Hello, Bookworms. I'm Hannah, and I'm posting this video in lieu of an April
Wrap-Up. Normally when I sit down to record I have my thoughts organized, but
I didn't have time to do that this month, so I'm just going to talk to you and
wing it and hopefully I can edit this video into something salvageables
Speaking of talking to you I have a quick question to ask before I get into
everything I want to discuss in this video. I feel like I'm having something
of an identity crisis on my channel, and I could use some feedback from all of
you. Many of you know I moved in January, and prior to that move I was recording
in a very small, laughably small, space. All of my lights and equipment in camera
were just [whoosh] right here in front of my face, I was working with a low quality
microphone that forced me to shout, and I was nervous being on camera for the
first time, so all of that working in tandem meant that I was very poised and
loud and bubbly in my initial videos, and now that I've moved I have more space to
move around and I'm more comfortable in front of the camera and I've noticed
myself sort of loosening up on camera and being more conversational. Some of
you have said that you like this new conversational approach, but when I'm
editing footage I feel as though I look sleepy on camera. I don't feel like my
genuine enthusiasm for books and how passionate I feel about storytelling in
books is really coming across on camera. It's not unlike me to overthink things,
and I'm overthinking this. I don't know if I should be exuberant and
exceptionally bubbly or if I should just be, you know, calm and conversational and
so if you want to weigh-in in the comments and let me know whhich you prefer
that would really help me. Now back to the January move. That was the catalyst
in everything that I'm going to be discussing in this video, because that
move was unexpected, it was quick it, was sudden, and it had an enormous impact on
my schedule. I now wake up on most days at about 5:50 in the morning and I don't
get home until sometime between 7 & 8 o'clock at night. And that means that I
don't have as much time to read, and I'm not tending to my personal goals for the
year, which I'll be discussing later in this video, and it means I really
have time to be making videos like I used to. I have realized that I have to
make some adjustments in my schedule, some adjustments on my channel, and I
really need to sort of recalibrate my life so that I don't lose my mind. That
sudden move in January meant that I didn't really have time to make a video
reflecting on the last year and sharing with you my goals for this year, so I'm
going to do that in today's video. One of the things I wanted to do about last
year was sort of wipe the slate clean on any unfinished projects, and that
included reviewing all of the books nominated for the Andre Norton award. I
was doing something a little different with those videos where I integrated a
lot more sound and music, sound effects and music, that is, but those are the most
labor-intensive videos I make, and they don't warrant many views. If they're not
helping many people find books then I'm not sure that they're worth my time, so
I'm not going to finish those. And I had an epic library book haul video I planned
to make. When I first mentioned that video I said that it was a daunting
video, and that is true, it's still true. It's so daunting I never got to it, so
not going to be doing that. And I also wanted to adjust this year to cater to
two personal goals for the year. The first of those goals was to read more books
that I want to read, make sure that I was reading books that I want to read, and
you saw that reflected in my reaction to this year's Women's Prize longlist. I
wasn't excited by all of the books on the list, and so I chose not to read them.
If those books aren't going to make me happy or enrich my life then they're not
the books that I need to be reading right now. There are a couple of things I
want to say about the Women's Prize long list and now seems like a good time, so
first, let me mention that reading and reviewing an entire longlist is an
enormous time commitment. It's one thing to read 16 books, that alone is a huge
time commitment, but it takes so long for booktubers to reflect on the books they
read, gather their thoughts, spend time recording videos, then edit those videos
and upload those videos to YouTube, then field comments on those videos.
It's very flattering when people say, "I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this
book," or "I can't wait to see your thoughts on the longlist," or "I'm really
hoping you'll review a complete longlist." I find it very endearing, and I'm
sure other booktubers do too, but I just want to let people know that as a
booktuber and a content creator there is a sense of pressure that comes with
these longlists, this pressure that we should be reading and reviewing all of
these books, and a lot of us just don't have time or a lot of us sacrifice other
things in our lives to make those videos happen for you guys, so I would just
caution everybody against making their beloved booktubers feel pressured to
review these complete long lists, because a booktube channel is essentially a
part-time job that's unpaid work. Also in relation to the Women's Prize longlist
and longlists in general, I made an observation recently and I came to a
realization that I want to talk about briefly. The observation was that the
Women's Prize gifted at least one booktuber the complete longlist which
is so cool and incredibly generous, but that booktuber was a guy, and this is a
prize that celebrates women creatives, and I think it's a shame that there's
not more support of the women booktubers who are out here sacrificing our time,
money, and energy creating content showcasing these longlist and
shortlist books. Now I understand that the Women's Prize is a sponsored event
and anytime something is sponsored that involves money, that's a business there
needs to be a return on investment, and that means that a booktuber with a
higher subscriber count or a bigger Twitter following is going to get more
support. And maybe the problem is that some of the avid women surprise
reviewers, like myself or Jennifer at Insert Literary Pun Here, we're very
critical of these books. We hold these books to a higher standard, because we're
told that they are the best books in women's fiction from the last year. Now
this leads me to the realization. That's a false statement; there's no way that
statement could be true. Hundreds of thousands of books are published each
year, and these longlists are comprised from reviewing usually about 200 books
that publishers submit for consideration. So 5 judges make their way through 200
books and most of the judge - I don't think the judges even read all 200 books
I believe they're divided to a set number of books per judge and then
they put forth their favorites and the list gets whittled down until we have,
you know, a 16 or 20 book longlist. Which leads me to talk about the judges for a
moment, because the panel judges is usually five people. Those five people
change every year, and thank goodness, because everyone has varied taste in
books. And this is the realization that I've come to. When five people are
working together to comprise a longlist we get a very diverse mix of books which
is a good thing. No one book is going to satisfy everybody. An eclectic mix of
books means that there's something for everyone. And the realization is that:
Fundamentally, I don't think longlists are designed to be read in their
entirety; I don't think we're supposed to read all of those books, because it's
just statistically improbable that any one of us will love all of them. That's
why half of the longlists I read tend to make me miserable, and the other half
fill me with joy, and that's true for a lot of other critical booktubers. The
word critical leads me to another point I want to discuss in this video and
that's that looking back on this year so far I have experienced unprecedented
reading highs and reading lows in a way I never have before, and it's
souring my enjoyment of books and it's making me a bit of a booktube grump. I
don't like how negative I've been in so many of my videos. I don't want to be
somebody who's just ranting about books all the time. I started this channel to
help people find books they'll love and enjoy, and I want to get back to that
which means I am not going to make my video review of See What I Have Done by
Sarah Schmidt. It's a longlist book on this year's Women's Prize list that
really didn't jive with me, but hey, that ties into my realization about longlists.
This book doesn't work for me, but it might work for you. If you think the
synopsis sounds cool, give it a shot. I don't want to make a whole video
complaining about it, so I'm not going to record that video. I'm really gonna try
to stick to more upbeat, positive reviews. However, I am going to briefly rant about
one more book before I proceed with being more positive on my channel, and
I'm doing that because I DNF'd a book in April for the first time since
August of 2016. For those of you who are curious the book IDNF'd in 2016 was
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. Pulley is an Oxford graduate
and yet I'm not sure she knows what pronouns are, or how to use them. The book
I DNF'd in April of this year is Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.
Now here's the rub on this book. When Adeyemi's agent was shopping the
book to publishers, publishers thought it was going to be big, and they got into a
bidding war over it. I didn't know this when I started reading it, but the
winning bid was a seven-figure offer. When a publisher spends seven figures on
the rights to publish a book they put all of their weight behind promoting
that book. They get their author out there on talk shows and podcasts. They
build up as much hype as they possibly can to make everyone think this is going
to be the next big thing, and they slap a gorgeous, irresistible cover on the book
so that everyone buys it so that they can recoup their investment, and what I'm
essentially saying is that we were all duped into thinking this poorly written
debut is the next big thing when it's not. I want my money back. Adeyemi
credits Sabaa Tahir, author of An Ember in the Ashes, with being a source
of inspiration for her writing, but that's not what's going on here. This
brings to mind Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, a wonderful book on writing and
being an artist. In it, Elizabeth Gilbert says that as creatives we imitate until
we innovate. Theoretically, as aspiring authors, we should get noticed when we
start innovating, and Children of Blood and Bone is one of those fluke instances
where a fledgling author got noticed in a big big way when she was still
imitating. If you read Children of Blood and Bone next to An Ember in the Ashes,
beat for beat Adeyemi is essentially copying Tahir's work. I'm not okay with
that. I'm angry about this book, about Children of Blood and Bone, and I won't
be seeing the movie and, frankly, I don't care how beautiful the second book is I
will not be buying it. Alright, now that we've got the rant out of the way let's
move on to goal number two which was to focus more on my writing this year,
something I didn't really do last year because I was busy querying agents.
A lot of you know that I'm a writer, and some of you have caught on to the fact
that I review books as a writer where I touch on themes, but I don't delve into
that too much because most of us went over that in school and I don't think
you need me holding your hand walking you through themes and symbols in books.
But I do touch a lot on character depth and plot pacing and structure and
storytelling, because that's important to me. It's partly why I read books, to
learn and take what I learn and use it in my own writing. As I mentioned, I spent
last year querying. I had a lot of success in a Twitter pitch, had numerous
requests for my manuscript, and obviously those didn't result in any offers of
representation. If they had I would just be screaming on my channel of joy, but
short of having an agent offer representation the next thing that any
aspiring author can covet is an offer to query again, and I got some of those. I
have agents who said, "You write well, you just need to work on this,
please query me again in future." And I'm really looking forward to the moment
when I can present something new to them, and I'm working on something new now. But
I'm finding it difficult to devote time and energy to it, so I have to make fewer
videos in order to spend more time writing. So that leads me to basically,
you know, recalibrating my life and realizing that, for a while at least, I'm
just going to make monthly wrap-up videos. And since I'm reading less there
may be some months where I don't have enough quality reads to make a
substantial wrap-up video, and I think in those instances I will finally get to
some of the videos I've been wanting to do for the last year but haven't had
time to do, because I've been reading long lists and reviewing the Women's
Prize and the Man Booker. Some of those videos I've wanted to get are, you know,
my favorite reads of all time. I want to share with you my favorite book of all
time, and I keep waiting to do it because there's never time to. I've been tagged
in some book tag videos; I've never gotten around to making those. And the
one video I really hope to make before the year concludes, because a lot of you
have asked for it, is a bookshelf tour which is possibly the most daunting
video a booktuber can make, but I get it. I would want a bookshelf tour too; I love
watching people's bookshelf tour videos, so I will try to make one before the
year concludes. In the meantime I've taken to posting mini book
haul pictures on my Instagram, so you can follow me there if you want to see what
new books I'm getting throughout the year, because I definitely don't have
time for book haul videos right now. I think that's everything I wanted to
cover in this video. Oh! I did want to mention that whatever video I post in
the month of May will either be early or late. But I think I covered everything
else: the longlist, being more positive on my channel, making fewer videos while I
focus on my writing, and making sure that I'm really reading books but I want to
read this year. Yeah, I think that's all of it. I do want to reiterate that I'm so
grateful to everyone who has subscribed to my channel and leaves me positive
comments and positive messages. It's so uplifting, especially since I make these
videos for you. These videos aren't for me; they are for you, and I hope that you
continue to enjoy them and that you'll be patient with me while I take a little
bit of time to recharge my batteries. Thanks, everybody.
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