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Thoughts of a Bookworm #6: Booktok is killing literature

 


Booktok. One of the most exciting community spaces for a reader in the past five years. A place where there is a big online community giving insight into old and new releases. Reviewers who are receptive to their audience and you don't have to be 'somebody'. This is no branded bookclub. It is a place for all people with different tastes come together to share what they truly love. Books.

I have to be honest, I have also been a fly on the wall. Using their recommendations many a time for myself or as research to help someone else in their favourite genre. It can be a great tool. But there are times where I have thought that I was giving into the book version of 'fast fashion'.

But what do I mean by 'fast fashion' exactly? Well, have you been watching recently? Especially in the romantasy space where plots have been subverted to a simple trope. One huge example that I tend to see is 'how much spice is there?' I get it. You want certain things to make your money worthwhile. But isn't that just stifling? Don't get me wrong, I not a gatekeeper and I don't really care about what genre you read because I've probably read it myself at some point. But it does kind of feel like we are sometimes not looking at the full picture. Taking away authors hard work to reduce it to a single trope.

In other spaces of Booktok we see the special edition, the readers who are up waiting at the door to the bookstore/ supermarket on release day trying to fight their way through to get a copy of a spredge edition or a bonus chapter. As much as I am for aesthetics and that chapter of five pages my question is are you ever going to read it once? Let alone twice? What happened to that beautiful place called the library?

You must think now that I hate Booktok, but really I don't. It has helped saved many bookstores from closing. It has given new life to people who never even thought about picking up a tome before. I think it has been great in that respect. It is also nice to talk to people again about books in a way that I never could have before. 

I just think we should see the pros and cons to what Booktok truly has to offer. We just have to be more careful of the consumerist society we already have and what that could do to our environment.

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