As I hurtle at far too uncomfortable a pace towards my sixties, I find that there is less and less of interest to me being broadcast on television. It is remarkable really when you consider the astonishing rate at which the number of channels has proliferated in recent years, but I just find it all very very boring. Endless streams of ‘celebrities’ who I have never heard of and care nothing about parade themselves across my screen with their over-confident, in-your-face personalities, oozing insincerity as they giggle, banter and grin. I no longer trust most TV news reports. The drama tends to be both terribly slow moving and patronises me with its barely concealed ‘progressive’ political agenda. No novel can ever nowadays just be adapted straight. The screenwriter always fiddles with the plot and sometimes changes the ending too. It is unbearable to watch most adaptations, so I have just given up on them. Most ‘comedy’, at least for me, is not remotely funny. Ghastly overpaid stars like Gary Lineker, Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and Ian Hislop are a constant presence, the appearance of their very faces send me hurtling to press the off switch. I would pay a tidy sum not to watch 97% of it. I do occasionally enjoy a programme. Some documentaries are very well made and informative. I do often laugh at ‘Would I Lie To You?’, and I think ‘Long Lost Family’ is just great. But that is about all I watch now. Coverage of the world of books is just lamentable and vastly less extensive than it used to be. There is the Sky Arts book club broadcast occasionally and on the BBC Sara Cox does a valiant job on ‘Between the Covers’, but this too is ruined for me by being yet another vehicle for the same small band of celebrities to promote themselves. The radio is much better, but it is sometimes nice of an evening to put down the books I am reading and watch some television instead.
I therefore increasingly find myself – as I understand vast numbers of young people are too - gravitating to YouTube. I now watch it for vastly more hours each year than conventional television, and particularly the little corner known as ‘booktube’ which I first discovered eight years ago and have been pretty devoted to ever since.
I guess booktubers should properly be described as ‘influencers’ in that most of the time they are reviewing and recommending the books they enjoy reading. Some are clearly plugging stuff publishers have sent them and may be paying them to review, but it is not difficult to avoid these channels. Some of them are a touch pleased with themselves and seem to think viewers are interested in their ‘reading stats’. Some have irritating personalities, laden with both arrogance and cynicism. Too many take fantasy seriously as a literary genre.
But over time I have discovered a number who have vaguely similar interests to me and an authentic presentation style, and once I find them, I happily press ‘subscribe’ and follow them for years. I have spent hours and hours in the company of some booktubers, with the result that they feel like virtual friends. When, as happens from time to time, one stops uploading regular videos, I feel rather abandoned. It takes some getting over, but new discoveries soon take their place.
So which channels do I watch most? They are of two main types. First there are younger, bright sparks who are just discovering literature and the joy of serious reading and are able to enthuse charmingly about the books they read. Secondly there are much more wizened characters like myself, who have been reading for decades and enjoy looking back and talking about new publications with perspective. They are good at separating wheat from chaff and making sound reading recommendations from a position of experience. Some are astonishingly well-read.
My current favourites in the first category include Alana Estelle (Alana Estelle - YouTube), a wonderfully fearless, irreverent and opinionated young American woman who reads a lot of classics and says exactly what she thinks about everything she reads. I also watch Christy Ann Jones (Christy Anne Jones - YouTube) from Australia who takes a rather more measured approach, and another compellingly enthusiastic American called Nicole whose channel is called ‘noteworthy fiction’ (Noteworthy Fiction (Nicole) - YouTube). I also enjoy the much more low key, laid back videos posted by a younger British booktubers called Aaron Facer (Aaron Facer - YouTube). There is a channel called ‘Audrey Approved’ which is far slicker and which discusses non-fiction as well as fiction which I greatly appreciate (Audrey Approved - YouTube). Another younger booktuber who I have been watching for years is ‘Lucy the Reader’ who also talks mainly about classics (lucythereader - YouTube). She has sadly taken down her earliest videos now, I guess due to embarrassment at her seeing her teenage self on the screen. But I always found it to be a wonder of You Tube that you could watch through someone’s videos and see them growing up and maturing in their reading tastes, first discovering adult literature and enthusing about it.
The older booktubers I regularly tune in to watch include Rosamunde Bott whose channel is called ‘Books from my Bookshelf’ (Books From My Bookshelf - YouTube) and a very bouncy and well-read fellow whose channel ‘Tristan and the Classics’ has led me to read a number of books I otherwise probably would not have (Tristan and the Classics - YouTube). Ros at ‘Scally dangling about the books’ is great too (Scallydandling about the books - YouTube). In America I am always impressed by Justin at ‘Triumphal Reads’ who reads mainly non fiction of a similar ilk to me (Triumphal Reads - YouTube), John at (John David (NicholasOfAutrecourt) - YouTube) and Olive at ‘A Book Olive’ who I have been following for many years and reads both fiction and non fiction (abookolive - YouTube). I like RobertG: Reader of Books - YouTube too, and in the main, the more ponderous but interesting Greg at Another Bibliophile Reads - YouTube.
These are all my kind of people. There is a wonderfully erudite guy whose name I do not know but whose channel IdeasInHat - YouTube is thoughtful and focused on non fiction of the kind I aspire to read. Then there is Jeff Rich and his The Burning Archive - YouTube whose style of delivery is extraordinary - a very slow Aussie drawl. He recommends global histories in the main, but also some classic literature. He holds some pretty eccentric views that I do not share, but I love find his booktube videos mesmerising. I can’t explain the appeal of his personality, but I can’t stop watching him. I have been following Katie at Books and Things - YouTube for the best part of a decade now. She is wonderfully geeky and enthuses about classic literature while organising read-a-longs. Great stuff.
I follow all these people pretty assiduously, but can not say that I watch all the videos they post.
There are though three who fall into this category. A relatively recent discovery is the extraordinary Benjamin McEvoy - YouTube, who seems to me to be implausibly young to have read so much classic literature and to be able to communicate about it with such eloquence and authority. He is completely brilliant. I just love his very professionally made videos.
Also pretty slick, but much more focused on new releases is Eric Karl Anderson - YouTube, the ‘Lonesome Reader’. I spend several hours each week in his virtual company, and have very frequently read books that he recommends. So charming, so enthusiastic. He is a complete natural.
These two gentlemen are exactly the types who should be fronting mainstream book-related television shows. But sadly such programmes do not exist any more.
My number one favourite booktuber is the master himself - the great Steve Donoghue (Steve Donoghue - YouTube) who I discovered in 2016 and have been watching pretty well every evening ever since. He lives in a small flat in South Boston, works as a professional book reviewer and is extraordinarily well-read. He seems to need very little sleep and manages both to read and think deeply about several books every day. His enthusiasm is completely infectious and he talks with equal authority about fiction and non fiction. I like his lack of literary snobbery, and while he can sometimes be a touch too strident in voicing arguable opinions, I admire his preparedness to do so. He has no interest at all in following prevailing fashion. He just says exactly what he thinks. Even when you disagree with him, the immense personal charm means that he never irritates. I have read dozens and dozens of books that he has recommended over many years. He posts several videos every week, and I would miss him so very much if he ever stopped.
RIP DAVID LODGE
1935 - 1925
The novelist and English literature academic who sadly died on New Year’s day was one of my absolute favourite writers. He is one of a very few whose books I would always rush out to buy on the day of publication in hard cover. He was one of fewer still whose books I would, having purchased them, invariably put aside to read as a treat at a future date, typically while on holiday. His novels were invariably very funny, but also has depth and dealt with some serious subjects or just made fascinating observations about a certain type of (mainly) contemporary British life of a kind not so far removed from my own.
I remember reading ‘Nice Work’ at one of few times in my life that I felt really miserable. I was stuck in Harrogate one freezing cold Christmas working as a waiter in a hotel. It called itself ‘The Majestic’ but was a revolting place to work. The managers were self-serving shits, many of whom were having affairs with employees under the noses of their wives. I was separated from my family, having to work very long hours and living in my bullying boss’s bed and breakfast. I had to be up to fight other waiting staff for teaspoons to lay on my tables at the crack of dawn, and was still there late at night serving dinner. I got a little break in the afternoons, when I used to head happily to tea rooms and read David Lodge’s wonderful book. I recall that I was reading it on the day of the Lockerbie terrorise attack – just appalling – and it git me through that too. I loved it in the main because it was one of the first novels I read that was recognisably set in my world, namely among academics and industrialists in Birmingham, the city I had grown up in and which was only very thinly disguised as Rummidge in David Lodge’s novels. He did, after all, live a few streets way from my family and his characters were extraordinarily and authentically well-drawn.
I remember reading the even funnier ‘Changing Places’ while working a few years earlier in a second hand bookshop located quite close to the Birmingham University Campus. This one concerns an exchange arrangement where by a rather conservative and shabby British Eng Lit academic called Philip Swallow swaps places and lives temporarily with a hot shot American professor called Maurice Zapp. It is a perfect set up for finely observed and gently satirical comedy. I just loved it. Much more recently I was pleased to see Maurice Zapp turning up in another author’s book, attending a bizarre conference on some American campus in Laurent Binet’s marvellous blending of fact and fiction, ‘The Seventh Function of Language’. Both books are among my favourites. It was Maurice Zapp’s appalled reaction to the dingy life of UK academics, and life in 1970s Rummidge that made it so joyous to read. “Even the weather forecast on television seemed to be some kind of spoof” was a line I remember loving.
I later read all David Lodge’s books soon after they came out and always enjoyed them hugely. I read some of his lighter works of literary criticism and autobiographies too. But I have left the earliest novels to savour later, and I think as I now enter my sixtieth year, it is time pick one. Like bringing up a cherished bottle laid down in a wine cellar for future consumption years later, the time has come to take one of my three remaining unread Lodge novels from my shelves and enjoy it at leisure.
