Ruby Granger | Is BookTok Too Obsessed with Aesthetics? @RubyGranger8 | Uploaded August 2024 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
Thank you so much for watching and, as I say, I would love to hear your thoughts. This perspective is not meant to be new and avant-garde - so many of us integrally and intuitively know that the book-object can carry meaning - but I just wanted to resituate this thinking to look at BookTok anew...
I also want to say a huge thank you to the TikTok creators who agreed to be featured in this video. I hugely appreciate their support, and would encourage you to check out their wonderful accounts:
@sophi3saur
@authorlianacincotti
@hawthornandvinebindery
@loverofpages
REFERENCES
“Accessory”. Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com/word/accessory.
Bramley, Ellie Violet. “In the Instagram age, you actually can judge a book by its cover”. The Guardian, 18th April 2021, theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/18/in-the-instagram-age-you-actually-can-judge-a-book-by-its-cover
Darnton, Robert. ‘“What Is the History of Books” Revisited,’ in Modern Intellectual History 4.3 (2007), 495-508
Hackel, Heidi. Reading Material in Early Modern England. Cambridge UP, 2005.
Macray, William Dunn. Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford: With a Notice of the Earlier Library of the University. Clarendon Press, 1890, p 67 and 467.
Nelson, Maggie. Bluets. Wave Books, 2009.
Ozment, Kate. ‘Rationale for Feminist Bibliography’, in Textual Cultures 13.1 (2020), 149–178 DOI:10.14434/textual.v13i1.30076
Pearson, David. English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800. British Library, 2005.
Taylor, Helen. Why Women Read Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Thomas-Corr, Johanna. “Without women, the novel would die: discuss”. The Guardian, December 2019, theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/07/why-women-love-literature-read-fiction-helen-taylor.
“The Instagrammable Book Covers List”. Penguin Random House. penguinrandomhouse.com/the-read-down/the-instagrammable-book-covers-list
ALSO TAKE A LOOK AT...
“16th-century Elizabethan embroidered binding”. Aa.6.52. St Johns College, Cambridge, joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/early_books/elizabeth.htm.
“Queen Elizabeth’s Geneva Bible”. Bodleain Library, Facebook, 1st January 2023, facebook.com/watch/?v=683278910183926.
Find me elsewhere:
instagram: @_rubygranger
tiktok: @rubygranger8
Pumpkin Productivity (my stationery company): bit.ly/3wgsR85
Timestamps:
0:00 intro
0:33 reading as a visual thing
2:38 our tendency to demean visuals & tiktok
6:01 booktok centralises the book-object
7:40 setting this within seventeenth-century book culture
10:45 linking this to special editions today
11:45 is this criticism gendered?
13:18 the importance of the book-object
14:04 outro
Thank you so much for watching and, as I say, I would love to hear your thoughts. This perspective is not meant to be new and avant-garde - so many of us integrally and intuitively know that the book-object can carry meaning - but I just wanted to resituate this thinking to look at BookTok anew...
I also want to say a huge thank you to the TikTok creators who agreed to be featured in this video. I hugely appreciate their support, and would encourage you to check out their wonderful accounts:
@sophi3saur
@authorlianacincotti
@hawthornandvinebindery
@loverofpages
REFERENCES
“Accessory”. Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com/word/accessory.
Bramley, Ellie Violet. “In the Instagram age, you actually can judge a book by its cover”. The Guardian, 18th April 2021, theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/18/in-the-instagram-age-you-actually-can-judge-a-book-by-its-cover
Darnton, Robert. ‘“What Is the History of Books” Revisited,’ in Modern Intellectual History 4.3 (2007), 495-508
Hackel, Heidi. Reading Material in Early Modern England. Cambridge UP, 2005.
Macray, William Dunn. Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford: With a Notice of the Earlier Library of the University. Clarendon Press, 1890, p 67 and 467.
Nelson, Maggie. Bluets. Wave Books, 2009.
Ozment, Kate. ‘Rationale for Feminist Bibliography’, in Textual Cultures 13.1 (2020), 149–178 DOI:10.14434/textual.v13i1.30076
Pearson, David. English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800. British Library, 2005.
Taylor, Helen. Why Women Read Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Thomas-Corr, Johanna. “Without women, the novel would die: discuss”. The Guardian, December 2019, theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/07/why-women-love-literature-read-fiction-helen-taylor.
“The Instagrammable Book Covers List”. Penguin Random House. penguinrandomhouse.com/the-read-down/the-instagrammable-book-covers-list
ALSO TAKE A LOOK AT...
“16th-century Elizabethan embroidered binding”. Aa.6.52. St Johns College, Cambridge, joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/early_books/elizabeth.htm.
“Queen Elizabeth’s Geneva Bible”. Bodleain Library, Facebook, 1st January 2023, facebook.com/watch/?v=683278910183926.
Find me elsewhere:
instagram: @_rubygranger
tiktok: @rubygranger8
Pumpkin Productivity (my stationery company): bit.ly/3wgsR85
Timestamps:
0:00 intro
0:33 reading as a visual thing
2:38 our tendency to demean visuals & tiktok
6:01 booktok centralises the book-object
7:40 setting this within seventeenth-century book culture
10:45 linking this to special editions today
11:45 is this criticism gendered?
13:18 the importance of the book-object
14:04 outro
