Recently I’ve been spending more hours reading than doing anything else.  Truth be told, this year, my reading of novels had taken a turn for the worse.  The recent books on the seller’s shelves were really doing nothing for me.  In the last couple of months, I was unable to finish the novels selected by our local monthly book club through my library because they were CRAP.

Many of them were from first time writers and I felt that they were really trying too hard to be taken seriously as authors but in the process, they lost me.

As a result, I was feeling a bit peeved that I had wasted my time reading up to 100-150 pages and they weren’t improving at all.  I battled internally whether I should just grin and bear it to finish the book or toss it aside.  The thing is though, reading a bad book means you’re going to have a bad experience which means you put off reading it and this in turn means that it’s sitting there on your bedside table taunting you.  You need to read it fully or bite the bullet and toss it aside or risk your love and joy of reading being marred.  This is what was happening to me.

Part of me wanted to feel the rush I did when I read JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.  I think some books are like drugs.  You just need to keep going back to them because there’s something about how they resonate with you.

I’m trying to find the drug again like I did with Salinger and I reasoned that I’m not going to find it reading what others think is great and that happen to be selling currently in the local book stores.  I need to dig deeper.  I need to find me some deep, existentialist, I don’t know – it’s just got to MOVE me.

I want to come out of the book a changed woman. 

I want to be emotionally moved. 

I need to feel it. 

I need to be thinking about it day and night. 

I need to have some massive crush on the character or the author or hell, someone.  I don’t care.  

I need to feel everything in it. 

I need to keep coming back to it. 

I need to see it on my library shelf and every time I see it, I need to remember how it made me feel. 

I need to be obsessed by it. 

I need to come alive by it.

Do you get what I’m saying?

There’s few writers who can do that for me and now, I’m obsessively reading just to “find that fix”.  It’s like some bloody drug.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been checking out some reviews of books by various “Book Tubers” but they all seem to suited for a younger audience reviewing young adult fiction.  There are a few I do follow and I’ll list those below however, in the last few weeks I stumbled upon a great YouTube channel called Better Than Food  by Clifford Sargent and it’s fair to say, he’s re-inspired my love for good books.  In fact, I tossed aside the crap that I was wasting my time on and I started trawling through his videos to create myself a decent reading list.

When I saw his introduction video, I was sold. He reads books “where I can measure my life before and after I read them”.

Exactly.  This. (*fist pump*)

Not only is he easy on the eye to look at (I’m hoping I can say but I said it, so there – I’m a 50+ year old woman so don’t deny me the pleasure of looking at handsome men – especially ones who read great books! – ha ha), but that aside, he’s sharing these amazing books – and I LOVE the way he reviews them.

Books that offer to give me “that hit” that I’m looking for.

His reviews aren’t negative but they’re thought provoking to the point you want to investigate who the authors are and read into them.  Suffice to say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed going through his videos and then making purchases for books or ordering from the library.  His is the first and main channel I will go to for books and ask myself, “what’s Clifford reading this week?”

So apart from Clifford’s reviews, who else am I watching for book recommendations?

Britta Bohler who I love!  Britta is wonderful and consistently shares the books she’s reading, the books she’s read, the books that have flopped.  She has all sorts of different “games” which I assume “booktubers” like such as Book Hauls or monthly themes where you read a certain author and some such.  That’s okay but I don’t usually participate in these things myself however, based on her reviews, methinks we would like different books to each other.  Some books that she has reviewed she loved, meanwhile I didn’t like and vice versa.

You win some, you lose some but like I said, “I’m looking for the fix”.

Thirdly, when I have some time, I’ll check out what Jen Campbell although her books are usually ones that don’t stand out for me – however, you just never know.  I have been inspired with one or two and besides, I like people who talk about books.  They’re my kinda people.

Finally there is Jaclyn who is an Australian living in Texas and who has the Six Minutes for Me YouTube book review channel where she reviews mainly Australian novels.  I’ll tap into her YouTube channel just to see what’s

So I tried my hand at reviewing my own books on YouTube but I just can’t do them justice compared to the others but I’ll stick with it. I have zero goals out of these except for sharing my thoughts on video…

What about you?  Do you love to read as much as I do?

What’s been one book that has utterly moved you or that you have become obsessed by it?

Watching Clifford’s channel has made me spend over $200 in books already, discovered Charles Bukowski, re-inspired my need to finish Heart of Darkness by Conrad Joseph and I’m looking forward to getting more of those book highs.

Bring it on!