Archaeologist Digs BookTube #booktubenewbietag

This post is based on a video from my YouTube channel.

BookTube is a wonderful place where book lovers can chat about books. In starting my YouTube channel, I will create content about books too. This post contains the YouTube video where I do the “BookTube Newbie” community tag, relevant links, and a full video transcript.

YouTube Video

BookTube Newbie Tag Background

The “BookTube Newbie” tag, also called the “New To BookTube” tag, was created by YouTuber Brenda C. (channel no longer exists). She had 7 questions in her original tag and other YouTubers have added their own questions over the years.

I answered ten questions based on lists I found on BookTube Wiki and Words and Other Malarky. Here are the questions I answered:

1. Why did you start this channel?
2. What are some fun and unique things you can bring to BookTube?
3. What are you most excited about for this channel?
4. Why do you love reading?
5. What book or series got you into reading?
6. What questions would you ask your favorite BookTubers?
7. What challenges do you think starting a YouTube channel will be the hardest to overcome?
8. When did you start reading?
9. Where do you read?
10. What kind of books do you like to read?

YouTube Video Transcript

Here you will find the complete transcript of the video in the previous section. There are time stamps for every minute if you want to navigate to a certain part.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. In today’s video, I’m gonna be doing the new to BookTube tag.

Now, if you’re new here, my name is Smiti and I’m an archaeologist, and I’m also an avid book lover.

I really enjoy watching new to BookTube videos, so in joining the community, I thought I’d do this tag as well. Now, if you’re not familiar with this tag, I’ll link more information in the description, but let’s get into it.

Question 1

So question number one, why did you start this channel?

 So I started this channel to create engaging content around archaeology, life and career design, and anything else that I might be interested in. And one of those things is books. So while this isn’t an exclusive book channel, I hope to talk about books fairly frequently on here.

Question 2

Question number two, what are some fun and unique things you can bring to BookTube?

So I think the most obvious answer to this one is that I’m an archaeologist. So hopefully my training and experiences could lend itself to some fun and unique perspectives. , I’m also a mom. I like to play soccer. I love donuts. I really like to try to do art. I started doing that last year I kind of feel like I’m filling [00:01:00] out a dating profile even though I’m happily married. So yeah, those are some of the fun and unique things I think I could bring to BookTube.

Question 3

So now on to question number three. What are you most excited for about this new channel? I am just excited to get going. I am new to Booktube, but I’m also really new to YouTube and I’ve been thinking about doing a YouTube channel for a long time and I just finally did it. And yeah, it’s a bit painful in the beginning, you know, editing yourself, hearing yourself speak.

But I hope the content’s engaging and that, you know, it’s useful, informative, engaging, all that. So I hope to just improve with every video. But yeah, just really excited to be here.

Question 4

So onto question number four, why do you love reading?

 So I think my reason for loving reading has changed throughout the years. So I’m gonna speak to my most recent love for reading, and that happened about a year ago. A couple years back I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and I have been slowly building out my depression toolkit.

So that means just tools I pull on and use when I might feel like I’m sinking into a low [00:02:00] or might be coming up against a depressive flare up. And I found that reading has been super helpful in getting my brain to a bit of a calmer state. So sometimes I might read before I go to bed, uh, just to calm my brain down, or I might read first thing in the morning just so I have like something positive to start the day out with. If I need to zone out for a bit reading is another tool for that. So it’s been really great to engage with reading again, and I just so appreciate that I can use it in my depression toolkit and it’s a tool that brings about joy, which is a big deal for me.

Question 5

So onto question five, what book or series got you into reading? So in full transparency, when I was in kindergarten, I really wanted to know when Sesame Street was on. So I was really motivated to learn how to read so I could read the TV guide that came in the weekly newspaper. So I would say the Washington Post’s paper TV guide was the series that got me into reading.

Question 6

So onto question [00:03:00] number six, what questions would you ask your favorite BookTubers?

Since I’m at the beginning of my YouTube journey, most of my questions would be, tell me more about, uh, because I just wanna know more about people’s processes and how they go about doing things, especially when it comes to book content. So to, with Cindy, I would ask, can you tell me more about your creative process?

To Jesse on YouTube. I would probably ask, can you tell me more about how you collect your thoughts, especially when you’re gonna do more of a social critique. To a Book Olive, I would probably ask, can you tell me more about how you go about selecting the nonfiction books you wanna read?

So yeah, those would be the questions I would ask to any book YouTuber who would be willing to get on a call with me to talk about their process.

Question 7

Question number seven, what challenges do you think starting a BookTube channel will be the hardest to overcome?

So I think the hardest thing for me is going to be negative reviews. I think it’s really important to state why you might not have liked something, and I’m a bit more comfortable with talking about social critiques, but I think it’s going to be a challenge to talk about books that I just didn’t connect with, especially if they’re coming [00:04:00] from emerging authors who might be part of historically underrepresented groups.

So the way I’m going about dealing with this is just really being intentional about articulating why I might not have liked something, and then whoever’s watching can make up their own mind and do their own research.

Question 8

Question number eight. When did you start reading? Like I said before, it was around kindergarten and I really wanted to know when Sesame Street was on

Question 9

number nine. Where do you read? I read at home, I read on the plane. I consider audio books reading as well. So that happens in the car too. Pretty much anywhere. I have a bit of quiet and space I’ll read there.

Question 10

So finally we’re at question 10, which is, what kind of books do you like to read?

I like to read a variety of books. I really value artful writing. Clear writing.

I like really good stories, but I also like character driven books. Honestly, I think my favorite type of books are mixed genre books. So books that pull from like different genres and mix it up in a really artful way.

Outro

 So if you’ve made it to the end of this video and you’re curious about my [00:05:00] take on some actual books, be sure to check out this video up here about my ranking of nine recent books that I’ve read, and I offer a ranking and a rating and I give you a rationale as to why.

So that’s all for today’s video, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.