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Booktube Made Me Broke

If you are a reader, it is inevitable, at some point, to not want to be one. To want to throw that book, that is in your hands, right across the room because you are now physically incapable of sitting with it. To be swallowed up by a bout of sudden accidie at the thought of having to roll your eyes up and down a page and do a mental juggling of sorts with your comprehension. Other readers, if they are sympathetic to you, will tell you that this is a phase and will go away, but will offer little advice as to how. If they are not sympathetic to you (and if actually, they hate you), they will steer you towards Booktube.

“Reading slump”, type in these two words or anything close to getting rid of it in the YouTube search bar and you’ll be blasted with hundreds of videos. Videos telling you about the “10 best books to get out of a reading slump” or “50 best books to beat a reading slump”. Videos that will tell you that to read again, you need to buy books again. Videos that will make you want to pick up that book you threw across the room and tear it to shreds.

Booktube (I don’t think I need to define that term) is where I get my reading lists (or TBRs). It is the place that introduced me to some of the best literature. Never otherwise would I’ve felt compelled enough to pick up the Bell Jar or the Christmas Carol. Who even was Joan Didion?  Booktube is also the place I think of when I am broke before the end of the month.

Speaking of reading slumps, of all the achievements of Booktube (if there are any), curing my reading slump isn’t one of them. It can’t be when the best book to read is not the one I have but the one I am about to buy. There’s always bigger fish to fry and a better book to read. It’s just never this one.

After consuming Booktube for years now, I’ve realised that there are rules. Rules which are unspoken but dictate themselves with great command.

You are to always buy the books. Booktubers (the biggest names included) would know every bookstore in their city but seem to be oblivious to the idea of library subscriptions and the concept of borrowing in general.

In terms of ambition, you are to compete with the Library of Congress.

Just this year Booktok was abuzz about men pretending to read in public. Now you need to understand that performative reading is a complete anathema to the online book community. What however is acceptable, is to log every book on Goodreads (or Storygraph, your choice) and to not settle for less than a hundred books a year.

Entropy is the law of the universe and it sure did happen to my reading. It degenerated from me reading (and enjoying) Normal People, to adding Conversations with Friends and Mr Salary by Sally Rooney to the Amazon cart. I organise Amazon wish lists now (I have three of them, each with more than ten books). I still organise my bookshelf, but only to end up piling it with more books that I buy.

Of course, a point can be made about the benefits of Booktube and Booktok. They have increased representation not only for marginalised authors and translators but also for the oft-overlooked regions of the world. They fuel the publishing industry, making sure that the printed book remains intact as a commodity, and that is exactly my point—books have always been a commodity, Booktube (and Booktok) has made people not read them, but consume them.

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“You deserve to be happy. You deserve to live a life you are excited about. Don’t let others make you forget that.”

— EXTRAMADNESS.COM

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“Just breathe. You are strong enough to handle your challenges, wise enough to find a solution to your problems, and capable enough to do whatever needs to be done.”

— Lori Deschene

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http://bit.ly/2M2ScPw

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When looking at the picture of a place, don’t you feel like going there, especially into the houses and into the streets and notice how people of a different country live.

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I whole heartedly agree

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You must go on adventures to find out where you really belong.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

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Givers need to set limits because takers seldom do.

Irma Kurtz (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

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I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.

Rita Mae Brown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

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If this help you pass it on!

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I wish this all comes true

Imagine

Imagine when we are old and no one has to come out as gay like being gay would be like being straight. No coming out of the closet and all.

And we’ll be telling our kids, “back in our days, we had to come out and deal with this whole bunch of bullshit, your lives are so easy” smh.

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The first time I met my boyfriend’s grandparents, I was terrified. First, I really wanted them to like me, and second, he told me they were pretty religious. They’re Roman Catholic, but I’m Jewish, and I didn’t get the impression from the rest of his family that that would upset them, but I wasn’t sure they’d be chill with us dating, and I’m always afraid of those unconscious, anti-semitic micro-aggressions. 

Sure enough, within an hour of meeting me they asked if I was religious, in a way that was obviously asking if I had a religion, and which one it was. I calmly told them I was Jewish, and my boyfriend’s grandmother lit up. Her mother was a Syrian who moved to Brooklyn in the early 1900′s and she grew up in a Syrian and Jewish community in Brooklyn and boy wasn’t it nice to have someone around who could help her with her Jewish pastry. It was really pleasant. His grandfather was mostly quiet. 

After lunch, he and I shared a cup of coffee and some cookies and I told him about my brothers. He asked if my mom was ok with me dating a gentile. And then he looked around, saw we were alone for a sec, and asked me to follow him out to the garage. In the garage he asked me to take an old picnic basket down from off a cabinet. And then he told me to open it. The moment the lid came off I knew. I knew that shade of red. He told me to take it out and lay it across the floor. It was a Nazi flag. Not just a Nazi flag, but one that was big enough to fly outside a government office, like a massive one. I laid it out, ice in my veins, trying to figure out what was about to happen next. And then he told me to take my shoes off and stand on it. 

He told me his vision wasn’t good enough to get into the army, so he snuck on a ship and figured that they’d have to deal with him when he was in Europe, and that’s what happened. He told me he went because they all knew it was bad, and he wanted to help. He told me he took the flag off of some dead Nazis. He told me to go home and tell my mother that I was safe with these goyim she’d never met, that I was loved and welcome and that they’d fight for me. He told me “Never Again”.

He passed away a few years ago, and only after his death, cleaning out his closets did we find his old patches and look up his division. This quiet man who said very little but always shared a cup of coffee with me after lunch was in an anti-tank division, and he and his division liberated camps in Poland. He saw the horrors, first hand. 

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today is a day to reaffirm our promise of “Never Again”. Today is a day to remember that the only way for things to get better is to fight. Today is a good day to punch a Nazi. Do it for me. Do it for Grandpa Rocco. Do it for the world. 

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Please reblog if you wouldn't act differently around a friend if they came out as bisexual, gay, lesbian, asexual, pansexual, polysexual, or admitted to being trans, agender, genderfluid, or bigender.