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booktube

Booktube

Penguin English Library Tour

Ever since I started collecting the gorgeous Penguin English Library classics, I’ve had numerous requests to film a tour video of them — showing you my entire collection! They are perhaps my favourite part of my book collection and the editions I choose over any others. It’s got to the point where I’m finding it hard to add any new ones to my collection because I’m sure that if I do the whole stack will fall down.

So, without further ado: here is my Penguin English Library tour!

(If you’re viewing on email or having trouble watching the video, click here to be sent directly to YouTube.)

Books Mentioned:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens | Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy | Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy | Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell | Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

| The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë | Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë | Evelina by Frances Burney | Frankenstein by Mary Shelley | The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy | Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James | The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

| Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon | Dracula by Bram Stoker | Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray | The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins | The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins |The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy | Middlemarch by George Eliot | Silas Marner by George Eliot | North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell | Villette by Charlotte Brontë | A Room With A View by E.M. Forster | Howard’s End by E.M. Forster

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll | Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton | The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells | The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells


What are your favourite book editions that you own? Do you collect any specific ones? Let me know in the comments below!

Booktube

All About Jane Austen! | Classics Series

Since I started my Classics series on YouTube, the most requested video people have asked me to make is one about Jane Austen. Luckily, she’s one of my favourite authors, so it wasn’t much effort to gather all of my Jane Austen books together and talk about them. Here is the result!

(If you’re viewing through email or the video will not display, click here to watch.)

Books Mentioned: (with affiliate links)

Pride and Prejudice | Illustrated Pride and Prejudice | Northanger Abbey | Persuasion

| Mansfield Park | Lady Susan | Sense and Sensibility | Emma


What is your favourite Jane Austen novel? Which are you most excited to read? Let me know in the comments below!

 

Booktube Discussion

Meet the BookTubers: Being in The Times

If you could have told me five years ago that starting a blog would lead to my face being splashed on the front page of The Times, I wouldn’t have believed you. I was a shy and anxious twelve year old who had been devastated by the loss of her grandfather only a few months before. Books were my refuge, and so talking about books online felt like something that had been made for me. It was an escape and a place to express myself, and I never thought anything would come of it. I never expected to get any views on my posts, never expected to make the friends I have through blogging. Back then, blogging was a relatively new thing: there were no expectations whatsoever. It was simply a hobby.

Skip forward to now and things have taken a turn for the crazy. When I was contacted by The Times to feature in an article on booktube (the part of the YouTube community that talks about books, if you didn’t know), I thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase our corner of the Internet, which most definitely isn’t as well-known as other areas of YouTube. There are so many passionate and creative people making videos on booktube, and so it was great to get a space where booktube was celebrated for the amazing platform it is.

Last Monday, a photographer (Gareth Iwan Jones) and makeup artist (Neusa Neves) came to my house to take photos for the article – it was such a surreal experience! I don’t think I’ve ever had my hair brushed so much in my life, and my eyeliner is never going to look that good again, but it was so worth it. It was strange to have to pose, and I don’t think I’ve ever changed outfits so much, but I was so happy with the results and glad that I looked like myself.

The article also features Jen, Simon and Sanne, who it was an honour to be featured with. I’ve watched Jen and Simon’s videos since they first started making them, and Sanne has been my favourite booktuber for a very long time so I felt very humbled to be on the same page as them.

Would I have written some of the things about me if I was writing the article myself? Maybe not. I was scared about letting someone else write about me because I know how I perceive myself, but this might not line up with how other people perceive me; it’s difficult handing over control to somebody else because I’m so used to having full control — I write my own blog posts, I edit my own videos, I do all of my social media. It was scary, but I was pleased that James Marriott did such a good job.

I would like to thank everyone for being so supportive. Your messages and love across social media have meant the world, and I’ve tried my hardest to respond to them all but I’m sorry if I’ve missed any! Friday was such an overwhelming day and I’m still trying to catch up with everything.

Whether you watch my videos or not, it’s absolutely amazing to have booktube featured in a national newspaper and get the recognition it deserves.

It really was an incredible experience!

You can read the full article here — you need to sign up to read it, but after that it is completely free to do so.

Booktube

VIDEO: How To Be a Writer with Katy Cannon and Lisa Williamson | #UKYAHomeBook

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I was very lucky to get to visit CPI Books earlier this week to see how books are made! I went with Stripes Publishing and we watched I’ll Be Home for Christmas get turned into a real book which was extremely cool. I’ll have a blog post and video up very soon all about this!

Katy Cannon and Lisa Williamson were there, two of the authors contributing to I’ll Be Home for Christmas, so I got to talk to them all about writing – their writing process, funny habits they have and their advice for new writers. You can watch the video below!

For those of you not watching the video online, you can click here to take you to YouTube where you can watch it.

I started reading I’ll Be Home for Christmas as soon as I got home and I’m loving it a lot; it’s great to have so many stand-out UK authors contributing to it because we have needed a UK anthology for a long time, as we talk about in the video. I’ll have a review up of it closer to publication date, which is in September!

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The UK’s top Young Adult authors join together in this collection of new stories and poems on the theme of home. Contributors include: Tom Becker, Holly Bourne, Sita Brahmachari, Kevin Brooks, Melvin Burgess, Katy Cannon, Cat Clarke, Juno Dawson, Julie Mayhew, Non Pratt, Marcus Sedgwick, Lisa Williamson and Benjamin Zephaniah. £1 from the sale of every book will be donated to Crisis, the national homelessness charity.

I’ll Be Home for Christmas comes out on 23rd September and you can see Katy and Lisa at YALC next weekend – the 29th and 30th July, plus you can visit Stripes’ Christmas in July stand on Saturday 30th.

Did anything surprise you about Katy and Lisa’s writing routines, or do you have any similar habits? Share the bookish love in the comments!

If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to click the ‘heart’ below to show your love of it!

Booktube

Not-So-Scary Halloween Book Recommendations

(For those not able to see the video, click here)

I hate reading scary books – I get terrified by them! So I thought I would put together a video full of books that are perfect to read at Halloween if you’re like me and get frightened easily. There are creepy inns, haunting pictures, and dead bodies! Enjoy!

Books Mentioned:

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs – With pictures to help tell the story, now is the perfect time to read it as the film is released in 2016.

Glimpse by Kendra Leighton – Based on one of my favourite poems by Alfred Noyes, Glimpse is about a girl who has lost her memories and a boy that haunts her in her dreams.

Dead Romantic by C.J. Skuse – In this hilarious novel, two girls set out to create the perfect boy from body parts that they collect. Think Frankenstein for a teen audience.

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson – One of my favourite books of the year, The Name of the Star explores what would happen if the Jack the Ripper murders started happening all over London again with a supernatural twist.

What are your favourite Halloween reads?

Booktube Discussion

PERIODS in YA

Lately I’ve noticed a horrifying trend in YA books – a lack of menstruating characters. Can you honestly tell me that Bella or Katniss never got their period? I find it hard to believe.

As part of my new feminism series on YouTube, I decided to make a video discussing this subject, and I’ve compiled a list to go alongside it. The books below are YA books that feature periods as plot points, or even just mention periods. Even these, surprisingly, are hard to find. The first step to getting more authors to write about menstruation is to talk about it and how important it is to talk about. We are letting teenagers down by not doing so.

I hope you enjoy the video!

THE LIST:

Continue Reading

Booktube Uncategorized

On blogging and booktubing + an announcement!

Hi! I’m Lucy and I’m both a blogger and a booktuber. I’ve wanted to write this post for a while now and, okay, there will be people who disagree but please hear me out!

There have been tensions between the blogging and booktube community for a while now. I’ve noticed the strain between the two, and I know I’m not the only one.

Booktubing is a relatively new phenomenon, only cropping up in the last few years, whereas blogs have been going for a lot longer. Both attract different audiences, booktubers usually with the larger audience, with some booktubers having over 50,000 + subscribers. That doesn’t mean, though, that one is superior.

WE ARE BOTH TRYING TO DO THE SAME THING. We both love books, we both talk about books, and, other than the medium, we really do do it in the same way.

When bloggers and booktubers fall out, the faithful readers and watchers are the ones that suffer. Nobody wants drama, y’all. Unity in the community! WE ARE EQUALS, NOT ENEMIES.

The bridge needs to be gapped between the two, and I have an idea!

What I’m proposing is a regular chat – on both YouTube, Twitter and blogs so that everyone can join in – readathons that include both booktubers and bloggers, and projects that mean both groups work together to spread the word about awesome books. Projects will be announced soon, but here is the first announcement for now:

I’ll be putting together a panel of people to do a book lover liveshow in June, and if you’re a blogger or booktuber, I’d love to welcome you to the panel! There will be an equal amount of bloggers and booktubers on the panel and the conversation will also be happening on Twitter and will be transcribed to a blog for bloggers to join in with. There will be something for everyone – we’ll be discussing things both mediums have in common so nobody will be left out, and it will be an awful lot of fun. We’ll be playing games about BOOKS, discussing organisation and tips for new bloggers and booktubers.

Nurture the newbies who will one day have to welcome new people to the community. Set a good example rather than just falling out and being all drama-ish.

With bloggers and booktubers joined together, we’ll be able to reach so many more people than if we work separately. More book lovers = more people to be friends with!

UNITY IN THE COMMUNITY, YO.

More details to be revealed soon!

(If you’d like to be a part of the liveshow panel (bloggers and booktubers, no matter who you are!), you can email me at contemporaryqueen@outlook.com with your details and why you’d like to be on the panel.)

And now, on a lighter note, you can see me make a fool of myself right here:

Uncategorized

Never Say Never: Vlogging

At the start of this year I wrote a post about vlogging and why I’ll never be able to do it. Being the rebellious person that I am, I then decided to post a few book haul videos to test the waters and I’m now trying to take the big step into booktubing on a permanent basis.

Making the decision to booktube is definitely something I think you should think carefully about. In January, when I wrote the post, I wasn’t at a stage where I was confident enough to show my face to the camera and I just wouldn’t have known what to talk about.

I’ve been watching booktubers for a while now and so I’ve picked up on a few things that I think you should be aware of when vlogging. I’m in no way an expert so please don’t take my word as the law. Just have fun!

1. Good lighting. 

This is a really important one to me. There’s nothing worse than a video where you have to squint at the person talking, as I learned in the first video I ever uploaded. Yes, I was sat in a dark corner and it pains me to watch it back now.

2. Speak with confidence.

Even if you’re not feeling confident, it’s always a good idea to put on a brave face because this will make the audience feel more comfortable watching you. This will definitely come with time, though.

3. Interact with the community!

I love watching YouTube videos and they’re always nice to have on in the background when I’m writing reviews or commenting on blogs. Just leaving a comment after I’ve watched a video makes me happy and I know it makes my day when I see that somebody has taken the time to leave a reply or comment on one of my own vlogs.

4. Have fun!

When I’m blogging, I sometimes feel pressure but, so far, I haven’t felt this when booktubing and so it makes it so much more enjoyable. I’m hoping that this won’t change and will try my best to keep it from happening because I’m loving it! Booktubing is fun and I’d love to share that with you all.

Booktubing is becoming more and more popular and there are so many channels out there now. I went on a massive subscribing spree the other day and I love seeing new videos pop up in my feed.

Leanna from Daisy Chain Books wrote a great post that mentioned vlogging  and Melissa from Harley Bear Book Blog did too. Check them out!

Here are a few things I’m going to be doing on my channel:

 

Are you a vlogger? Would you like to be? Do you like watching booktube videos? Let me know below!