I started uploading my book rants to YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook in February 2022. My main goal was to make my passion for books and literature more public. But I also wanted to read with more attention, and doing the videos required giving reading my all. And finally, I hoped to promote the genre I most love, memoir.
Over time, I discovered that my rants were also a way for my upper level English students to practice their listening. Using subtitles to see the exact words a native speaker speaks is one of the best ways to hone the ear. I try to publish a long rant every two weeks, with shorter ones in between.
In April 2023, the same month My Half Orange was published, I began a series of videos on my favorite expat memoirs. Here’s the first video in that series, about the fantastic The Factory of Light, by the late great Michael Jacobs: