Live Video in Bookship!!!
I imagine a lot of people are tired of Zoom meetings. The scheduling, sending the invites, trying to explain to people how to join the meeting, getting ZoomBombed. The fussing with the settings, the time limits (or paying for it)…Us too. And then there’s….
Nonetheless we are super excited to announce secure, free, unlimited, one-button instant Video Chat in Bookship. Just go to your Reading, tap the video icon (
), and you’re in. Your fellow readers will get an alert on their phone; when they tap it, it opens the app and joins them to the meeting. Presto! It’s never been easier to have a virtual book club meeting!
You can also do an open video chat ANYONE on Bookship can join. Just hit Café, then Go live. It’s a fun way to meet other random Bookshippers who want to chat books. Even though you are “public”, you’re still pretty anonymous. The only thing people can see about you is your Bookship Username, everything else is invisible to them unless they know you. I’ll be hanging out in the Café from time to time; drop in and say hi!
Give it a go! It’s brand new so it may have some kinks - if you have trouble, drop me a note please!
In other news, you can now write Reviews in Bookship. Just go to the top of your Reading, and hit Review. Jot down your thoughts, say whether you Loved the book, and also recommend related books other people might like. It’s posted in your Reading, and if you want to go public, you can post it in the Café as well. And when you hit Done, you’ll get recommendations for related books that may be of interest.
There are many new things in Bookship version 8, including nearly 100 authors in our Meet The Author program, who will join your book club meeting by video (with more coming on board all the time!). Below are a few - they’d love to get involved! For a complete list, open the app and go to Browse / Meet the Author. We are especially excited by our partnership with the Tall Poppy Writers Group, who have joined our program!
| | Mike Chen | | We Could Be Heroes |
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Mike Chen is a lifelong writer, from crafting fan fiction as a child to somehow getting paid for words as an adult. He has contributed to major geek websites (The Mary Sue, The Portalist, Tor) and covered the NHL for mainstream media outlets. A member of SFWA and Codex Writers, Mike lives in the Bay Area, where he can be found playing video games and watching Doctor Who with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals. |
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We Could Be Heroes is part daring superhero adventure, part mystery that will keep you on the edge of every page-turn. Jamie and Zoe are delightfully flawed and charmingly relatable despite their extraordinary gifts. If you’ve ever wanted to dive deeply into the minds of superheroes and villains, and have a marvelous time doing it, this is the book for you.” | |
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S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She's the Nebula Award nominated author of Runtime and Hugo-nominated co-editor of Escape Pod, with Mur Lafferty. She's also a Data science consultant, with specialization in machine learning and digital signal processing. |
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Homeland meets Zero Dark Thirty in this science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience and labor rights in a near-future dominated by the gig economy. Famed computer scientist Ray Kurzweil said 'Machinehood builds an inspiring and believable vision of the future that is both thought-provoking and hopeful. It will leave you wishing that tomorrow could arrive a little sooner.' | |
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| | Carrie Callaghan | | Salt the Snow |
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Carrie Callaghan is the author of the historical novels A Light of Her Own (2018) and Salt the Snow (2020). Her short stories have been published in multiple literary journals, and she is a senior editor with the Washington Independent Review of Books. She lives in Maryland with her family and three ridiculous cats. She loves seasons of all kinds, history, and tea. |
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American journalist Milly Bennett has covered murders in San Francisco, fires in Hawaii, and a civil war in China, but 1930s Moscow presents her greatest challenge yet. When her young Russian husband is suddenly arrested by the secret police, Milly tries to get him released. But his arrest reveals both painful secrets about her marriage and hard truths about the Soviet state she has been working to serve. Disillusioned, and pulled toward the front lines of a captivating new conflict, Milly must find a way to do the right thing for her husband, her conscience, and her heart. | |
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| | Richard K. Morgan | | Thin Air |
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Richard K. Morgan is the acclaimed author of Thin Air, The Dark Defiles, The Cold Commands, The Steel Remains, Black Man (published as Thirteen in the U.S.), Woken Furies, Market Forces, Broken Angels, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2003. Altered Carbon is the basis for the wildly successful Netflix series. |
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On a Mars where ruthless corporate interests violently collide with a homegrown independence movement as Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power, Hakan Veil is an ex–professional enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that’s made him a human killing machine. But he’s had enough of the turbulent red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home—which is just what he’s offered by the Earth Oversight organization, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It’s a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil … until it isn’t. | |
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| | Katya Cengel | | From Chernobyl with Love |
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Katya Cengel is a freelance writer and author based in California. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post among other publications. She has reported from North and Central America, Europe, Asia and Africa and was based in the former Soviet Union for half a decade. She is the author of Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) 2020 winner and Foreword Indies 2019 winner “From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union” (Potomac, 2019). |
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In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the late twentieth century was a time of unprecedented hope for democracy and freedom in Eastern Europe. Communist propaganda was finally being displaced by Western ideals of a free press. Despite the region’s appeal, neither Kyiv in the Ukraine nor Riga in Latvia was the type of place you would expect to find a twenty-two-year-old Californian just out of college. But Cengel ended up living and working in both. This book is her remarkable story. "a welcome report from the front lines in a time of torment and hope." —Kirkus Reviews | |
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| | Diana Giovinazzo | | The Woman in Red |
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Diana says: "As an Italian girl from Central New York, there was always a stack of books by my side. But it wasn’t always about reading other people’s stories, I had to tell them. My first book was a compelling tale of a family making a journey along the Oregon Trail for Mrs. Dickinson’s second-grade class project.". A self-proclaimed history nerd with an insatiable wanderlust, She's also the co-host of the Wine, Women and Words podcast (https://www.winewomenwordspodcast.com/) |
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Experience the 'epic tale of one woman's fight . . . to create the life of her dreams' in this sweeping novel of Anita Garibaldi, a 19th century Brazilian revolutionary who loved as fiercely as she fought for freedom (Adriana Trigiani). Swept into a passionate affair with the idolized mercenary, Anita's life is suddenly consumed by the plight to liberate Southern Brazil from Portugal -- a struggle that would cost thousands of lives and span almost ten bloody years. Little did she know that this first taste of revolution would lead her to cross oceans, traverse continents, and alter the course of her entire life -- and the world. | |
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| | Molly Flatt | | The Charmed Life of Alex Moore |
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Molly Flatt is an author as well as a journalist as well as a book futurist, holding down The Bookseller's FutureBook conference. As Comment Editor of The Bookseller, she stirs up date about the future of publishing. As a Journalist, she writes for The Guardian, the Evening Standard, and the BBC. And she's a damned nice person too! |
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Minnie Driver said 'I was hooked after the first paragraph'. The Charmed Life of Alex Moore is a quirky adventure that starts in the high tech startup world of London and quickly lands you in mysterious doings in the Orkney Islands. You'll be hooked too. | |
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Happy Reading!
Mark
