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I saw this video a few days ago and today my younger sister (who is in middle school, mind you) told me that some of her friends in her class have read books like Icebreaker, or some other books from Colleen Hoover (Sorry if I said her name wrongly, I'm not familiar with her) and I am actually concerned cuz reading those books at such an early age can really mess up the minds of kids, since they could think that some kind of abvsive behaviour is "romantic" or that it's "cute" which is obviously not. My problem with these books is that so many times they glorify 🍇, abvse, misoginy,, bullying and much more that made me dislike the Booktok community. I don't have any problem if someone ADULT likes those books but the fact that kids can calmly buy them and read them is still concerning to me and also the fact that they get publicized to kids (for example the 16-year-old biker being recommended an 18+ book is absolutely disgusting)

I'm not sure where the quotes are coming from but it looks like a problem of target audience. These characters are being written to appeal to the fantasy of one group or another and the goal is to supply some sort of hyper stimulus for enjoyment. It is taken out of context so I can't be sure, but it seems like criticizing these writers on the wrong standard.

I think the main problem with that Tiktok you're reacting to is, that Tiktoker is equating a *lack* of intellectualism with *anti*-intellectualism, and being gets very defensive about it as an intellectual reader. I agree with you, that both approaches can and should be allowed to exist side by side. Not all content is aimed at all audiences. If someone is upset about not being served the content they seek, it's either that indeed, they are on the wrong platform, or the fault of the algorithm. But never the fault of the creators who are making content with a different target audience in mind, attacking them is not right.

I have no idea how I lived before I bought an ereader.

we just learned this in our eapp subject but there's two types of reading: intensive and extensive. intensive if for analysis, evaluating, and engaging with the literary in deptth, extensive on the other hand, is reading casually and a comfortable level- it's for leisure. now the thing with extensive reading is, despite the fact that you are reading causally, you still use your brain, you still engage with it in a non-shallow way. turning your brain off when reading is something i believe is dangerous but otherwise, extensive reading is a thing and not a problem at all.

Here’s my thing, I’m taking a memory from a Highschool honors English course please bear with me. There was a point when we were going to study Romeo and Juliet (the original Shakespeare play (just wanted to clairify)) and a kid in my class was trying to get my teacher to change it because it was “too hard”. I’m not going to act like anything Shakespeare has ever written is point blank to the point and simple, it’s not. But it’s not difficult. If you take the context of some of the words it’s not hard to decipher. There are by far more confusing and complex pieces of literature out there. (God help him if he ever studies that in college.) It’s perfectly ok to not like Shakespeare it’s really not for everyone but his plays are also extremely important from both a linguistics and literary perspective. You can turn your brain off and read, that’s great but also we shouldn’t be downplaying the importance of certain pieces of literature. You can also analyze and interpret books all day long that’s also great but don’t expect everyone to do that. If you’re going to read a book with deep themes and plots please expect that more people are going to be analyzing those books instead of just saying “yeah that was good I liked xyz”. And if you’re going to read a more lighthearted, “read for fun” book don’t expect people to be analyzing every little detail. That’s it thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

I have recently rekindled my love for reading and have been itching to explore booktube, and I'm really glad I found this video so early on so I may keep a critical eye about things, rather than being swept away and stressed by book hauls etc. Subscribed ❤

Thank you very much this year i don't want to read cozy fall book 🧡🤎 I love your content

This is why I say good and bad writers are just that. It has nothing to do with gender.

I think it's important to note that criticizing a book is not the same thing as telling people not to read it. There are books I didn't enjoy or that I couldn't get into, but I would never tell anyone not to read something and form their own opinion. It seems like the monetization of book content creation has no room for negative reviews, because positive reviews/recommendations drive sales and consumption is the lifeblood of content creation.

S. A Cosby has some great thrillers focusing on social issues. I read Razor blade tears and it was good, kind of like a buddy cop dynamic between the two main characters, great action and stakes.

I disagree about criticism needing to be constructive. As a reader I am allowed to dislike a book and say just that without trying to make it better. If I order a dish at a restaurant and don’t like it, I am not going to call the chef and ask them to add spices or change anything. I also don’t need to insult them either. But we can totally discuss our thoughts and feelings on any thing including books.

We're talking about romance novels only here, right? It stands to reason that the characters would have attractive or (god forbid) even 'pornographic' descriptions. It kind of comes with the territory, and it isn't exactly gender specific. Is it a crime...

I definitely agree with A Flicker in the Dark and Darling Girls. Both great books!

I read none of this is true earlier is true and to say it was crazy is an understatement it’s so good and I can’t wait to pick up the night she disappeared from her! I’d like to recommend you the last word by Taylor Adams it’s a very fast paced, you’re on the edge of your seat kind of thriller.

honestly that person on tiktok is right. trope-ification of literature has led to a ton of books written in like a month that have horrendous writing being published, while authors who work on their craft for years are being rejected by publishers. I'm simply unable to respect the booktok community when they push trash into the mainstream while actual good writers are either not getting the success they deserve or they're not getting published in the first place

Mostly, it's either the author taking their wish fulfillment too far or having very little understanding of the opposite sex.

Id say it has to do with the fact that they're trying to create their own ultimate hot person fantasy. I like to make my characters attractive both ways, men and women get equal points for hotness in my books, but I like to keep it more grounded and less whimsy with the way I describe them

TikTok does not promote anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism is a defined ideology with a history and a fair amount of intellectual sophistication behind it. TikTok is a trivialization engine: it prioritizes short, quippy, atomic content and consequently has incentives almost diametrically opposed to the demands that literature makes on a reader. Trying to combine the two and consume them is the mental equivalent of trying to drink brackish water. It will poison you. It's not valuable as a introduction to anything.

Rachel Oates has a 3hr long in-depth video going through the book It Ends With Us chapter by chapter and she shares on screen long excerpts/passages from the book and I’m reading the direct quotes from the book and it absolutely baffles me how anyone can say that book does not romanticize abuse when it absolutely DOES. Just because the main character eventually leaves her abuser in the end, does NOT mean the abuse wasn’t romanticized in the beginning. And before anyone says, “we’re seeing it from the survivor’s POV, so that’s why it shows it as romantic in the beginning cause she loves him and is willing to make excuses for him. No one wants to believe the person they love is an abuser,” just stop. He wasn’t this nice, sweet guy who later showed his true colors and became abusive after they’ve been together for a while. That would’ve been understandable and I wouldn’t have considered that as romanticizing abuse. But that’s not what happened. He showed major red flags and was abusive from the very beginning BEFORE they even entered a relationship together. From their very first interaction we see that he’s got anger issues and he doesn’t know how to respect people’s boundaries or ask for consent. The ONLY reason Lily has to like him at this point is because he’s hot. Guarantee you if she didn’t find him attractive she would’ve picked up on all the red flags and been creeped out by him from the beginning. Also, do people forget he literally SA’d her in the beginning? How is this romantic? How the hell does anyone fall in love with a guy like this? Fall in lust, sure, cause it’s clear she’s attracted to him, but love? What’s to love about a man who doesn’t respect your boundaries, refuses to listen when you tell him no, and begs, coerce, & manipulates you into having sex with him? Call me crazy, but I don’t find that attractive or romantic in the least bit. And the fact that Lily still enters a relationship and MARRIES him after all this, with all the red flags waving right in her face from their first interaction before she even “falls in love” with him (if you can even call it that, I don’t think Lily even knows what love is), how is that NOT romanticizing abuse?

That video in the middle hit the point exactly, i think. I spent most of highschool only reading manga and I only started reading books with written paragraphs instead of drawings again when I wanted to find out what happened next in a manga adapted from a light novel, so I started reading that and now here I am managing to actually find books I line and read them again! (And fuck, some of them are on the list my GCSE English teacher told me I should read. It's hardly most of the list but that was a list I hated with a burning passion and now I'm reading a few books that were on it!) And I don't really analyse those books I read much. (I mean, I do a little bit but honestly I spend more time analysing the characters and politics in the One Piece manga in the name of writing fanfiction and getting pissed off at dracula adaptations on tumblr (dracula adaptations just treat the characters so horribly its not fair. Lucy isnt a slut and jonathan isnt evil and the fact that its supposed intellectuals that originally started those readings of the characters really pisses me off more than anything) than I do any serious literary analysis.

My issue is not with the content of the books bit more the sheere number of them and the weird idea that you must read all of them in a short amount of time. There's nothing wrong with a book haul as long as it's an irregular thing. And you don't have to manage to read a book a day or whatever. Reading and book buying aren't competitions. Also. There's nothing wrong with a pretty book. I have some really pretty books that I only really picked up for the prettiness and the content matter was secondary (I still made sure it was content I was interested in). But the issue is when you get 5 copies of the exact same story in different covers and not because the previous 4 copies fell apart from being handled frequently.

As an author myself, it always gets me. Like I read books with spicy, I enjoy my spicy books. But I'm getting irritated because I'm worried my book series won't do well at all because ANY spice that does happen isnt explicit and it takes a while to get there. 😭

I appreciated your brief tangent into Taylor Swift: it illustrated your point so well. The art and artists we love can be fabulous, but they aren’t above criticism. I think it’s fair to love a book or artist and yet remain a bit skeptical. Wonderful video! You do an excellent job researching and presenting and I’m very engaged with your videos.

Can someone tell me the books that are out the picture?

I'm an aspiring fantasy author (a man too), and sometimes I go "Damn, this'll need a hell of a lotta work, am I good at all?" Then I saw the nonsense some guys make and I can confidently say I'm at least above that. Descriptions of... Breasts... Would be pretty out of place in a violent war story lol.

I don't have problems with Romance, my problems is with Watppad and bad writting. Bad writting seems to be popular now 🤡

19:52 there was criticism against Komi in Komi can't Communicate that her social anxiety problem isn't relatable, because she is pretty. Similarly people read to escape from reality and don't want to see the pretty girl get the chad. They'd rather see their own heartbreak validated. Like yeah bro/gal, love sucks. Because more often than not people are unhappy with their love life. They can project their frustration onto the frustrated lovers and release their own feelings that way.

I really like Vin from "mistborn", and Zofia, from "agla",

I think it's good to read a book for entertainment alone, but maybe after reading a book for fun, we should all feel encouraged to engage with the text on a critical and analytical level, because it helps us understand the book in a way, and allows for people to enjoy and like the book in a different manner. It also allows for great engagement in the book and allows you to appreciate the work, the story, the themes, the characters, the relationships, word choice, etc. more! Maybe this is coming from a writer who finds analysis of text to be enjoyable and entertaining, however, I really do love analyzing the things that I love. If not to show the love you have for a book, but by analyzing it and looking at all the thought and detail put into said book. Literary analysis can be a great way to engage with your books, even if your predominant motivation is to be entertained by the book. I really recommend trying this approach, as you get the best of both worlds, work on yourself, and still feel like you're building new skills!

One of the wonders of reading is that it allows the reader to immerse themselves in intense experiences without facing any personal consequences. This is why people can enjoy high-stakes fantasy: readers get to feel the adrenaline of following a character who fights for their life, without ever being in real danger. They can explore the uncertainty of characters who don't know when they’ll eat next, whether they’ll see their loved ones again, or even if they’ll survive the day, all while remaining safe themselves. The same holds true for romance. Many readers are drawn to the heightened emotions and dramatic, even dangerous or unhealthy, fictional relationships precisely BECAUSE they are fictional. These stories allow the readers to indulge in the thrill and emotions without any risk of personal harm. For their own life, they certainly DO NOT want any insecurity or constant shadow of fear. They want safety and reliability. Whether it's fantasy, mystery, or romance - readers seek safety and comfort in their own lives. In the books they read, they still can enjoy (or for some even prefer) the excitement of something far different.

4:50 "romance novels had men that treated the women like real people and also were very much in love with them" - shows Willoughby 👀

You are great ,loved the video 🫶🏻

The amount of times I’ve stopped and not started a book channel because I feel like I can’t afford to keep up 🤍 thank you for mentioning this !

When you pirate something, you are likely doing it because you can't buy it for some reason. So, you wouldn't buy it anyway, which means that the creator isn't "losing" anything. Also, when people who pirated something are engaging in that piece of media online, they are giving the creator free advertising, which might even lead to more people buying the piece of media, so it'd pose as an actual benefit! I am against being able to afford something but still never buying but pirating it, but only if the creator isn't investing their money into something harmful. Capitalism is ruining a lot of things in gerneral because it's just all about the money people get out of it because they do need it to survive.

Great video essay, as always! What always baffles me with romance, as a casual reader of the genre, is that in our society, the majority of humans do seek partnership…romantic partners to share lives with. Like the basis of humanity but for some reasons (I agree with the ones you gave) it’s “stupid and vapid” and this comes from someone on the ace spectrum. As if, for bad or for worse, we’re not always pushed into being in relationships in real life but when it’s in a romance novel, that’s somehow wrong and stupid and ONLY FOR WOMEN? Make it make sense.

real. i read haunting adeline and then read the bible 🫡

there are many valid points made but i do think the example used of say someone recommending the poppy war as a book with a strong female protagonist instead of say a deep war saga that explores those traumas etc was a bit... of an overreaction? ever since people started to read books, they would ask "if i liked x what else should i read? can you recommend me something like y? i enjoyed z aspect of this book, are there others with that?" and to me that is a very valid form of book recommendation. if someone liked the hunger games, i think they'd enjoy the poppy war. both of these have a strong female protagonist at its center. these aren't false statements and i don't think the brevity of the recommendations necessarily dismisses the years of hard work that went into those books nor does it take away from the serious topics. other readers have their own responsibility to read a blurb, read a chapter, decide how they're going to interact with the book and in my opinion it's not necessarily down to the initial person who recommended or reviewed. however - i think there should be a big difference between reviews by publications, reviews by readers, and ultimately the marketing done by the author and publishers and i think this final one has been blurring the lines the most to where i'm peeved. when i open a review by a publication, i believe the focus should be on a deeper analysis with the personal enjoyment as an afterthought (and that to me depends on how prolific the author of the review is). i think anyone who wants to fall into a more professional sphere with a blog or longform video reviews on say booktube fall in the middle. when i open goodreads on the other hand, i don't have a treshold that a reviewer needs to meet; it's for themselves first then other readers, and it's on you to toggle around and realize if you might want to read it - but even if it's just a star rating or a few words, it doesn't undermine anyone's work or any serious topics it deals with. these are readers. THAT BEING SAID - the marketing changing towards prioritizing buzzwords to the point where it's ONLY about buzzwords (like hearing enemies-to-lovers in a three sentence pitch for a book or in the blurb is one thing - marketing your book with only the cover and buzzwords of tropes around it is another, and that difference is what irks me because now everything is the latter) to me is not what we should be allowing authors and publishers to do. you should go get the buzzwords from other readers who read the book, not the publisher marketing their latest release with nothing more than "friends to lovers only one bed she fell first he fell harder blah blah blah". WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHY WOULD I PICK UP THIS BOOKS JUST FOR THAT? tropes have always been a tool for recommendation and yes cliches are cliches for a reason. however, the fanfiction tagging system being implemented to published books should not be accepted and it shouldn't work - they work on ao3 because i already KNOW the characters i want to see in those situations. what good is a book that's only an amalgamation of tropes with zero character to speak of? are they actually fleshed out or just conforming to whatever you need to fit as many tropes? i think that's more of an issue than ribbing off other creators for how they choose to review, read, or recommend. social media is for you to cater - find the reviews to match your style. people think about the algorithm too much imo

And this is exactly why reading should never have become a hobby to get clout off, like wow people can read and own books… and? Unlike most of these people I’ve actually read since I was 3, got relentlessly bullied for it growing up cos no one wanted to read it wasn’t cool and yet I read religiously, everyday and only now cos of clout chasing on TikTok and instagram has this happened, it really speaks volumes that people are reading to say they read and not because they enjoy reading. Take away a lot of peoples socials and a lot of their “hobbies” will disappear I promise

Without male gaze many careers for women would simply vanish.

Me reading Machiavelli “The Prince” after reading any Ana Huang book

You know, I'd argue it's okay to have kinky books or books exploring sexual & romantic fantasies be it " Ms Barbie V*gina" or "Mr Dark Rich & Emotional". Smut for the smut god (praise Slaanesh)! HOWEVER that should not be the norm. I'm a woman writing a war story with a large cast of male characters. So guess what? I'm doing a ton of research and learning about the male perspective: how men show emotions, how they deal with trauma, how they internalize events etc. And even for the women characters I start from scratch because you know what? Not all women are like me! Tl;dr. Smut is ok, but don't normalize it and do your due dilligence as an author. ✌️

I feel this way for Female writer in Song of Achillies 😂

It's essentially gossip girl in book format *Looks at the gossip girl book series that the show is based on* Ok.....thinking with our small brain today

I wanna tie in the increasing amount of unrated or mature rated TV shows as well. Due to the popularity of sexual scenes and other mature content (Game of Thrones, Spartacus, etc), it seems like almost every show that's been coming out has some type of smut. So in a way, there's been a huge spike in smut in books. I personally don't mind reading or watching smut every now and then if the story is actually good. But when it's in every single book or show, it makes it hard to enjoy and becomes stale and boring, imo.

honestly my biggest problem with booktok is how it's reduced to "spice lovers", "anti-intellectuals", etc. booktok has grown so much that it's become really more of a network of different kinds of communities. the content creators i follow on booktok aren't the kinds of people that make people think "omg booktok is so unhinged". i think outsiders don't realize just how big and varied a community it is, and there are some people giving the whole community a bad name

I didn't understand the open ending in Verity. What did you make out of it?

4:44 Colorado Mountain boobs hahahahahhaaaaaaaaahahahahaha

As someone who learned long ago that I don't enjoy writing sex scenes, I've noticed it frees up my characters to pursue other interests. It seems that most of these arrise from authors simply trying to write sex and sexual themes. If you're not good at something, just don't write it. If you don't know what to write women for other than sex, well first off visit someone. Second of all, just don't write them. Write a mens only story rather than this.

Tolkien wrote trauma in a way to reflect the horrors of WW1. The entire story of TLotR is reflecting that. Frodo's wound that never truly heals is to reflect his longterm, chronic PTSD and depression. SJM wrote trauma as an excuse to be edgy and had a classic mary sue as a main character. She has no quantifiable comparison between her books and Tolkien's works of masterful literary art. To be honest I feel like she never read them and only saw the films. Having read just a few chapters of ACOTAR was enough for me. Insufferable prose if you can even call it prose.