Imagine this: books. Shelves upon shelves, walls crammed with tomes and titles, collections ranging from the KJV Bible to the Mortal Instruments, from Dickens to Riordan to Plato to Tolkien. Tables of rosewood, floors of marble laid with azurite, French windows with intricate frosted designs, and no smell other than that of well-worn paper and leather. Incandescent bulbs are aglow, hanging from a twenty-foot-high ceiling, as an incessant lashing of rain roars outside the shut windows. Despite the freezing downpour outside, the heat from the bulbs makes the room fairly toasty as you trundle in with a large mug of steaming hot chocolate, ready to peruse the aisles upon aisles of books.
In many ways, it is a highly desirable situation for any avid reader. Of course, there is little possibility of this being a realistic situation for any person, but the chances are never zero.
Now, when you read the first paragraph, and you took in the imagery, there was a part of you that pictured the aesthetic. I'm sure this is redundant, since I'm already talking about books, but here's the thing: I could just as well have asked you to imagine "a library, rain outside, you come in with hot chocolate". Even if that has the same essential meaning, and for any bibliophile, is still a dreamy situation, there is no competition here. Imagery is what your brain wants, what it needs.
Imagination.
And that is why BookTok talks in vibes.
A portmanteau of "book" and "TikTok", this social media sub-community of bibliophiles has been the subject of innumerable online discussions, from praises to criticism. However, all controversies aside, there seems to be one thing that BookTok has figured out pretty quickly. There is no substitute for the imagination.
Book titles, unless extremely descriptive (see: Japanese manga titles), do not usually form a strong image in your mind. And with the new late-stage capitalist book publication systems, the blurbs at the ends of books are also being taken away. In this horrifying situation, how do you go about recommending books to your friends without either being well-versed in the story or, gods forbid, spoiling the story?
It was at this impasse that BookTok came up with this ingenious idea: you vibe.
The Hunger Games? Forestcore, anarchist. Harry Potter? Academia, wizardcore. Albert Camus? Absurdist, existentialist.