Skip to footer

'Parapalooza' YouTube channel features people reading from their favorite titles

The new YouTube channel encourages readers to upload a video of themselves sharing a paragraph from a favorite book.

The 'Parapalooza' YouTube channel was launched by the Southern Independent Booksellers Association.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Wanda Jewell was so excited by Stephen King’s newest novel “Joyland” that she kept reading parts of it aloud to her husband.

And then she was struck by an idea. “I suddenly thought it be great if readers had a way to share that impulse,” Jewell told independent bookseller newsletter Shelf Awareness. “It takes the 'You've got to read this!' feeling to the next level.”

So the SIBA has launched Parapalooza (stylized as ¶arapalooza), a YouTube channel where readers can post videos of themselves reading sections of their favorite books aloud.

The rules? Not many. “The only requirement is that selections are read aloud with meaning, enthusiasm and feeling,” Jewell said.

On the YouTube channel’s page, the SIBA suggests that a preview of a book may be a good way to appeal to readers in the age of short attention spans.

“In the time of Vine, and Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, the Paragraph may prove to be the quickest entry into a good read,” the site reads.

So far, selections read on the channel include “A Companion for Owls” by Maurice Manning, “An Armenian Sketchbook” by Vasily Grossman, and “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare.

Want to upload your own video? Check out the YouTube channel here.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Parapalooza' YouTube channel features people reading from their favorite titles
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0726/Parapalooza-YouTube-channel-features-people-reading-from-their-favorite-titles
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe