This Week in Booktube: August 16, 2026
(These are the Booktube videos I watched this week. As always, I encourage you also to check out each of the videos I've linked to down below. Support Booktube. And let me know what you've watched this past week.)
Steve Donoghue Response Video: The DC Finest Lineup!
Bookish Stop Being Afraid
Twelve Months of Christmas fivestarreview for this christmasbook "My True Love Gave To Me." 1 Book, 4 Novellas, 5 Stars!
Bucky749 Toytube: where one has gone before figure unboxing: The Talosian keeper unboxing
1 comment:
Cat.🐈
Out of nowhere, I was reminded of how back in school my (supposed) esteemed literature teacher put a quote on the blackboard, proceeded to attribute its author as "Lev Tolstoy (author of [inserted Soviet Russian work]". I corrected her and the class laughed at my face.
This story of course I have told as a comment before. What struck me later however, was how literature teachers from this corner of the earth don't even read much (anecdotally somebody said literature teachers don't read outside what they are assigned to teach so don't even have expectations, something like that). And this is the country that loves bragging to itself "we have a traditionally studious culture".
...fun when contrast that with Americans who are supposed to be reading less and less. Yup, the people that love to shove it to others' faces "I know about your countries better than you do because I read a lot of books"; the very people who argue about Marxism endlessly and much more than citizens of former or current Communist states in the past or present; the people who read lots of Chomsky, read lots of French pomo stuff; etc.
If that's what people consider signs of declining reading rates then I think the kids are alright.
The adults, over this corner of the earth, aren't alright at all (but to be fair, perhaps they have never been).
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While the booktubers are being quiet because they are busy playing with cats and scratching their chins: I have started reading 2 supposed compsci classics, one about "compiler" (with a cute moniker = red dragon book) and one about networking. They are old and they are dry, but it's a pity nobody writes them like this these days. There's more to say about that but anyway... One of them I got from an old bookstore in HCMC (doesn't seem to be a photocopy thankfully), and the other was out of stock so I have no choice but (look around) read its pdf. Yet another cause of sadness that I would love to complain about (if only people around me wouldn't shut me down if I do), given that India and China seems to either sell or photocopy these sorts of books or both a lot (meanwhile the "traditionally studious" country only bothers to print tests for cramming exams).
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One last quip that hit me: the China that my countrymen love to criticize is always outdated by 20 years compared to the real China. (Sadly this statement wouldn't make as much sense without its proper silly context.)
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