympathize with your rant😊 I like to challenge myself and choose books from various domains. I enjoy nonfiction, I like memoirs, biographies, essays etc. So many readers are like guests at a party who choose to stay in a corner all night and not explore other rooms and talk to other guests. I also agree that reading too.much dark romance will warp your brain into thinking that this kind of sexual/romantic behavior is normal and to be expected. Maybe people think "it's just books, it's not real, so what's the problem?", but it can become a problem.

u dont have to be so angry sheeeesh

You're right that we celebrate Christmas far too early here in England, so much so that I begin to suffer from festive fatigue LONG before December 25! I really enjoyed this video. I think 'The Haunting of Hill House' might be a decent entry for me into the horror genre.

my mom gave me a popular booktok romance (maxton hall trilogy). I feel so bad because she really put a lot of love in the gift and was really happy but I mostly read brazilian classics so Idk what to do with all thoses books. I might read it just so she doesn't feel bad, but im really scared

My answer to "why do I always do this?" is "past me is a jerk and hellbent on my suffering". Also holy moly, the Divine Comedy is a bold choice. Good luck! My holiday book is The Left Hand of Darkness; I did read it once before, but so long ago that I've forgotten everything but the broad themes.

Following ALONE for your rant on how media affects us more than we think. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and ppl don't want to hear that. none of this abusive shit should be normalized.

oh I read this book a few years ago, I haven't stopped thinking about it since. if you want similar vibes I recommend samanta schweblin or mariana enriquez, two mazing argentinian authors

It’s not just books. Recently towns in my area received a letter about the water pipes, a new statewide regulation that explained issues about the water pipes and the next steps the cities were going to take. The number of people who started posting on Facebook asking questions and spreading misinformation about things that were very clearly addressed and answered in the letter was mindblowing. People clearly hadn’t taken the time to read the letter through once before going to Facebook, but they still got mad if you suggested the answers were all there in the letter…

Damn, the concept of mind normalising what you're reading is actually terrifying when you put it like you did. (I mean, I already knew of the concept, but somehow hearing your explanation was a big punch) I just found your channel, and now I'm wondering what are some books you would deem as worth reading to expand one's horizons. Can you maybe name some or redirect me to another video of yours if you've already talked about this? I have to admit I'm coming out of a period of reading more "light/fun" literature to help myself cope with stuff, so I'd appreciate some recs of more "deep" books now that I feel my brain is ready to deal with them. For example, I've been strongly recommended "I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman.

Your channel deserves to be huge!

I found your channel a while ago and, as a book lover, reader and amateur writer (fanfiction ahaha), I've been loving your content! I love literature but I feel like the romance genre, in books, nowadays, are plagued with porn. It's not even erotica anymore. It's just porn... I say all of this as someone who was once addicted to porn as a teen. It took me years to get over it and reading smut relentlessly makes you go to porn websites too often too.... I fear for this generation of readers. Sex TOTALLY has a place in literature but too much is always too much... It will rotten your brain instead of bettering it. So sad but I still like to keep my hope for the future ♡ Literature sets us free. Let books go back to being weapons to fight for good again! 🤍 Greetings from Brazil 🥰 PS: hablo un poquito de Español también. Gracias por tus palabras ❤️

i appreciate your opinion. the most frustrating part of booktok for me (i deleted the app bc it made me so mad) was that people truly believe that if it's not on their side of booktok then it's not a problem. these videos don't exist in a vacuum. just because it's not on your fyp doesn't mean it's not on millions of others. sure there are amazing books still being published, but due to booktok and the hype trains it creates some publishers are latching on to that as a money grab and are publishing lower and lower quality books. a lot of booktokers love these books because they think having to use their brain while reading makes the book inherently bad and that anyone who thinks critically is pretentious which is frightening. this will have consequences for years to come.

All i can say is...Mix It Up!! Geez, atleast try to expand your vision of the world and maybe throw some spice in it but too much spice ruins your palette.

Hey, just adding some perspective here. I like a variety of genres of literature, from the classics, all the way to... erotica. I have been a writer for a long time and I enjoy a bit of bad writing, as in, so bad it's funny. But there is that and then there is just bad writing that has the audacity of taking itself seriously. That's why I can't read some 'romance'/erotica in full. I am still interested in how the spicy stuff is written, because, let's be honest, it's the most interesting part of those books anyway, so why would I waste time reading badly crafted, uninspired passages that add absolutely nothing of value?

I love your rant haha and I agree! I was glad when I saw that GenZ reads books and it became a trend but atm I'm just sad bc what most popular bookmakers do is not really reading in its intended sense.

I usually don't write comments but I do agree with your statements. The only book I read that was from booktok was one that my friend raccomended. I absolutely hated it as the characters are so shallow and the end was written so poorly and didn't make any sense. I personally can't understand how these type of writers can write a 600 pages but the plot is only in a 100 pages. I might be wrong but most of the books from booktok are extremely long for no reason. 🙃 Anyway I told my friend my honest opinion about that book and I raccomended her some classics that she later read and loved. P.S.: I think that will be my first and last book from booktok I read. However anyone can read whenether they want as long they don't normalize abuse or objectification of women. [I apologize if there are some grammars mistakes but it's not my first language :⁠,⁠-⁠) ]

What pisses me off alot is that many of these authors who write dark "romance" use kink as an euphemism for straight up abuse. There's no cnc in books like Haunting Adeline, there's just s*xual assault. There's no real BDSM in Fifty Shades of Grey, it's just a toxic relationship and abuse. In my opinion this is dangerous. Because it will normalize and fetishize abusive behaviour and makes it easier for abusive people (mostly straight cis men tbh) to disguise and validate their predatory fantasies as "kink". This is a huge problem in the kink community, these people are a plague and they are very dangerous especially for vulnerable and unexperienced people within the community. And it makes me angry to think about that some books that have been made famous by booktok are a breeding ground for this shit and that they also could make victims believe that what happened to them was actually super "sexy" and "romantic". Makes me sick.. Look, I also like to read something erotic once in awhile, there's nothing wrong with being into porn or kinky stuff, but pleeeease make sure it's ethical and depicts consential interactions even in the "dark" section. It's not that hard, have some standards.

Just found you, watched this video. Thank you algorithm! 🙏 I read a lot all through my life, had stress and couldn't find the time, then I was interested in seasian authors, read quite mind-blowing books, searched for more, found "booktube", "bookstagram" and "booktok". I was flabbergasted... Couldn't believe what I saw. Then I found your video, thank you for saying what was storming around in my ming. Subscribed and hoping you will make many more! ♥️

Well I found a new channel I'm subscribing to!

Back when I was a kid, we used to read a lot of anthology of short stories of many genres in school, even stories that were more adult and that helped develop critical comprehension skills without the need to read full books. Also, short story anthologies might help people with short attention spans. I don't think people don't really like reading, I just think they are looking at the wrong format.

I don't read smut, never read a SJM book, but honestly, you guys need to chill down. I mean, this video had a lot of potential, why waste it by keep on telling something like: you can do what you want but just know that you're an idiot. Seriously guys, I wish I had this kind of confidence to consider myself above strangers on the internet and call them idiots. And please, can we stop calling porn addicts smut readers? I'm asexual, I don't give a fuck about sex (literally 👀) but even I know that porn addiction is not reading smut. First, it's a medical condition and then it has some very specific traits that make it an addiction ruining people's lives. Stop shouting professional terms around to gain consense. People saying books aren't political don't say it because they read smut or because they're idiots, they don't vote Trump because they read smut, they know perfectly what they are doing, they are putting their own needs and privileges before everything else, hence the "books are not political" speech, they know books are political, they know it very well, they just don't care because they don't need to care. I've seen lots of smut readers talk about Palestine and social issues, so stop blaming them for everything that's wrong in the world. Maybe, people are getting illiterate because education is less and less founded? Maybe because the gap of quality between private and public schools is increasing and not because teenagers read smut? Maybe, and I say maybe, Harris lost because her and Biden ignored and actually funded and allowed a gen0c|de? But no, clearly it's smut readers, heck, I say even global warming it's their fault, I'm an aerospace engineer so clearly I'm smarter than them cause I read very difficult books so 👀👀 (I'm ironic, of course) (Sorry if I made some mistakes, english is not my first language)

I completely sympathise with your opinion on literacy rates and critical thinking declining. A friend of mine straight up refused to read Lolita and condemned everyone who read it - I asked her why and it turned out she believed the book was pro-pedophilia? It would have been so easy for her to look it up or do her own research and she just never bothered to. I don't mind if people want to read porn, but I at least wish they would be more honest about it, rather than mincing around the edges and pretending that the books they're reading are in fact challenging and thought provoking. My previously mentioned friend has finally admitted she reads Sarah J. Maas as an aphrodisiac, but I've met plenty of people who genuinely think that ACOTAR is the best thing ever written. I don't like to yuck someone else yum, but if you haven't read very widely then you don't really have any kind of metric to judge things like that. This inability to engage with anything that is unlike the stuff in your personal bubble really does lead to people being unaware of how the real world operates and making criminally underinformed decisions, especially if those decisions have consequences, like in an election. A couple of months ago an article in The Atlantic revealed that university professors are shocked by how many literature students are unable to read a book from cover to cover - as in physically incapable of keeping up with the course because either they've never read a whole book before or they only read YA and never try to challenge themselves. The problem has gotten so bad that professors are literally having to change their syllabuses in order to account for it (if you haven't read it, it was an interesting article and might make for a good video topic, it's called "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books"). Attention spans were bad before the rise of social media, but I don't really know what we're supposed to do about it now, anymore then I'd know how to stop something from hitting the ground after it's already been thrown out of an aeroplane.

thank you for making me laugh and also just stating the facts instead of dancing around the point, i am sick of the “well reading anything is better than not reading” bullshit, like why are people encouraging thoughtless consumption?

The title and the first sentence was enough for a like :) I am currently rereading the three-body problem and it's still as good as it was the first time round (just way less difficult, since my English has also vastly improved).

i saw Fourth Wing recommended everywhere, and curiosity got the better of me. damn i was naive! i was NOT prepared for that. i’m usually a classic/literary fiction reader, and this atrocity made me lose faith in contemporary literature (the ones that go viral on a TikTok mostly). we’re doomed.

Hi again! Just wanted to say, that I love your video essays on all things book community related.

I mean, spice has its place, but it does not need to be in every book. Some people may want to read books with little to no spice, but as they say: "sex sells" (there is a reason prostitution is called the oldest profession in the world). But I can see how it can aeem concerning, especially in books that are marketed towards young adults (which is an actual category for the ages 13-16).

Honestly this whole craze over smut has had me cringing, not kinkshaming I just want the story to have more substance and the writing to be better

I don't know what booktok has to do with this. It's obvious that the lowest common denominator has shit taste. It was always like this. Like since literacy became common, popular novels was stuff like pulp and harlequins. School doesn't magically turn average or below average people into intellectuals. Reading/watching porn isn't the same as porn addiction. Obviously buying whole books for sex scenes is silly, but that's what happens when people don't know about short stories. Trump winning is caused by Democratic party forgetting that president is supposed to be a leader after Barrack Obama ran out of office terms and pushing uncharismatic bureaucrats like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris as candidates. A presidential candidate needs charisma to capture uninformed voters. Trump has charisma so he won.

The words "morally grey" completely lost their meaning, at least it feels like it. A morally grey character is one with complex morals, inner conflicts about these morals and also, a moral compass that is not completely good. An asshole is just an asshole, but apparently that distinction is lost. Also, often it feels like the main character is supposed to be morally pure, which makes them very bland. Moral questions are actually interesting, but people don't seem to get that. (yes, I am intentionally splitting my comments, since that gets you more engagement)

The tropification of books is also a problem. It reduces a book to tropes and thus, reduces the importance of characters, character development and the plot (and therefore, the quality), which makes such books often very similar to each other. That in turn gives the impression that all these books are the same and very trashy (correct). I also thinks that that makes readers less able to think critically about a book and therefore, less literate. Because if you read the same four tropes in ten different versions, that does nothing for your literacy. Tropes also say nothing about the plot, which makes it kinda harder to actually find books with good plots, especially in fantasy, since they are getting constantly marketed with the tropes in focus.

Yes, I absolutely agree with everything you said! Like, it's fine if you want to read "trashy" books, sometimes that's what you need, but then saying that these books are soooo deep etc., that's just not the case. Critical thinking and literacy are essential for life and that includes being able to recognize that some books are not that deep. Which is not a bad thing, but saying they are when tey are clearly not...... And yes, everyone has a different interpretation of a text (also completely valid), but there are books that are subjectively not deep. (sorry for rambling, but I have a lot of feelings about that)

12:53 - can't believe I'm defending smut, but I'd rather people read it than watched porn. At least this way you can be sure no one real is getting abused (except your poor brain, but oh well).

i dont typically comment on videos but it seems like you have a lot of feelings about this, which i totally understand. im not into booktok, but have known some people who are. this is just anecdotal experiences, but friends that ive had that are into booktok are also.... really shallow people. they tend to prefer looks and appearances over authenticity and depth. I think this is reflected in the types of books that are popular on booktok- they are shallow and really misrepresent/fetishize topics that deserve to be treated properly (like the normalization you talked about). from the people that i have interacted with, those on booktok (or other similar online reading spaces) tend to like the appearance of reading books/being intellectual, but often don't really process/deeply reflect on the things they are reading about.

everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including you, so whatever. it's just quite ironic to go on a public platform naming many people 'illiterate' for reading what you consider 'trash' and 'ban-worthy' and make grammatical mistakes at the same time, lol. and no, we don't have to be accurate in a foreign language 100% of the time, coming from a non-native of English myself. it's the fact that you are ready to trash people for their taste and guilty pleasures while not speaking immaculate English yourself at the same time. do you see the contradiction here? you set high standards for others, then set the same ones for yourself?

15:08 Hi from españita!!

all books and fiction are political, regardless of the authors' stated intent.

this is what happens when girlies skip their ao3 smut phase. srly though, a friend of mine recommend booktok because she thought I'll like it, only for me to find puddle depth analysis and recommendations on the get go. glad it wasnt just me being overly critical

Brutally honest, but soooo true.