E.E.B.S - The Elusive, Exclusive Book Society
- secretfirebooks
- Aug 12, 2024
- 3 min read
The Secret Fire Books YouTube channel has been busy lately. In addition to uploading more book reviews and hauls over the past several months, I've been also making "Monthly Report" videos in order to gradually catalogue my reading progress and general opinions on various books. It's been a whole lot of fun, especially when discussing the nuances of book-collecting and genre fiction with my viewers in the comments.
But, the most fun I've had lately has been connecting with other "booktubers" and genre fans on other channels.
A few months ago, I got connected with Jake Swick of PulpMortem - an absolutely fantastic channel focused on classic, unappreciated paperback science fiction, AND YOU SHOULD ALL GO SUBSCRIBE TO HIM RIGHT NOW!!!
Anyway, during a brief conversation in the comments on one of his videos, Jake suggested that the two of us team up for a collaboration on a book that both of us had in our respective collections. I was a little over-eager and immediately said yes. Before I knew it, Jake - devious schemer that he is - was already planning something big for us.
A couple weeks later, he informed me that he had also reached out to another channel, the Book Graveyard. I had previously caught a few stray videos from that channel in my YouTube recommendations, but wasn't too familiar with it - or with its humble host Nick. I quickly remedied that and was astounded by the breadth of Nick's book collection, as well as his love of classic men's adventure pulps and...*cough, cough*..."sleaze novels".
GO SUBSCRIBE TO HIM AS WELL!! Please...!
After emailing back and forth with these friendly gentlemen for a while, we finally decided how and when our collab would go into effect. Jake had apparently been trying to start up his own online book club, inspired - of all things! - by Nerdrotic's weekly YouTube show "Friday Night Tights". I was already a fan of "FNT" and was intrigued by the idea of doing something similar focused entirely on classic genre books. In Jake's eyes, all three of us had tapped on a particular niche with our individual channels - the love and discourse of books that most modern readers would consider "old-fashioned", "pulpy", or even "trashy". We were all talking about books nobody else seemed to care about...
But we cared about them VERY much!
Thus, the Elusive, Exclusive Book Society was born!
The title, is, of course, a bit of a joke. There's nothing elusive about us - the three of us will take turns hosting the episodes on our respective channels, so finding new episodes will be pretty easy for viewers. The exclusivity is a flat-out lie - the three of us (especially Jake) have been scrambling to find other friendly booktubers who would be interested in talking books with us. Finally, the word society is left over from an idea we teased for a while before filming the first episode - showing up on camera in posh leisure robes or smoking jackets to give the appearance of us being "experts".
(Jake does still puff at an unlit tobacco pipe just for laughs.)
Basically, we'll be filming at least one episode a month, discussing a classic bit of pulpy literature we all agreed on. We hope to have another YouTuber on as a special guest, in addition to the three of us, on every episode. Either way, there's no particular structure; we go over the plot of the book, get each other's general opinions, make some dumb jokes, and just have fun.
I've heartily enjoyed the first two episodes we've made, and hope our viewers will enjoy it at least as much.
Our first Ep covered the entire Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison:
The second Ep (pictured above) just came out today! We covered Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore:
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