All posts tagged: july

Amazon in Brick and Mortar

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Since its beginning in July of 1994 people have said Amazon would put booksellers (and eventually printers) out of business. Well, against all odds, it hasn’t happened. And with people like us out there, we don’t expect it to happen anytime soon, or ever. In fact, did you know print book sales have been outpacing e-book sales over the past few years? And the next generation of readers is driving this trend. So there’s plenty of room for hope. But Katherine C. predicted a new trend that’s now here (check out her masters thesis from 2012 about how digital brands would do well to present their brands in physical space). Since 2015 Amazon has been experimenting in brick and mortar retail by opening physical stores. There are seven open locations (NYC, Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Chicago, and in Lynnfield and Dedham, Massachusetts) with six more opening in 2017. And last week Katherine C. visited the Chicago location. There are more than a few things that make this store very different from other bookstores… All books are rated …

July Book

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Image © Foreignpolicy.com This month we read to learn more about our Nation’s heritage with a good nonfiction book. There are many, many stories that make up who we are as a country. And it’s a goal of ours to keep educating ourselves on where we come from and who we are by reading a new one of these stories every year. This year’s is one from Ta-Nehisi Coates in the form of his acclaimed National Book Award winner and finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, Between the World and Me. This short, yet extremely powerful, 152-page book was published in July (fitting) of 2015. Coates was inspired to write the book after a meeting with President Obama in 2013 and reading James Baldwin’s 1963 The Fire Next Time. Between the World and Me is a series of letters from Coates to his son, Samori. In these letters Coates examines the notion of race in America and how it has shaped our history, most often at the cost of the bodies and lives of black men (and women). …

The Year in Review

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Another year on the books! This month marks two years since we first started The Bookly Club. Thank you to all of you who have joined us here. This year we enjoyed reading a diverse group of books, which we mostly liked. Here’s our year (2016) in review: March: Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church In 2001 a group of reporters for The Boston Globe started a series of reports on the Catholic Church’s management of sexual abuse. This group of journalists methodically and publicly uncovered the church’s decades-long neglect, denial and deliberate coverup of sexual abuse committed by numerous Boston area priests. Our thoughts … “The crimes committed by the abusers are only equalled (if not surpassed) by the Church’s complete and abject failure to protect its children from repeated, horrific, sexual abuse. As grotesque as its subject matter may be, this book is important to read.” April: One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories Novak’s book is a series of fictional short stories born from his creative imagination. Just a few of the short stories include: a boy …

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. …

A Textbook Case

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I’m glad I read this book. However, I don’t know if I liked it as a book. The format seemed to be lacking. It felt like reading a series of articles. It was very well written, well researched, the subject matter was rich with important insights, and I felt like I learned a lot. But I felt like I was reading a textbook instead of a book. Granted, a lot of my nonfiction exposure thus far (outside of undergraduate and graduate courses) has been with authors like John Krakauer who spin an interesting narrative through their book. But in On The Run Goffman recites her findings and supports said findings with necessary evidence. Essentially, the book seemed to lack a certain passion and personality that I was hoping for. And as a result I never fully connected to the author or her subjects. But I guess it makes sense… this book is literally an anthropological study in book form. Much like a documentarian she keeps her reporting scientific and observational. I think what I would have preferred was if …

July Book

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Images © ted.com Welcome, welcome! We’re glad you’re reading with us, or at least reading this post. Whether you’ve joined us in the past, followed our posts and reviews, browsed Bookly as a good distraction during the work day, or if this is your first time visiting… either way, welcome!   We’re glad you’re here. Especially this month. This July we’ve selected an important non-fiction read. Since in July we celebrate and reflect on our American history, we chose a story to teach us more about who we are as Americans… On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman. Goffman is an American sociologist who currently works as an assistant professor at The University of Wisconsin—Madison. Published in 2014, this book is Goffman’s ethnographic account of the six years she spent living in West Philadelphia (sorry, but you know where our head went with that. Just us?) observing the impact of mass incarceration and policing on low-income, urban, African-American communities. She started this research during her sophomore year at Penn and it eventually evolved into her doctoral thesis, and this …

Our First Year of Bookly!

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Hooray! We’ve officially completed one year of Bookly. If you’ve been following along since the beginning (thank you!) you might remember we read our very first book last March. The book was Still Alice. And we’ve read a lot of other great ones over this past year (the short and smart We Should All be Feminists, a good tug at the heart strings from Tell The Wolves I’m Home, and the bizarre but fascinating The Handmaid’s Tale, to name a few). This year we’ve also shared some great cover redesigns, newsworthy bulletins, and helpful recommendations! And we hope you’ve enjoyed it all, and maybe learned a little something new. We’ve definitely enjoyed sharing these past 12 months (and 9 books) with you all! With February coming to a close, that means we’re starting a whole new year of Bookly picks and posts. And if you’re new here we hope you’ll join the Bookly club! Here’s a little refresher on how our book club works, AND a few hints at what we’ll be reading this year 🙂 The Bookly Club was started as an …

July Book

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Pictured:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie © The Guardian We hope you’re enjoying summer so far! For this month’s selection we’re changing pace, from YA to non-fiction. Since July is the month when we celebrate our history, we figured it’d be a good time to get a little introspective and learn something new about what makes us who we are.   We did a lot of back and forth with this choice. We had a different book chosen just a few weeks ago… but as we promised, we want to read all types of ‘books’. So we’ve chosen We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: a 52-page essay. No excuses this month – give this one a quick read! This book (or booklet as we should call it given the charmingly small size) is a modified version of a TEDx talk Adichie delivered in December 2012. Nigerian-born, she is the award-winning author of Americanah, one among many of her well-received books. In this essay, as a self-proclaimed “happy feminist” she offers a personal view and unique definition of feminism. Telegraph journalist Rupert Hawksley calls We …