All posts tagged: Betrayal

A Spotlight on Betrayal

Published by

I’m fessing up: I didn’t read Betrayal. Mainly because I saw “Spotlight” and was afraid reading the book would be redundant. As it turns out, after talking with some of the other Bookly Clubbers, I might need to keep it on my TBR list. But in lieu of a book review, I’m here to give you my thoughts on the movie, which I was thrilled to see win Best Picture at the Oscars this year. Saying I enjoyed this movie sounds a bit strange since it’s such a disturbing story, but you know what I mean. So let’s get to what I liked/didn’t like, bullet point style. As much as I LOVE Rachel McAdams (and I really really like her), I thought her performance was a bit meh. She has a tendency to play characters that don’t seem to push her far beyond just playing Rachel McAdams. But still, I’ll see [almost] any move with her in it. (Note: DO NOT see “Aloha.”) Mark Ruffalo was GREAT. I thought he played the character well, and made Michael’s neuroses …

{Betrayal} Cover Redesign

Published by

I‘m sure most of you have heard about this year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture: SPOTLIGHT. It’s an intense story about The Boston Globe’s special “Spotlight” team of journalists who, in the early 2000’s, investigated a decades-long conspiracy in the Catholic Church. And the book, Betrayal, is what the Spotlight team wrote after their years of award-winning investigative reporting. It’s a serious read that deserves a better cover than either of what’s currently out there. So, as I do on occasion (when having two kids under two-years-old will allow), I’ve re-designed an alternative cover for our March read. I tried to keep a subtle religious theme with the text and image column creating the shape of a cross, and then tying in the newspaper influence with the subhead copy being arranged in a way that’s similar to a newspaper column. I think if Betrayal actually hit the shelves with this cover, the book could reach a whole new audience! But, for now we’ll just keep it between us until my little ones grow up and I have …

An Unlikeable Must-Read

Published by

Betrayal was a difficult book to read. Frankly, at times it felt like reading just a laundry list of sexual abuse crimes. Gory detail after gory detail. One after the other, after the other. You get the idea. And as I was reading my husband kept asking me, “are you liking it?” and I wouldn’t know how to answer. I’m not sure if this is a book you can “like.” It’s not one you read casually. Instead, it’s one you read out of necessity. The stories this book tells are important ones that I think everyone should know more about. To catch you up to speed, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church was written by the Spotlight team of journalists at The Boston Globe in the early 2000’s. It unveils the Boston-area Catholic Church’s deliberate negligence and cover-up of sexual abuse crimes committed by hundreds of its clergy members, allowing them to abuse thousands of victims for decades. The book is a compilation of the 600 different Spotlight investigative reports. It’s a battery of case files, statistics, victim testimonies, and allegations. As I was reading, …

March Book

Published by

Image © NPR.org Every year Hollywood’s awards season starts in November and doesn’t end until late February. The Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Academy Awards are some of the most well-known (probably because their red carpets get full E! coverage). And if you’re anything like us, you make time to watch all the fashion, speeches, glitz, and glamour of self-congratulatory Hollywood. But there’s one pattern we’ve noticed over the years, and that’s the number of nominated films that are based on books. In fact, of the 87 films awarded the Academy Award for best picture since its inception in 1928, 62 have been based on books. This year alone, seven of the eight films nominated for best picture are based on books: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, The Martian, Room, The Revenant, and Spotlight. So, as you may already know, March is our Screenplay month when we read a book that’s been made into a movie and ask ourselves the question; is the book really better than the movie? Which brings us to our book choice this …