Everyone knows what YouTube is, but there is a large community of YouTube creators that are dedicated to discussing, reviewing, and sharing the love of books and reading.  They call themselves Booktubers.

I love booktube.  I’ve thought about trying to do it myself, but I think that for now I’ll stick with this platform to share my bookish perspective.

If you were to do a simple search for booktube within YouTube or on Google you will quickly become overwhelmed with the abundance of creators wanting to share their book worlds with you.  Not every booktube channel will be for everyone as not everyone has the same taste in books.

How do you find the best booktube channels for you?

Quick and Easy Way 

• Make a list of your favorite books, books you are interested in reading and genres you normally read
• Pick 5-10 books you love, look for reviews of those books on YouTube, watch the videos and subscribe to the ones you like and identify with, hit the little bell to make sure you get updates when new content is available. You can filter the results by time frame if you want to focus on recent content.

A Smidge More Effort

• Check out the creators Goodreads account.
• Look at what this person is reading now, see if those books are something you would read
• Click the compare books feature when you look at the goodreads profile and see how many books you have in common and ratings you match.  After awhile you’ll get a feel for how many books you should have in common.  It might be helpful to have a litmus test for your core favorites but it needs to be a little flexible.

The Long Round About Way

• Find one booktube creator you like and follow with regularity and see who they have listed in their channel tab on the YouTube header bar.
• Follow them on Twitter and see what booktube creators they support with retweets and sharing
• Read comments on videos of the booktuber you like and check out profile/channel of the commenter. This can take you down a long and winding rabbit hole but it will expose you a large variety of booktubers with some commonality.

My favorite Booktubers:

Mara from Books like Whoa

Mara crosses all genres but tends to focus on mystery, romance, non-fiction. She adds to the conversation about literary techniques in her trope sub-series and reviews all of her Agatha Christie reads. I found Mara because she also loves books by Ilona Andrews.  

 

Hannah from  A Clockwork Reader

Hannah reads across all genres as well, she provides thought-provoking reviews and insights.  She reads young adult but also literary selections, this combo keeps her channel a balance between reading for escape and reading to grow as a reader.  

 

Joce from Squibbles Reads

Joce does not hold back.  She will tell it like it is and is not afraid to say what was wrong with the book.  Her reviews are highly analytical and they elaborate on the literary elements utilized.   She covers a wide spectrum of genres, with a focus on books that celebrate diversity.

Heather from Bookables

Heather has a Potterverse passion, a love of darling contemporaries, and has recently jumped into the realm of Thrillers and intense mysteries.  Her videos are beautiful and her personality is charming and very conversational.  

 

Sometimes I need a quick break to digest something different from the memes and content floating around Facebook. I recommend booktube as an avenue to learn about new books, find reviews of books you’ve read, and to see the reception of books that you are interested in reading.  It’s a fun platform to utilize in addition to goodreads. Once you have a variety of channels in your feed, it’s a fun easy way to watch bookish videos that are more relevant to your reading interests.