Finding Yourself Again in Books: BookTube & Religion with Rachel

Reading is not an isolated activity. While the consumption of words is between the reader and the page, communities have formed around written work since ink first dripped onto a page. YouTube was one of the first social media platforms to host an online book community: “BookTube,” as it soon was dubbed. There, people with a stack of books and a video camera could create and post anything relating to books. I sat down with Rachel, a BookTuber and content creator, and asked about her experience with her online book community and how it’s bled into other social media platforms.

LEX: I stumbled upon your YouTube about a year ago, either through Twitter or TikTok, and there was a screen cap of one of your videos talking about a book that was “Christian fundamentalism subterfuge,” or something like that. I’m an ex-fundie so I watched it and was like, “Wow, I really like this gal because she knows what she’s talking about!”

RACHEL: Thank you, it’s good to hear from somebody in the ex-fundie club! [Laughs.]

LB: That’s a big reason why I wanted to interview you. I see that you’re really spread out across a lot of different social media platforms, but I want to focus on your YouTube channel. Can you talk about your experience with online book communities? How you got started, what made you start posting on YouTube, things like that.

RP: I got started in the BookTube community because I was a stay-at-home mom. I had just had my second kid. He was around 3 months old, and all I really had for myself at the time was books; because you kind of lose yourself when you become a parent, especially a stay-at-home parent. You sort of feel like you have no humanity outside of being a caregiver all the time. It felt like my only name was “Mom,” and I didn’t know “Rachel” outside of motherhood. I was looking for a way to have a thing that was just for me.

I was reading a lot, and I would wonder if anybody was talking about the book that I was reading. I was reading a book called Furyborn by Claire Legrand, and I was like, “Is anybody else talking about this, or am I the only person on Earth who likes it?” I went on YouTube and searched “Furyborn by Claire Legrand,” and I came across Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. I was like, “Wait, there are YouTube channels purely dedicated to talking about books? I could do that!” I made a Twitter account and was looking at all these people talking about books; I had no idea that this was a thing that people did, where it was this very niche group of people who were talking about books with each other all the time. I was like, “This is it. This is the thing that I can do that is just for me. It doesn’t have anything to do with parenting, and I can have this one thing to myself.”

LB: When did you start your account?

RP: I think June of 2019.

LB: Wow, you’ve been doing this for about three years. It sounds like you weren’t part of any other online book communities before you joined BookTube.

RP: Not really. There are Facebook groups for books, but I didn’t realize what Book Twitter was until I joined Twitter. I’ve noticed that the spaces across social media for books are so different, and I’ve really gotten a lot more out of being on Book Twitter and Book Instagram than I have from being in those Facebook groups.

LB: How did you end up pivoting towards talking about religion and your time as a Christian fundie? What made you want to delve into that? I know that can be really scary.

RP: Honestly, I don’t know. I think at one point I was like, “This is fun,” but when you first start your channel you feel very nervous, and you feel like you have to perform for other people. I wasn’t very myself, which is very sarcastic and pretty blunt. I wanted to be more myself, so I wanted to start talking about things that I had experienced and to open up my channel to talk about more than just fantasy books.

I decided to do a couple of videos. One was about why I stopped being vegan, and the other was about why I stopped being a Christian. From there I was like, “I could talk about this all the time,” because they actually kind of went hand in hand. It was actually deeply freeing for me to say on the internet, “I left fundie-land.” And then to have that resonate with so many people; I was like, “Oh, there’s an opportunity here for me to have this conversation with other people, and it’s very helpful for all of us involved.” And I thought, “Well, shit, I need to hone in on that.”

LB: How has the reception been on YouTube, both with your ex-fundie videos versus your book videos? In general, how has the community been for you on BookTube?

RP: Pretty good. The BookTube community is predominantly people like me, who lean left, lean agnostic. It’s rare that you come across somebody who’s not like that in the BookTube community, and they tend to stick to themselves. I’ve had great feedback from people who are actually in the community; it’s outside the community where I get upset men who come to my comments and say stupid stuff.

LB: Throughout the past three years that you’ve been posting videos and talking about books, do you think that you have influenced people to buy this or that book? Or stay away from this or that book—I mean, obviously stay away from certain books, because I know that I fall into that category. But do you think you have had some sort of an influence on what people read or what they gravitate towards?

RP: Yes, and it’s funny because I didn’t realize how much of an influence I had until that Christian fundie subterfuge book. What happened was I found out that she had used a fake name to try to publish her book to a secular audience. On Twitter, I said, “Hey, just FYI!” as a warning, and it got shared like 800 times. I was not expecting people to be coming out in droves to go to Goodreads and say, “Don’t read this,” which is not what I was trying to do. I was just trying to warn people, because I believe very strongly that people have the right to know what kind of books they’re getting into, especially if they’re going to pay for them. It was weird, because I saw people almost verbatim saying what I had said about the book, and that was really odd to me. Sometimes it can be kind of awkward to know the influence that you can have about books on the internet. Other times I’ll post a video about an indie book, and I’ll get told, “Oh, I just went and bought this because of you!” Which I think is great, and I’m glad people are supporting indie authors.

LB: And then have you been influenced by any creator to buy a book yourself?

RP: All the time. There are a lot of books that I don’t know if I ever would have picked up if it weren’t for another creator. The joy in BookTube is that sometimes one of us finds a gem, and we’re able to share that gem with everybody else; we all get this collective joy out of it. One of my friends in the book community—she doesn’t do videos, but she talks on Twitter quite a bit—her favorite book is The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. She got our entire friend group in the book community to read this book, and we all loved it. It was a book that I had put on my back burner, and I would eventually get to it. I didn’t really know what it was about, but I thought it looked fine. But then, she was so passionate about it that all of us ended up buying it and reading it and loving it.

LB: What other kind of book creators would you recommend to other people besides yourself?

RP: Oh, my gosh—so many. I think one of the biggest resources on BookTube are actual librarians who are in the community. One librarian is Ashley from Bookish Realm. She has one of the best channels and is so informative. She does so many different things that I think are so important, like talking about children’s books and not just Young Adult and Adult. She talks about any sort of discourse that comes up in the book community; she’s also a fellow mom, so I enjoy seeing how she balances doing BookTube and being a parent. And with her being a librarian, you get a lot from that perspective. I think that her channel is just such a find for anybody that comes across it. And then, if you like people who are snarkier like me, Liene from Liene’s Library is super sarcastic and rant reads a lot like me.

LB: That’s wonderful. [Laughs.] I guess I’ll throw another social media platform into the mix, but how has it been going from Twitter and YouTube to now adding TikTok into your realm of content?

RP: It’s been interesting; TikTok is really tough for me. I had a TikTok account but then it got taken down actually because of an author. So I had to rebuild a new TikTok account from the ground up which was really frustrating. If I talk about anything controversial on YouTube, I get paid for it in ad revenue; but on TikTok, I might get reported and have my whole account taken down again. It’s very tough because you have to learn a whole new set of rules and understanding of how to market yourself so that you can lead people back to where you do your primary content, which for me is YouTube. Not only do I have to make and edit these YouTube videos, but then I have to make smaller versions of them to put on TikTok and hope that that will draw people to my YouTube channel. It’s been a little difficult, but it’s also been fun. I’ve met a lot of creators that I otherwise would have never met, and I have been introduced to books that I never would have heard about. I’m thankful for the relationships I’ve cultivated because of TikTok.

LB: That right there is the whole premise of my project. I really wanted to push against the idea that reading is an isolating activity—which it can be if you make it that way—but I’ve personally met so many people just through the love of books and talking about books and different aspects of them.

RP: Absolutely. People say social media is always bad, but I think that in having social media I have had a community where otherwise I would have had loneliness as a parent. The book community didn’t further isolate me; instead, it opened up a possibility for me to have friendships where otherwise I was pretty off on my own.

LB: Now that you’re three years into making videos and you’re spread across different social media platforms, what do you see in the future for your YouTube channel in the next two or three years?

RP: I feel like I just recently got where I would really like to be. I just hit all the goals that I have been saying for the past year and a half that I really wanted to hit. So, I feel like now I’m in the best parts of this; I’m just sort of coasting, and I’d really like to continue that. However, I feel like I’m not that great at reviewing. I opened up commissions to beta read, and people will commission me to read their books. I find that extremely helpful because I am learning how to type out feedback letters where I give in-depth feedback directly to authors about what I experienced while reading their book, what I think that they could do better on, and what I think they need to hone in on. Where their strengths are, where their misses are, things like that. So, for now I’m just going to try to continue to be a better reviewer. But I hit all my goals, so I’m really happy.

LB: Well, congratulations! That’s always exciting. I really like what you said about just coasting for now. I think a lot of people need to coast.

My final question is, what book have you read recently that you would recommend to me, or what’s your favorite book? Or just recommend me a book or two that you have recently read that you think I would like or you would recommend to anybody.

RP: While I didn’t grow up Catholic, the way that religious trauma is talked about in The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo is so good. Her writing is immaculate. Elizabeth Acevedo is the greatest out there doing it right now. The way that she’s able to convey emotions in her writing is truly powerful. And then speaking of power, Babel by R.F. Kuang—oh, my God. It’s immaculate; it’s perfect; nothing could top Babel.

LB: I have her Poppy War trilogy and Babel on my TBR list, and Lord knows when I’ll get to it—but it’s on there!

RP: Babel is taking me forever to get through because it’s so “big brain” compared to me. [Laughs.] It’s so smart and brilliant. It’s about academia, so you should read it in your off time because it’s going to relate too much for you right now.

LB: Yes, but there’s the issue of: what off time? [Laughs.]

RP: True! Like parenting, there is no off time.

LB: Are you going to do a video on Babel? Because if so, I am looking forward to that.

RP: I plan to, but when I make videos, it’s really hard to set yourself apart from everybody else, so I try to have a conversation from an angle that has not been had yet. However, with Babel, it’s really hard to do that. I’m working with some ideas and trying to think about it. Right now, I still have to type up my notes for my Ready Player One review. But yes, I do plan on reviewing Babel once I figure out what angle I want to come at it from.

You can find Rachel on YouTube at ReadsWithRachel, and you can find her everywhere else via her Linktree.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.