All posts tagged: May & June

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 …

Revisiting an Old Favorite

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I read Perks a long time ago, sometime during my middle school years, and while I remember liking it, that’s about the only memory I have. When we chose it for our May/June read I was eager to re-read it but anxious that it wouldn’t hold up to all the “I loved that book!” comments we received. Thankfully, it did. Admittedly, it took me a bit to get back into it, but once I fell back in love with the characters I was hooked. Via letters to an anonymous friend, Charlie navigates becoming a teenager–something we all can relate to. Shy and quiet, he’s not the most popular kid in school but he soon finds a group of friends that welcome him and make him feel at home. A shy and quiet teenager myself, I was surprised Charlie and his friends didn’t have more of an impact on me when I read it in middle school. While I wasn’t quite as rebellious as he was when it came to drinking and smoking, I struggled to …

Crying and Smiling at the Same Time

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My journey with The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a long one. I first read the book when I was in high school, not long after it was released in 1999.I read it for the second time immediately after I finished the first reading. I remember as a teenager thinking that this book perfectly captured some of the struggles of high school. Even though Charlie and I had very little in common in terms of our experiences, I remember understanding his feelings of “outsiderness” and confusion. My next foray into Perks was in 2012 when the movie was released. I hadn’t read the book in over 12 years, and though I still counted it as one of my favorites, I had forgotten some of the details and so of course found myself a sobbing mess in the theater. Now here I am, having completed my most recent reading of Chbosky’s first novel, and I am feeling all the same things I felt 16 years ago, plus even more. Reading it this time around, I found myself, as Bill …

Have courage and be kind

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I’m very glad that I finally crossed The Perks of Being a Wallflower off my list. I’d seen the movie years ago, which only made me more interested to read the book. And if you haven’t seen the movie yet you really should. I think it does a really, really great job with this story. And well cast, too. I think this book is a new favorite of mine. The only thing about it that I might change would be to have read it at a younger age. It truly is a perfect young adult read. The story, the protagonist Charlie’s authentic, pure perspective on the fragile high school years, the perfect capture of those one-in-a-lifetime friendships, and the subtle telling of a larger more grievous story all made for a powerful read. And I loved the letter-writing style. It felt like Charlie was confiding in you. Of course this is an intentional literary tool, but admittedly it worked very well for Charlie’s story. And who wouldn’t love Charlie? I mean, when he has thoughts like this you can’t help but love …

{The Perks of Being a Wallflower} Cover Redesign

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            The Perks of Being a Wallflower has a variety of covers to choose from. All of which I like. Even the “Major Motion Picture” cover is inviting (unlike most of its kind). But I liked the book so much I thought I’d do a redesign just for fun. Most of my inspiration came from an artist I recently found on Instagram. His artwork is simple, powerful and beautiful. It can tell one million different stories in just one image. And I found one that I thought captured Charlie’s (The Perks protagonist) story pretty well, so it seemed a perfect selection for this redesign… a young boy flying from a childhood swing set.   Image Source: Fajar P. Domingo Lettering: Katherine C.‘s handwriting Typeface: Helvetica    

May/June Book

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Images © http://www.collider.com May and June are two of our combo months (along with December and January). We read just one book for May & June. It makes it a good time to catch on some other things. And this month (these months) the theme is: School’s Out! So, drumroll please… dun dah dah dah!!! Ok. That’s enough. For May & June we’ll be reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It’s a modern young-adult classic. Or at least that’s what we’ve heard. It’s one of those books that’s always on our TBR (to be read) lists, but somehow we’ve gone years without picking it up. And, maybe, watching the movie instead. Ahem. Well, enough procrastinating. It’s time to officially give this one a go. You in?? Well, you should be. And if the movie trailer doesn’t grab you (trust us, the story is about a lot more than it seems), here are a few more fun facts… The Perks of Being a Wallflower was written by Stephen Chbosky and first published in 1999. Chbosky is a native of Pittsburg, as is our protagonist Charlie. …

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 …

May & June Book

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This month’s theme is …. Schooooooool’s OUT. For. The summer! (Get ready for that song to be stuck in your head for the rest of the day) Spring is here, school’s almost out, and summer’s on it’s way. Now begins those few precious months all of us post-grads miss so desperately… Summer Break (excluding the teachers in the group). So forget required reading for awhile and enjoy! In honor of school days past, we’re reading the young adult classic Ender’s Game!   Written by American author Orson Scott Card in 1985, Ender’s Game is a scifi novel set in Earth’s future, when mankind is about to face a third attack from alien life. The main character, Ender, is one of the many children trained from an early age to fight in this ongoing war. But apparently there’s a certain genius to Ender’s tactics… we’ll have to read to see what that is exactly. Some of you might remember the movie that came out in 2013 with Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley. Yes? No? It looked pretty awful and it didn’t seem to do very well considering the book’s existing fan base… …