An internet diary, a safe space, and community hub, plus other stuff that's kinda cool! On this channel I explore, interrogate, and examine my own life with the hope that through this process, I collapse the distance between my experience of the world and that of another person's.
⊹ ࣪ ˖ General Info ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Born and raised on Hawaii Island. Now located in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, French & English. I am a June Gemini. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧♊︎ My MBTI is INFJ.
⋆˚✿˖° Find me on the Internet ⋆˚✿˖° Instagram: @hunteriskindacool Biz Instagram: @kindacool.index TikTok: @huntisnotcool
Hey , hunter i hope you're doing great ! And i just wanna say i LOVE your thoughts on books. And your favourites series is my fav lmao. I hope you continue that😅 and would absolutely love to see more bookish content from you. Looking forward to your future content ❤
i loved this video so much, and the way you articulated your points was amazing!!! i honestly got teary-eyed a few times (reading /those/ quotes at the end was the cherry on top). this series is a favorite, thank you for sharing this!!
I also grew up sheltered in a small town. I'm autistic and grew up bullied and undersocialized, so reading was how I learned as well as entertained myself, and I've been going to libraries for books since I was little. I'm glad to see someone else with a similar story to mine 💓
Reading has saved me so many times. And it’s the one thing I can count on when I’m feeling alone. Sometimes it’s easier to read someone’s life and problems and relate to it than actually facing the problems that I have in hand. It’s kind of like my pre workout before working out life head first. So thank you for posting this video and reminding me that it’s okay that I’m taking my time and feeling feelings when reading!!
Absolutely! I feel that reading gives me the language that I need to describe and understand my own experiences :) I love your comparison to pre-work out! Such a good analogy.
I resonate with your point about wanting more than a binary review of a book on TikTok or honestly anywhere else ppl review books. There are so many times where I've seen a bad review with no context and I rarely find good bad reviews that outlines why the reviewer didn't like it. Whenever I stumble upon those good bad reviews, sometimes I end up reading the book because the reason why the reviewer didn't like it is the same reason why I end up enjoying the book. A bad or even good review isn't enough because my subconscious will have me not picking a book that i may end up enjoying because of the bad review and picking up a book that I end up not liking because it has a good review. I'm working on not looking letting reviews sway my choice too much but when the algorithm relies on those yes/no, it's hard to find those hidden gems (gems for me, not for a broader audience) when it's bogged down by bad reviews.
This was sooooo interesting, I did not make all of these connections as I was reading! Rin's character was so refreshing to read as an MC also. PS Can you talk about how your English lit studying is going and how or how frequently you annotate/analyze as you read? trying to learn how to stop just reading for consumption and be able to do analysis myself :')
YES! I feel like I could've drawn way more from this series. Definitely one of my favorites. PS Noted! I'll start to build another video around this topic :) Thanks for the comment and thank you for watching!
Growing up, we used to drink barley tea more than water!! ALSO love the idea of sending postcards to yourself while you're traveling, such a good idea!
I agree with you that I would love to see more of why someone enjoys a particular book/author, and when they recommend a book, what it's about and what made them gravitate towards it. Thank you for this video!
Very interesting, meaningful and useful video, thank you! Greetings from Ukraine! Right now there is an air raid and I am watching your video. Your video gives meaning to life.
Look, I stayed away from fantasy books for such a long time because I wanted to seem cool. Not this nerdy kid who likes magic and dragons. I gaslighted myself into thinking reading tedious classics and slow paced litfic would make me seem cool and like I have "good taste", when in reality it was just middle school all over again in my head, where people with nerdy interests are automatically boring and embarrassing. How stupid.
hi ive subscribed to you after watching a video of you talking about a book and your uniqueness. would love to watch your other videos and video essays that you're planning on too. hope you have a lovely day.
Like you said I think it's more important to enjoy what you are reading no matter what it is. yes there is some merit in saying that romantasy is probably not as intellectually stimulating as Tolstoy but why force someone to read something good if they hate it and don't enjoy it, they won't get anything from it. I think it's always to find out what someone likes about media, for fantasy I like plot, lore, and character focused material, in mystery it's character first then plot, for literary works the writing and character are whats important. That's generic but it's what I like so when I talk to someone and i can tell the reason they aren't liking something is because are taste isn't aligning.
What are you on about? So there are no good or bad books, it's all just classism and marginalising people? Please touch grass, it's not "upholding power structures and maintaining privileges" to just like specific styles of books. It's easy to recognise shit literature if you read a decent amount, we all studied books in school. People don't dislike colleen Hoover and fourth wing because they want to "suppress communities" they just recognise that it's poorly written and has no nuance. Also its funny that people keep jumping to defend modern, shitty mass appeal literature when at the end of the day they're the most wide selling and successful books anyway. That's why people are mad about it btw, low quality books dominating the market, and I'm sure those authors are crying into their stacks of money.
fantastic job🫶🏻enjoyed watching this video, this is something I have thought always, deep inside my mind whenever I hear that this,book is bad or this book is good ,I think to myself why so, I have myself deemed different books into different categories, but at many places I was never able to give myself enough reasons to believe why that book was bad or why that book was good, esp why that book was bad.
I believe in formal criteria for taste that allow a lot of variety in content, thus accommodating the role of subjective preference without flattening all distinctions. "There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion-and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas." --Susan Sontag This last (taste in ideas) seems particularly evident to me.
I love this view. The main thing to remember is that taste is unique and subjective. I often don’t agree with book recommendations just because I know it’s not a genre for me or I’ve read something from certain author and havent enjoyed it at all
This also resonates with me as someone who primarily read manga in my youth but has gotten interested in novels in my early adulthood. I really love well-told stories, but I second-guess myself every time I talk with other "well-told story connoisseurs" because whenever I say that my favorite story is in manga (or anime, LN, VN, etc) format, it just gets sneered at. Most people who say manga is for kids never even picked up a manga in their life, insisting that it is immature because it has drawings lmao. I mean, sure, not every manga I read is profound--both mediums have their own fair share of vapid, derivative works--but the best stories manga has to offer are in no way inferior to the best stories found in novels. The irony of people insisting they have a mature taste in fiction petulantly insisting that they will only consider consuming a piece of fiction if it comes specifically in the packaging that they like (prose) is insane, but that's just my opinion.
I was literally going to make a video on something like this. On how book culture is so fast and wide. Hyping books up. Pumping them out. And how I, am a slow methodical reader. I don’t have a TBR. I don’t have a list of books to check off. I have a book in front of me that I am reading. Engaging with. Savoring it. That is why I read! Love your work! And your insight!
This is such a good discussion. There are books that I will never consider literature no matter what anyone says, and all books aren’t literature either. But no one will convince me that Colleen Hoover is a good writer or is a necessary author in her genre. Either way, read what you want and engage critically with it. The things you enjoy don’t have to be considered “good” but understanding what exactly it is you’re engaging with is important. One of my favorite movies is Hairspray and I thoroughly enjoyed Sarah J. Maas’s books-despite all the hate they get-when I was reading the books. As I got older, I understood that they weren’t the “best” books but I still enjoyed them. And thats what matters. Re: Booktok, I do feel like the pushing of “spice” in books is dangerous because most of these books cater to children in some way either through how their covers are designed or how they’re labeled as YA despite the adult content found in them. Most books do have something to say and even if it’s “bad” you can find something in the book that resonates with you.
Doesn't mean that self help book readers shouldn't be exiled from society or that shut IS "good" literature??? Or anything by coleen hoover is of any literary value... it isn't elitism, it is intellectualism
I disagree that there is no way to discern between good and "bad" literature. Smut is clearly rubbish literature eg 50 Shades. You can enjoy it but it doesn't make it high quality writing or conceptually unique.
eeep I love this series! Ditto on the wired earphones, I just realized I kind of exclusively use wired earphones. I do appreciate an escape from reality with noise cancellation occasionally hehe. ayeee I grew up drinking barley tea! I was just thinking about picking up some next time I go to Marukai or Don Quijote. 😂 It totally hits the spot in the summer. Postcards are so special. I have such a soft spot for snail mail in general. That’s so cool you received one from a friend while they were traveling! I want to send myself postcards the next time I travel. Great idea!
To me, a good book is one that can properly express it's ideas in a way that entertains me. If a book make me feel things as if I where there myself I consider it worthwhile, even if I don't personally enjoy the book.
I don’t think your argument takes into account that a lot of popular fiction is created and marketed as product or “content” rather than art. There are also plenty of intelligent, artistic, wildly creative writers today that cater to women and minorities and write about these experiences. We have Toni Morrison, she won the Nobel and is taught widely in universities and justifiably loved by “elite readers”. We don’t need to uplift crap populist art as high art just because it serves a particular demographic. This goes for books that cater to men too. God knows we certainly don’t need to uplift Michael Crichton or Tom Clancy or crappy self help hustle books or whatever the average man are reading.
Also it’s a little ironic that you deride the idea of good and bad taste in this video yet include tons of b-roll of books you own, pretty much all of it being critically acclaimed and highly respected works of art. Show us the real potboiler crap if you wanna make a point!!
