Top 5 Tuesday #18: Fav Booktubers

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm.

This week’s topic:

Top 5 favorite booktube channels

I don’t watch booktube as much as I used to, but I still visit my favorite channels every now and then for recommendations or just to see what’s up. When I first learned about booktube, I was so taken by it that I nearly bought every book that sounded appealing to me. I overstuffed my bookshelves during that frenzied period and overspent on books.

Although I no longer do that, there’s something about booktube that gets me easily excited about a book. I guess the booktuber’s enthusiasm is infectious. Plus, it’s easier to sense a person’s excitement for a particular product when watching them tell you about it than reading what they say about it. Well, anyway. Here are the booktubers whose channels I always return to.

Rincey Reads

Rincey Reads is one of the first booktube channels I followed. She reads a variety of genres and gives honest reviews of them. Sometimes her reviews get me interested in a book and other times I check her channel to see what she thinks about a book I’ve read. She’s a great one to follow and can also be found on the Book Riot booktube channel.

The video above is her review of Angie Cruz’s Dominicana, which I recently read and liked.

Reads: a variety of genres but leans more toward mysteries; often reads adult novels but will read YA; also reads nonfiction and comics

Jean’s Bookish Thoughts

I love Jean’s content. She is so smart and so well read. Like Rincey, she reads a variety of genres and I can depend on her reviews to be honest as well. I visit her for recommendations and love her themed book recommendation videos. She is a classics scholar and would sometimes talk about classical references in the stories she reads, like the Harry Potter books. She’s a great one to follow as well, and she also hosts a podcast called That’s Ancient History that’s all about antiquity.

The video above is from her Harry Potter and classics videos, where she talks about classical references in the series.

Reads: a variety of genres for all ages; enjoys fantasy, especially if there are dragons; also reads nonfiction, comics, poetry, and picture books

Sam’s Nonsense

I love Sam’s channel. She’s one of the first booktubers I started following too, but she has since stopped making new videos. She reads mostly high fantasy and classic novels, but sometimes reads nonfiction as well. Of course, she is responsible for introducing me to Robin Hobb’s books and getting me hooked on them. Her love and enthusiasm for Hobb’s work was infectious.

The video above is a discussion of her reread of Assassin’s Apprentice, the first book in Hobb’s extensive Realm of the Elderlings series, which is broken up into several trilogies.

Reads: mostly adult fantasy and classic novels, but will sometimes read YA and middle grade

Jen Campbell

Jen’s channel has such diverse content. She is a poet who has also written collections of short stories and children’s picture books, and she also hosts a podcast called Books with Jen and sometimes runs writing workshops. She has a variety of content on her channel — honest book reviews, book recommendations for all ages, author interviews, text analysis, deep dives into fairytales, and much more.

The video above is from her “Fairy Tales with Jen” series where she does a deep dive into a fairytale: it’s history, where it might have originated, how it may have changed over the years, etc.

Reads: a variety of genres for all ages, but leans toward fantasy especially those that hint at fairytales; lots of poetry; picture books and nonfiction

My Name Is Marines

Marines’s channel is another one with great, diverse content. She reads a variety of genres for mostly adults and YAs and present well-rounded discussions of the books she reads. She also runs the Snark Squad blog, where she co-hosts a podcast that discusses books and other pop culture content.

The video above is a discussion about abusive relationships in After by Anna Todd.

Reads: a variety of genres for all ages, but leans toward YA

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That’s it for me.

Hope you’ll check out these booktubers.