Vampire novel <i>Twilight </i>by <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/books/stephenie-meyer-confirms-plans-for-two-new-twilight-novels-1.1063944" target="_blank">Stephenie Meyer</a> and <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/books/2022/10/28/why-is-prince-harrys-memoir-called-spare-a-brief-history-of-the-royal-term/" target="_blank">Prince Harry’s memoir <i>Spare</i> </a>are some of the most discussed books on YouTube, the platform has revealed. Celebrating its burgeoning community of literary content makers, accessed under the #booktube hashtag, parent company Google has unveiled a list highlighting the popular books featured in videos from 2012 to 2023. Dubbed BookTube’s Ultimate Reading List Through The Years, it was extrapolated from the more than 636,000 videos featured with the hashtag. YouTube told <i>The National</i> that, combined, these garnered more than 350 million streams in 2024 alone<i>.</i> The reflective initiative is even highlighted by YouTube’s first-ever "Yoodle" – a graphic atop the YouTube website similar to the <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2024/07/29/paris-olympics-google-doodle/" target="_blank">Google Doodle.</a> Book titles are presented chronologically according to the year they were most featured on the platform (rather than their print release date) and many have been dissected by the community’s leading content creators. Highlights include a variety of genres, from popular and young adult fiction to hard-hitting literary works, but YouTube is yet to provide as explanation as to why the years 2017 and 2022 were omitted from the round-up. YouTube Mena's partnerships manager, Tanya Khoury, says the listed books also resonated with regional BookTubers. She cites the growing popularity of Saudi Arabia’s Dupamicaffeine (5.87 million subscribers) and Egypt's Nedal Reads (398,000) as indicative of a dynamic online book-loving community taking shape in the Arab world. "BookTubers have started a very influential and inspiring community on YouTube for over a decade now. In Mena, we’re seeing a similar trend with more and more creators joining this journey of appreciating books, and sharing their own analysis,” she says. “We are grateful for all BookTubers in Mena and globally, who share their passion every day to make reading a cultural event and to bring people together to think, brainstorm and share ideas.” Big-selling titles are featured throughout the collection, but often not in the year they were originally published. A trend emerged as literary works saw a BookTube peak as their film adaptations hit theatres. Suzanne Collins's <i>The Hunger Games</i>, which was popular in 2012, was published four years earlier. Its online popularity can be attributed to the first instalment of the film franchise, which was released that year. The same is also true of 2008’s <i>Twilight</i> by Stephenie Meyer, another BookTube favourite in 2012. This was the same year the five-part film series it spawned ended with<a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/the-twilight-saga-is-coming-to-an-end-but-not-everyone-is-hooked-1.419072" target="_blank"> <i>The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2</i></a><i>.</i> BookTubers are also unaligned to the timeline of bestsellers lists, with some titles becoming talking points years after publication. Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/books/from-orwell-to-fitzgerald-the-100-books-that-influenced-david-bowie-s-life-1.959087" target="_blank"><i>The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</i>,</a> hit bookshelves in 2007, but caught fire on BookTube in 2014. The same goes for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's stunning 2013 novel <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/six-great-novels-about-migration-and-dislocation-1.17805" target="_blank"><i>Americanah</i>,</a> an online favourite in 2019. As for 2023's <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2023/01/10/what-has-prince-harry-said-in-his-book-27-new-claims-made-in-spare/" target="_blank"><i>Spare</i></a> by British royal Prince Harry, BookTubers were on the pulse, with the memoir being the most discussed of that year. Check out the full list below: <b>2012</b> <i>Twilight</i> by Stephenie Meyer The complete <i>Harry Potter</i> series by JK Rowling <i>The Hunger Games</i> by Suzanne Collins <b>2013</b> <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i> by John Green <b>2014</b> <i>The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</i> by Junot Diaz <i>The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks</i> by Rebecca Skloot <b>2015</b> <i>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time</i> by Mark Haddon <b>2016</b> <i>A Court of Thorns and Roses</i> by Sarah J Maas <b>2018</b> <i>Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic </i>by Alison Be <b>2019</b> <i>Americanah </i>by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie <i>She Said</i> by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey <b>2021</b> <i>The Vanishing Half</i> by Brit Bennett <i>Normal People</i> by Sally Rooney <b>2023</b> <i>Spare </i>by Prince Harry