Bookship Social is here! Bookship update, May 2020
We hope you’re continuing to stay safe and healthy during this challenging time, and finding ways to stay in touch with friends and family.
Last month we mentioned exploring social features for Bookship. We’re delighted to announce they’re here!
Bookship version 7 introduces the Bookship Café. The Café is a public forum where you can:
* Start a discussion about a book you are reading
* Post a Public Reading anyone can join
* Find friends to read with!
The rest of the app will work very much as you know it today. Bookship 7 is available in your app stores now. It’s been 3 months in the making. Thanks all you survey-takers for the very helpful feedback.
The first time you enter the Café, you’ll be asked to set up a Public Profile. This is how you’ll appear to people in the Café, people you may not know (your email address is NOT shared!). Dress up your profile with your avatar and bio and create a public bookshelf, showing off whatever books you choose. Then drop a comment in the Café and introduce yourself!
Bookship has always been completely free, but that’s not sustainable for the long term. New in Version 7, Bookship Premium is a monthly subscription that will help us keep Bookship going. It provides:
* Access to a much-improved Bookship Briefings feature (the paper clip) for your Readings
* Readings and Groups with 10 or more people (groups under 10 remain free)
* Guaranteed ad-free experience.
As I mentioned last month, it doesn’t feel like a great time to be asking for money, so for the next three months, Bookship Premium will be free our existing customers as of today. If you really want to help out, you can subscribe for $ any time, including now :). (Complimentary subscriptions may not have Book Briefings for all Readings; they are hand-curated by yours truly and there’s a lot of you…).
Bookship Premium will be $2.99 per month in the U.S. (or roughly the equivalent elsewhere). We donate 10% of our revenue to three great literacy non-profits; we hope you’ll join us in supporting literacy!
OK, on to the books! The most popular books on Bookship in the last 30 days are:
 The Ten Thousand Doors of January Alix Harrow's debut novel is catching a lot of people's attention. In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut. An adventure story triggered by discovering a magic book? I'm in. Eliot Peper says it's "Indiana Jones meets Narnia, but smarter, subtler, and more culturally informed."It seems like a great time for a literary, escapist novel! |
 The Dutch House Literary heavyweight Ann Patchchett returns with a post-war, twisty family drama. Self-made man Cyrl Conroy surprises his wife with a new mansion, the Dutch House (I guess it's good to be wealthy....). His wife Elna, well, she doesn't take to it very well, and disappears. The resulting impacts on the family play out over generations. |
 Where the Crawdads Sing I hate bringing you the same book each month. If you've been following these mails, Where the Crawdads Sing may be familiar to you. It's here every other month, it seems; it's perennially popular on Bookship, so if you haven't read it, you might give it a try.Kya Clark has survived for years alone in the marshes of North Carolina, only to be suspected in a murder. An ode to nature and a unique coming of age story, Where the Crawdads Sing is, as the New York Times says, "a painfully beautiful first novel". |
Oh. I know you didn’t ask but I’ve been reading:
The Game of Birds and Wolves, the story of the women who won the WWII U-boat war.
Faceless Killers, the book that invented the Nordic Noir genre.
Midshipman Hornblower, the first of the famous Horatio Hornblower sailing stories.
Ransom, the story of Achilles and Priam - which I am reading as a public reading on the new Bookship. Join me!
Thanks for reading and staying in touch. If you have any trouble with Bookship, please drop me a note! And Happy Reading!