 What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. I'm currently sitting here surrounded by pretty much every book that I own. And by the end of this video, pretty much all of the books behind me are going to be packed away to be taken to Lifeline. I already had this video planned for quite a while because I just moved house recently and I knew I wasn't going to keep most of these books. But now seems like a better time than any because a conversation that keeps coming up on Booktube came up again recently and that is the consumerism on Booktube discussion. Hold up. I want to give my opinion on it. Not that not that anyone asked. I think there is a genuine discussion to be had about the amount of books or I suppose the more appropriate thing to say would be the mentality around how much books that we are supposed to buy and purchase as a book community. But I'll get into that a bit later first before I do anything. I want to show you the books that I actually plan on keeping because while I am giving away all of these books around me, I don't know how many there are. While I am getting rid of all them, I am going to be keeping some. By the way, look at this, hang on. Look at how long this microphone cord is. It's actually ridiculous. Hello. Okay, so I'll show you the books I'm going to keep. Hang on. I've got to do the 10 minute walk back. Make yourself comfy. This is probably going to be a bit of a long video. So the books I'm keeping, I'm keeping for a number of reasons, either sentimental value I've had them for a really long time and I just don't want to get rid of them or I spent a lot of money on them and I don't really want to give that away or it might even be a book that I want my family and friends to read so I'd like to have it on hand. The essential stories of HP Lovecraft, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Treasure Island, Charles Dickens Complete Ghost Stories, Dr. Jurgler Mr. Hyde, Gulliver's Travels, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. This is one of my favourite books, by the way, Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. I'm keeping this because this is the book that made me realise Joe Hill is one of my favourite authors and at this time is probably my favourite author. The Three Musketeers by Alexandra Del Mar. This is probably, I might even go so far as to say my favourite classic ever. I feel like the story of the Musketeers is absolutely timeless. It's a great adventure story. You can re-read it like a million times and it still never loses its charm. It's just, I love this story. Race by Toni Morrison Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Patton. This one is not in good condition. When I picked it up it was actually already a little bit rough but the cover is coming off so I'm gonna have to look into getting it re-glued and fixed up a bit. Great Expectations by Charles Dick. You know what, actually, nah. The Day After Tomorrow by Robert Heinlen Weathering Heights Emily Bronte The Sherlock Holmes Collection. This is one of my favourite books that I own, not just for the story. I do love Sherlock Holmes. Probably more than most other fictional characters but just because it is a beautiful book, gold trimmed and has that really rustic old feel. The same kind of goes for the Robert Louise Stevenson Collection I have as well. The Illustrated Edition of A Monster Calls, absolutely beautiful story and really beautiful book. The illustrations in this are fantastic plus it has a lot of behind the scenes stuff from the movie as well which is pretty cool. Nosferatu by Joe Hill I'm keeping this one because my good friend Natasha over at my reading is odd got this for me and it is actually signed by the man himself so this is a very special, special book to me. The Lord of the Rings, I'm keeping for obvious reasons. My small travel copy of the Sherlock Holmes stories and of course the Hobbit, the book that really started it all for me, my passion in writing and fantasy. This book right here, this is probably the most special book to me out of all the ones I own. That's it, that's all of the books I'm keeping. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be packing these books into the boxes and I'm going to show you what they are as we go but I'm not going to be reading out the titles or anything like that because it would just take, it would take way too long. And while I'm packing them and showing you what the books are, we'll have this discussion about booktube consumerism as it were. Get that zoomed in there nice and close. So the first thing I want to point out is that I'm not giving away all these books or donating all these books because of the topic of consumerism on booktube. This is actually something I have planned to do pretty much as soon as we moved in. I just haven't gotten around to it yet and it felt like good timing to have this conversation while I'm doing this because they kind of go hand in hand. Even though my reason for getting rid of the books may not explicitly be because of this conversation. The main reason I'm getting rid of them is pretty simply just that I don't really have a whole lot of space for them anymore. I did move into a bigger house but I still don't really have the space to build my own kind of personal library, which is fine. I don't really mind, to be honest. And also I'm just not that attached to, you know, holding onto these books that I don't particularly care for anymore. That's just not my personal preference. I just don't really see the point anyway. This one is the poems of T.S. Elliot. Poetry just, I don't know, never really did it for me. I'm just, I guess I'm just not a poetry guy. I've tried, it just doesn't work for me. It doesn't really do anything for me. Now I could summarize this whole conversation by saying quite simply, you know, let people spend their money however they want. Let them buy as many books as they want. In a nutshell, that's my personal stance on pretty much all of this. However, I don't think we should so quickly dismiss some of the genuine criticisms about, you know, buying, let's say, an excessive amount of books. The word excessive in quotation marks there. Because some points have been brought up that I think are good points when it comes to buying lots and lots of books. And we're kind of brushing them off with the argument, you know, it's their money, let them spend it however they want. We should still be having the conversation is what I'm saying. You might remember quite a while ago, Mary Kondo. She's a Japanese woman with a Netflix show about basically reducing the clutter in your home. You could say she gives you tips and advice on leaning more towards a bit of a minimalistic lifestyle. That's her whole thing. If you really boiled it down, it would basically just be getting rid of things that you don't have an immediate need for or you don't find yourself using on a regular basis. Now, Mary Kondo kind of said the same thing about books when it comes to books and there was a lot of outrage and I do understand that. Me personally, I don't really think... Well, I think a lot of the claims about her intentions when she said that, I don't think that's really what she meant. When she said, you know, get rid of books that don't spark joy, I don't think she meant quite literally just the emotion joy. I think she was just saying it in the exact same way. She says that about literally everything else that she encourages you to get rid of. At least when I heard it personally, to me, it seemed like she was saying, if you want to have this lifestyle, the whole, you know, the whole point of my show, my Netflix show, if you want to have this more minimalistic lifestyle, you should probably look into getting rid of books that don't spark any kind of emotion in you, that you don't really have any particular feelings for, books that you're completely indifferent about. And to me, that just seems like a fine sentiment. I mean, it's not like she was going out and telling people who didn't want to live this more minimalistic lifestyle to do that. You know, this was advice she was giving to people who were actively following her for advice on having a more minimalistic lifestyle. So it makes sense to me that she would have applied that same strategy that she uses on everything else to books as well. It just makes sense to me is what I'm saying. So the biggest point I think that can be made about, again, in quotation marks, excessive book buying is the environmental impact. I definitely don't think this is a topic of discussion we should be dismissing. This is a topic that I think we should be discussing, at least in some capacity. Let's say we compare physical books to e-readers, assuming that you don't read e-books on your phone. Let's say you go out and buy an e-reader. The greenhouse gases created by manufacturing just one e-reader is actually about 100 times more than a physical book. And while that sounds pretty insane and might make you feel pretty validated about buying physical books, it's like, yeah, it's better for the environment. If I just buy the paper copies, really think about it. If you get an e-reader, you have the potential to purchase all your future books on there. We're not just talking about a hundred books. We're talking about potentially thousands. So while it might look like an immediate look anyway, that books are fine environmentally, in the long run, I think we should be taking serious consideration into their impact on climate change. Because statistically speaking, if you bought an e-reader today and bought all your future books on there, in a hundred books time, you would be leaving a better environmental footprint. However, with that said, we should also take into consideration the extra effort that goes into recycling technical waste over paper and ink. Most books are biodegradable after quite a bit of time, whereas technology like e-readers and phones, et cetera, they're a lot more difficult to dispose of in a manageable way. We should be having conversations, especially when it comes to things like the environment. And with book sales going up, physical book sales, I think we should take into consideration just how much paper is being used and the impact that can have on deforestation, et cetera. Because it's all good and well to get angry about deforestation and then go and buy a thousand books without giving it a second thought. To be clear, I'm not making any accusations. I just think it's something we should be thinking about. That's all. Another topic for discussion that comes up quite a bit when we're talking about huge book halls, et cetera, is the kind of stigma or pressure within the booktube creator community that we have to also be buying a ton of books if we wanna be seen or taken seriously in the booktube sphere. I had to get myself a chair because my knees were starting to hurt so much, so enjoy this crutch shot. You've probably noticed that it's been a long, long time. I think years, in fact, since I had a bookcase in my backdrop and my background of my videos. So it would be pretty easy for me to say that buying tons and tons of books isn't necessary to have a somewhat successful booktube channel. And I think that's true. However, I completely understand why people would feel the opposite. I know that's how I felt when I started off on booktube. I saw these massive book halls. I saw booktubers sitting in front of their own personal library of hundreds and hundreds of books. And I thought, that's what I need if I wanna be big on here, if I want people to look at me and think, wow, he reads a lot. That is a definite, definite pressure, especially with newer booktubers that I think we should talk about. I don't think it's anyone's fault because I don't think we should be shaming people for wanting to sit in front of their book collection or their library and display it, that would be silly. It makes for a nice backdrop and that's fine. And to be clear, wanting or aspiring to having your own extensive collection of books or your own personal library of books, even if it contains a lot of books that you may not like or have even read or feel that strongly about, I think that's completely fine. Of all the collective hobbies or hobbies that involve collection, I think collecting books is a great one because unlike, you know, with toys and stuff that you have to keep in glass cases as cool as that is, that's not something you can really share so much with people, but if you have your own personal library and people come over, you can let them borrow some of your books or they can really enjoy that hobby with you. I think that's a great point in defense of buying a lot of books. But again, I do think we should be talking more on Booktube about how it's not entirely necessary to be doing, you know, enormous book hauls just to be considered a Booktuber. Some people might not be happy with me saying this, but I think there is a very big focus within Booktube and the, you know, more successful channels around kind of the glamour and the aesthetic. I think we all know that, even though we don't like to really talk about it because when you say that aesthetic is one of the big parts of being a big Booktuber, people assume that what you mean is they're not good at creating content and they're only big because of their aesthetic and that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying that channels that are aesthetically pleasing and that does happen to involve owning and purchasing a lot of books, they tend to be more successful. That's just how it is. Like I said, it's no one's fault, it is what it is. But we shouldn't pretend that that's not the reality. I'm not saying Booktubers should haul less, but I think we shouldn't pretend also that it may not have a bit of a negative impact on people who can't generally afford that much stuff. I do think it could be very beneficial for the Booktube community if we all worked collectively towards making it seem not so necessary to own gigantic collections of hardbacks. So the final point that I wanna talk about that I see brought up in conversations around, you know, big book hauls is probably the conversation of supporting publishers and authors, which is obviously a fine sentiment. That's completely fine. Yes, I would love it. If we supported, you know, publishers, our authors, your local bookstores as well, that kind of stuff, absolutely, completely agree. However, I don't think we should be letting specifically publishers, not so much bookstores and authors, but I don't think we should be letting publishers completely off the hook when it comes to expecting them to adapt coming into the digital age. And I'm not saying they haven't tried to do that, because like I said, e-book sales are up enormously, which is fantastic. That's great for everyone involved. If we were to also assume that they are making the proper steps towards adapting in an age where we're trying to reduce greenhouse gases is what I'm saying. This could be done in a lot of different ways. I like reducing the price of e-books in particular because I just don't think any price over $10 for an e-book is completely reasonable, specifically talking about, you know, fiction stories, obviously, but the difference between digital books and physical books is that you're not paying for shipping, you're not paying for the physical manufacturing of the book itself. What you're paying for is data. You're paying for zeros and ones to be automatically transferred to you or into your account. That is a virtually a cost-less process. And for that reason, I think digital books should be significantly cheaper than physical books. And I think if they were as an industry standard, then people would be highly encouraged to lean towards digital books rather than paper books. And you know, that helps the environment. And like we've talked about, helps fight the stigma that having enormous collections of physical books is necessary to be considered a serious reader. In doing this, I really don't think it would hurt the publisher's pockets too bad and I don't see it having pretty much any effect on authors you wanna support as well. Let's not pretend that buying physical copies of books is the only way to support your favorite authors. It's just not, that's just not the truth. Publishers like every other business in the world at the moment should be expected to be making efforts that might come at their expense towards helping reduce the use of, you know, papers and plastics and whatever. Stuff that can be avoided and it simply can when it comes to physical books. Not that I wanna see physical books ever completely die out. And I know buying an e-reader isn't accessible to everyone for financial reasons, maybe for health reasons. I know looking at screens all days and particularly helpful for a lot of people when it comes to their health. I'm not trying to shame those people or say that this is what they should be doing. All I'm saying is that publishers should be making those options a lot more accessible. That's all. At the end of the day, if you were to take anything away from this video, just take away this short quick message and that's that I'm fine with people using their money however they want. I'm fine with people buying as many books as they want. I don't care. It really has no effect on me. It's fine. However, I don't think we should be dismissing genuine criticisms about excessive purchasing as well. That's all. Well, there it is. I still have no idea how many books that was but I am sweaty as heck. Let me know what you think about the whole, you know, consumerism on booktube discussion. At the end of the day, these have just been my personal thoughts. Like I said, I'm not in the practice of telling people what they shouldn't, shouldn't spend their money on, especially when it goes towards some kind of productive hobby like reading, but nothing should be immune to criticism. So I don't think we should be dismissing discussions about excessive purchasing that easily. That's all. Thanks guys. I'll see you in the next video. Catch ya.