Oddments of High Unimportance

Steve Donoghue at Stevereads writes about BookTube, a YouTube community devoted to booklovers. It’s a fun survey of what he loves, dislikes, and questions about the community (why do so many of the vloggers tout Young Adult novels?).

But his joy in the community is in the members’ joy of sharing what they love, particularly the contents of their bookshelves and their bookhauls. Steve shares his own pile o’ books from a single day’s trawling and it’s truly breathtaking. I adore his aside that he doesn’t keep a TBR (“to be read”) pile, because they will all get read.

His haul reminds me of my 20s and 30s when my friend Scott and I would do a book-crawl through all the used bookstores in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. I would often trudge home with bags o’ books, less than a third of which I ever read, probably. For me, it was always the thrill of the hunt and the serendipitous discovery – the actual sitting down and reading always seemed a little more dutiful and less fun. Which for a booklover and reader like myself is an odd thing to say, but true at the time. I had more time to read then, I think, but used it less.

In my defense, when my obsession for a particular author or subject took me over – like Chekhov or Hazlitt or Kotzwinkle or Montaigne or Delacroix – I would scarf down whatever I could till only crumbs were left.

Steve maintains an active YouTube presence where he shares years of his bookhauls, reviews, starter kits, a tour of his bookshelves, read-alongs (his fans love his readings of Trollope) and tons more.

Updated on 2026-01-10

(via This column will change your life: stop being busy | Life and style | The Guardian)

(via This column will change your life: the case against hope | Life and style | The Guardian)

(via Odd Job Man and Language! by Jonathon Green, review - Telegraph)

(via Turkey Problem | Nassim Taleb)

“We cannot think if we have no time to read, nor feel if we are emotionally exhausted, nor out of cheap material create what is permanent. We cannot co-ordinate what is not there.” (Cyril Connolly)

One of my favorite quotes of all time, probably my very favorite, is this one from Stanley Kubrick: “Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.”

What would the 50-something you say to the 20-something you?

You’re going to need reserves of determination, and persistence, now, during the high points and right up to the moment you retire, if that ever happens. So, don’t be put off easily. You’re never too young, too inexperienced, too familiar, too old, too traditional, too radical, too uncool, too black, too female, too weird, too conventional, too deaf, too Portuguese, or too anything for anyone to stop you making the comedy you feel driven to make. And if you don’t feel that, then you shouldn’t be doing it.