📅 ⏰ Calendars, Groups and Reminders!
Welcome to our somewhat belated July newsletter! The good news: we waited to send this until we could announce some new features! First, thanks to those who got in touch last month about our audiobooks question. There is definitely interest out there so we’ll be looking at that for later this year as a potential development.
Meanwhile, many of you have asked about managing book club meetings with Bookship. Happy to say the next Bookship release (version 6.1) will land in your app store in the next few days, perhaps as early as today. As of 6.1 you can create Calendar Events tagged to your Groups and to your Readings, to keep track of when your meetings are. Set a reminder schedule and Bookship will take care of sending out reminders to your group on the schedule you request. It’s pretty straightforward - just look under the Account tab for My Groups and My Calendar (you can create the Calendar Event before you know what the book will be, and assign the book later). Feedback very much welcome!
Calendars in action:Â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j14YTbFfgrI
This Month’s Tip: Finishing a book
If you are tired of seeing a Reading show up in your list of readings, or getting reading Reminders - for example if you are done with the book - go to the Reading (the book page), scroll to the top of the page, and hit “Done”. It won’t be shown on your main screen and you will no longer get reading reminders. You will continue to get updates if others post, until the creator of the Reading does an “End” Reading. You can always find a list of all your readings, finished or not, on the Accounts tab.
OK on to this month’s popular books!
This month’s most popular book has been rising on Bookship for awhile now. A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window is next in the line that starts with Gone Girl and Girl on the Train and …you get it. Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much) … and spying on her neighbors. One day she sees something terrifying … Or does she?
Thrillers seem to be hot right now…must be because it’s so hot outside :). The Silent Patient is another hot thriller. In fact, A.J. Finn (you remember right?) said: “That rarest of beasts: the perfect thriller..I’m absolutely dazzled”. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him.
One of Tolstoy’s classics, often considered one of the greatest works of fiction (and you can read it for free on Bookship!). Anna Karenina touches on themes of betrayal, faith, family, marriage, Imperial Russian society, desire, and rural vs. city life. Tolstoy called it his first true novel. Dostoyevsky declared it “flawless as a work of art”, an opinion later shared by Vladimir Nabokov. William Faulkner described it as “the best novel ever written”. Give it a go (it’s free after all). No fair cheating and just watching the Keira Knightley / Jude Law movie :).
Thanks for reading and staying in touch.
If you have any trouble with Bookship, please drop me a note!