Announcing A New Stage of the BAOS Book Club

Friendships, fun, and a cool site-wide book readathon.

Dear friends and readers

After your overwhelming response to the launch of the BAOS Book Club, we are super excited to announce some even cooler features.

In July, we focused on making the reading experience smooth for you. Now, we have even more exciting features, including a site-wide book read-along, and an amazing opportunity to earn money while reading or writing.

You’ll need to become a member of the BAOS Book Club to experience the same. For $5 a month, you get access to four things:

1. A virtual book club

What do you do if you’re sitting on your balcony one day, staring out at the rain, and you feel this sudden desire in your heart to read a book about a giant talking dragon who doesn’t hoard shiny things but loves to read books and collect them?

Or if you’re working at a quiet cafe and, suddenly, you crave to read a book where a handsome, globe-trotting architect falls in love with a beautiful, mysterious seamstress who’s not seen the world outside the small village in Cairo where she grew up.

I know these are super-specific requests, but I also know how whimsical book lovers can be.

We yearn to feel a certain feeling, to know a certain person living in a particular place. We long to read about them, to feel what they’re feeling.

Such yearnings are seldom met because a simple Google search would rarely lead you to the exact book you need to read.

But what if you had a place to make specific requests exactly like that?

That’s where the Books Are Our Superpower Book Club steps in. It’s the coolest place on the internet for book lovers to hang out for a reason. You get recommendations for all your requests, no matter how specific they get.

After you become a member, you’ll get access to an exclusive channel where we can do the following:

• Ask for book recommendations: both fiction and non-fiction (no request is considered weird or outlandish)
• Take part in text and video discussions with readers and writers straight from the heart.
• Talk about the last book you read that had your heart.
• Talk about your favorite book that you keep re-reading.
• Share your favorite quotes and go through quotes and snippets shared by other readers.
• Make friends with people all over the world who are just as crazy about books as you are.
• Learn about all the cool new books releasing and everything interesting happening in the world of books.

To get all these amazing perks, join the BAOS Book Club today.

Note: If you’re just a casual reader, this book club isn’t for you. Only join if you’re a hard-core book lover.

2. A newsletter for book lovers by book lovers

As a member, you’ll get access to our weekly newsletter containing some amazing stories written by book lovers for book lovers. We only started in July, but our newsletter has had some amazing stories.

• A dissection of the triangular model of consciousness as proposed in the 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. This brilliant article by Akshad Singi discusses how people tend to look at themselves and the world through the eyes of three quite different mentalities. Each of these mentalities has its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, and the power to drive decisions.
• Aaron Nichols talks about Bessel Van Der Kolk’s masterwork The Body Keeps The Score and how the author spent forty years researching the human body’s reaction to trauma. The post discusses the book’s take on how we can use methods outside of pharmaceutical drugs to move past trauma.
• Violet Daniels talks about how reading about flawed characters and their complicated lives provides us with an essential anecdote for the way we live now. Based on the lessons from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, this article is full of delicious insights every book lover will enjoy.
• Vipula Gupta, our resident classics-nerd, shares her take on the timeless relevance of Anne of Green Gables and how its completely relatable coming-of-age story confirms its status as a classic.
• Ashley Broadwater writes about are the major differences between the “Panic” book by Lauren Oliver and the TV series on Amazon Prime. Hint: The third section explains the biggest twist that convinced her the series is better. And warning: Spoilers ahead!
• No matter what you did, there was a lively streak of creativity in you that propelled you to reach there. It helped you unleash your inner storyteller, it made you into a mini creator. But how do you unleash this spark? Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi discusses this in her brilliant dissection of Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic.

I’ve only mentioned a few articles. Head over to our website to check the amazing collection of articles published by our brilliant team of writers. You’ll need to join the BAOS Book Club to be able to read the full articles.

But wait, there’s more. Have you been wondering……

Can I write for the BAOS Book Club newsletter?

Yes, you can!

If you’re interested in writing for the BAOS Book Club newsletter and have an interesting story in mind, send a brief pitch to bookclub@baos.pub with your proposed article idea (100–200 words) and we’ll get back to you.

You don’t have to be a Medium member or even a writer of Books Are Our Superpower on Medium to apply. We are open to writers from all around the world. As long as you have a story about books, we have a place for you.

Do I get paid to write?

Of course, you do!

Every article you write for the BAOS Book Club will be commissioned. The rates might be low in the beginning, but as our readership grows, you can expect the pay per article to increase exponentially as well.

We’re just starting out now but we’ll keep our first-ever contributors in mind. As a publication, it’s our goal to forge long-lasting relationships with talented readers and writers from all over the world. If that sounds like you, don’t hesitate to reach out.

3. A site-wide readathon (Pick a book to start!)

For the first time ever, we will be hosting a site-wide read-along on the BAOS Book Club. For August, our read-along partner would be Akshad Singi. Here’s what you can expect from the readathon:

1. One general discussion thread before starting the book. This will include reasons why we are excited to start reading, our thoughts before we proceed, etc.
2. Weekly chapter-wise posts, with detailed chapter discussion. These will be a great way to find what other readers thought about the same passages and how the words affected them. After all, as Edmund Wilson says, “No two persons ever read the same book.”
3. Akshad will also be sharing small tidbits throughout the week — like a favorite quote, some interesting connections he noticed, etc. Readers will also be sharing their own quotes, snippets, and observations, making this an enriching discussion for all.

So which book to pick?

And that’s where you come in, dear reader. You get to pick the book to read, and all through August, we’ll be sharing our learnings from the same. You have four options to pick from:

• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle In the Dark: What most people don’t know about science is that it’s nothing but the search for truth. Learning the principles of scientific thinking can help us in our search for the truths of life as well.
• Contact: This is a hard science fiction novel that deals with the theme of contact between humans and aliens.
• Cosmos: A Personal Voyage: This book corresponds to the popular television series of the same name, and talks about how amazing our universe is.
• Broca’s Brain: Reflections on The Romance of Science: In this book, the author talks about intelligent robots, extraterrestrial life, and their consequences.

Fun fact: all of these books are written by Carl Sagan, the American astrophysicist known for his contribution in the fields of planetary science and exobiology.

Which book would you like to read for the August readathon of the Books Are Our Superpower Book Club? Leave a comment below to let us know.

Join the BAOS Book Club today to take part in this cool readathon.

If you’d like to run a similar read-along in the future for the BAOS Book Club, send us a pitch about why you want to do it and what books you choose to bookclub@baos.pub.

4. A cool book review opportunity

You pick the genre. You pick the book. You pick the price.

Sounds like a dream? With the new book reviewing feature of the Books Are Our Superpower Book Club, we make all of that possible.

If you’re interested in reading and reviewing books in exchange for some money, fill this form today to let us know.

That’s all from my end today.

I hope you’re as excited as I am about this incredible new turn in the journey of the Books Are Our Superpower Book Club. I hope to see you in the book club and be a part of your reading journey.

If you have any questions or need any clarification, please leave a comment to let me know.

Don’t forget to join the BAOS Book Club today. I promise we’ll keep bringing more incredible opportunities your way.

Love,
Anangsha
Creator, Books Are Our Superpower.