Book Club¶
A subset of the PyATL members have organized a book club. Participants receive free books in exchange for posting a review in a public forum. We also, from time to time, discuss the books at meetings or on the mailing list.
How to Participate¶
- Any member of PyATL may participate in the book club.
- Books are distributed in person at PyATL meetings, so you must come to meetings to participate.
- You may only hold one review title at a time, so each book is signed out to you using your name and email address.
- Your first book is “free”. Subsequent books can be obtained by reporting the location of the review, or returning the book if you have decided not to post a review.
- You may keep any title you choose. We do encourage members to pass on books they won’t re-use, in case another member would find it valuable.
Sources of Books¶
We have arrangements with the publicists at several publishers of Python and general programming books, including O’Reilly, Manning, Addison-Wesley, Packt, and Apress. They send review copies of books to the club organizers, who distribute them to members at meetings. These copies are sent to us in good faith with the understanding that we will help with publicity by posting reviews online (see above).
In addition to the publisher review copies, some members have contributed copies of books from their own libraries. These enter the reading pool and are subject to the same rules as publisher contributions.
Review Guidelines¶
Reviews should be a summary your opinion and impressions of the book. They are not meant to be a huge commitment, so they don’t have to be very long or follow a formal structure. Example reviews can be found on the book club group blog.
Reviews may include details such as
- the nature of the book
- your impressions about readability
- whether the content matched your expectations
- whether it was technically accurate
We try to be balanced and talk about the good and bad, but if a book is bad you have to call it like it is.
Posting Reviews¶
Reviews should be posted within 2-6 weeks of receiving the book. You can post to your own web site or blog, the group blog, Amazon, Readernaut, or other public location. After the review is posted, contact one of the club organizers with the URL so we can notify the publisher and receive credit for the group.
If you don’t have your own site where you can post reviews, contact one of the organizers to be given access to the group blog.
Organizers¶
- Doug Hellmann (doug.hellmann@gmail.com)
- Skylar Saveland
