Is BookTok Actually About Reading?

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2024

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Most people who complain about BookTok have never seen a BookTok.” Alyssa Morris drops that insight about two-thirds of the way through the episode, and it’s such a good point that I almost want to make it the title of the episode. Most people have an idea of what BookTok is (people talking about books on TikTok) but no real understanding of the immensity of BookTok. It’s talking about what you’ve read, sure, but it’s also about recommendations, and performance, and the aesthetics of reading culture — and the criticisms of it have a lot more to do with weird ideas about what reading (or talking about reading!) “should” look like.

If you’re interested in reading culture, you’ll be interested in this episode — full stop. Let it surprise you! And make sure to check out Alyssa’s BookTok newsletter, which has quickly become one of my favorite reads of the week.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Anne. We're making today's full episode free for everyone. There are no ads and you'll get the
0:06.6	whole Ask An Anything part of the show. So if you want to join the ranks of paid subscribers,
0:11.8	so you always get the full ad-free episode, along with access to the discussion thread, head to
0:17.5	culturestudypod.substack.com. We are so close to making the show completely sustainable,
0:23.6	which means that basically we're so close to paying Melody a very sustainable rate and not
0:30.0	always being like, we have enough to pay Melody through two months from now. And that's only
0:35.7	possible because people become monthly and yearly subscribers.
0:40.4	So if it matters to you that there are podcasts in the world where no one is telling us like,
0:45.9	oh, no, we shouldn't talk about that or like asking us to talk about other weird things,
0:49.7	or, you know, we can reject any ad that asks us to say like vaguely phobic things about
0:56.1	shapewear.
0:56.8	If you want a podcast like that in your life and you want it to keep going, please consider
1:02.0	subscribing today.
1:03.3	So one more thing.
1:05.5	Melody and I talked a lot about what kind of episode could possibly come out the morning after election night.
1:14.8	There's no right answer. There is no episode. It's just impossible. So we're taking next week
1:22.1	off. No matter what, it's going to be a very intense week. So if you're a listener in the U.S., please go vote.
1:30.1	I am sure that you are already in the process of doing so, but we'll see you again in two weeks.
1:37.0	Okay, on with the show.
1:39.9	There's definitely several formats that booktakers use to talk about books.
1:45.2	So commonly we have yes, no, maybe videos.
1:48.5	We have hype level videos where they talk about books that are criminally underhyped,
	...

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