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Bookly’s Hiatus

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: The Bookly Club is going on hiatus, this video explains it all… View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Bookly Club (@thebooklyclub) It’s been a wonderful run. And who knows? Maybe we’ll be back someday. But thank you so much for being a part of this community, and thank you for the 60 wonderful books it’s brought us. Keeping up with it all may have gotten a little away from me (fitting photo, haha) but I wouldn’t change this experience for the world. And if you’d like to keep in touch you can find me at @shecoversbooks

High Drama, Low Believability

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Our theme for August is “Beach Read,” and while The Stolen Marriage may not be a typical beach read, it certainly ticks the “Beach Read” boxes of being quick, and with quite a high mix of drama. Chamberlain certainly didn’t hold back in terms of the dramatic themes in The Stolen Marriage. Discussing the book with the other “Katherines,” I kept finding myself sliding into a Stefon-like description (“This book has everything – the polio epidemic, death, World War II, abandonment, abortion, adultery…” and I’ll stop there even though I could easily tick off 10-15 more things, but there would be major spoilers). In many ways, it felt like every chapter was also the introduction of another new element (SPOILER ALERT: “…mediums, secret relationships, arson…”). And while that kind of drama can certainly be entertaining and engrossing, it can also be incredibly overwhelming and unbelievable. For all of these terrible things to happen to one person in the span of a year!? Well, the book might as well have been about 2020. It was also …

Feeling Old. Might Delete Later.

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I don’t know that I have much of a framework for “reviewing” books like this. I’m obviously old enough that I identified with the cranky old teacher who would rather turn people into apples than deal with their nonsense. Wayside School is obviously a strange little book with strange little characters. It’s like fantasy for eight year olds. A book grounded in something they understand, a classroom, and expands on the complexities and simplicities of learning, friendship, and recess, while being out of this world wacky. I can see how kids my niece and nephew’s age would laugh and laugh at the silliness. I also can see how the bouncy, punchy read could keep the attention of its intended audience.  As an adult, I appreciate a couple of things about this book. One, every student in the classroom gets a chapter – or at least most of them. They are all their own self. I think it is a subtle but important point for kids. We are all someone with individuality, flaws, silly sides, and …

Seven Brief, Though Thorough and Therefore Sort of Difficult to Follow, Lessons on Physics

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If you read Katie C.’s review, you already know that I gave her a heads up that I found this hard to read. And it was. Despite being brief, the lessons were still lessons on physics, and physics was never really my subject. HOWEVER. I still very much appreciated Rovelli’s “brief” book of essays. I highlighted more passages in this book than I expected to and than I have in most other books. And I highlighted for a lot of reasons. In some places I highlighted words, like “phantasmagorical,” because I simply can’t think of a better word, or phrases, like “Genius hesitates,” because they were awesome. Sometimes I highlighted because the prose is simply beautiful. For example: A reality that seems to be made of the same stuff that our dreams are made of, but that is nevertheless more real than our clouded, quotidian dreaming. I highlighted because I felt gobsmacked by what I read, because I certainly had no idea that “If a person who has lived at sea level meets up with …

Discovering the Truth About Evelyn Hugo

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I did very little “research” of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo before I read it. Basically just the jacket description (side note: I keep wanting to call her Eleanor Hugo and I’m not sure why…), and therefore I wasn’t totally sure what to expect from this one.  So, I thought I’d walk you through my thoughts as I read the book (spoilers abound!): “Oh, this’ll be a good beach read… maybe a little like Devil Wears Prada” (i.e., girl trying to make it in journalism gets job of a lifetime, but has to make sacrifices, etc.) “Well, Evelyn is no Miranda Priestly.” (i.e., I found Evelyn to have more redeeming qualities than Miranda out the gate) “What does Evelyn want with Monique? What am I missing?” (and it was at this point that I started to do something I don’t usually do – I scoured every word I read for clues as to what the twist/kicker would be in this book) “OH! Well. This is a beach read with a message. Love is love. Love it!” “OK. …

Black Lives, White Thoughts, and a Gray World

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First of all, I’m happy to be back as an active member of the bookly club. I’ve been decidedly absent in my time studying for my boards and as I figured no one wanted to hear my critique on “Radiology Cases: Emergency Medicine” or “Medical Physics” – I was laying low. Admittedly, On the Run was a bit of a tough read to jump back into but, unless you have been living under a rock as of late, almost painfully poignant.  Social media is the greatest blessing and curse of our generation. It simultaneously brought our collective youth and desired youths to a sniveling pile of filtered selfies and self congratulations and has given a voice to the historically silenced and marginalized population.  In doing so, it created a national conversation/uproar about justice, race, and that truth that we hold to be “self-evident.” We are all created equal. We are all created equal. But it is abundantly clear that we don’t live in a time or a society, that allows us to stay that way. …

April Book

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Images ©Knopf Doubleday In the mood for a good laugh after last month’s read? Phew! Us too. So, in honor of April (the month of foolish pranks) we’re reading One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak; “the wonderfully cockeyed, consistently hilarious debut.” You probably recognize the name B.J. Novak. He’s a writer and actor widely known for his work on the acclaimed comedy series “The Office” as an actor, writer, and executive producer. Now, Novak is expanding his scope beyond the walls of Dunder Mifflin. In One More Thing he takes on a range of human experience in this quirky new story collection.   “Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete.”   Published in 2014, Novak’s One More Thing joins a growing list of celebrated books published by comedic actors/writers (Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey, etc.). Although unlike others who have written autobiographical …