2024 Reading Challenge Update: October Winner and What You Read This Month

This month’s Reading Challenge winner is Berke Maltepe, who will be enjoying a digital gift card to Trident Booksellers & Café! Trident is an independent bookstore and a beloved institution on Newbury Street in Boston, where it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary. Congratulations, Berke!

Big congratulations, as well, to everyone who read a book this month and told us about it. There are two months left in the 2024 Reading Challenge, so keep reading! Hint: for more chances to win, make sure to track your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too.

The October theme was “a book about a time in history that you’d like to know more about.” Here are some of the history and historical fiction books that readers listed this month:

What You Read in October

Cover of I Must Betray You

I Must Betray You, Ruta Sepetys
Find it at Snell Library

“Ruta Sepetys writes historical novels that illuminate historical events that might not be so familiar to some readers. I Must Betray You is set in Romania in 1989 at the time when Communism was being overthrown in eastern Europe. A 17-year-old student named Cristian struggles to do the right thing when he is coerced into becoming an informant for the secret police just as the dictatorship that has oppressed his country for decades begins to fall. Like many of the author’s grim stories, this gripping novel ends on a hopeful note.” — Linda

Cover of Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library

“Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo is a coming-of-age story in 1950s San Francisco, set against the backdrop of the Red Scare. Lily Hu is a Chinese American girl who is starting to question her sexuality after she reads a dime-store novel. She goes to a mysterious club, based on real bars in San Francisco, called the Telegraph Club.” — Galen

Cover of Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
Find it at Snell Library | Read the e-book

“The story follows Kivrin, a history student at Oxford who travels back in time to study life in the 14th century. However, due to some miscalculation, she arrives during the time of the plague, which is a period of devastation and mayhem in European history. Willis has written the book with detailed research and emotional depth. The Doomsday Book examines the resilience of humans when we come in contact with a catastrophic event, which makes time-travel both an adventure and also a poignant reflection on how we survive.” — Navya

Cover of The Book Thief

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin

“What I liked most about the book is that it’s written from the perspective of Death. It gives great insight into the atmosphere in WWII, but is still heartwarming, as it mainly describes the situation of a little girl. It also highlights how people risked their lives to uphold humanity in this time of hatred and injustice. It’s a book that really goes to the heart and is so well written—it’s a bit like art.” — Mirjam

Cover of My Brilliant Friend


My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin

“Absolutely loved it!.” — Nicole



And What to Read in November

November is a time to relax, with “a relaxing or soul-soothing book.” Here are some soothing suggestions. Need more ideas? Check out Northeastern’s curated selections of e-books and audiobooks! And if you’re in Boston, you can stop by the Snell Library lobby in person on November 19th and 20th for Reading Challenge stickers, bookmarks, and books to check out, and friendly librarians who love talking about books!

Covers of Legends and Lattes, What You Are Looking for is in the Library, Rest is Resistance, and The Psalm of the Wild-Built

Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree
Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book
Legends & Lattes is a cozy fantasy novella following Viv, an orc who has decided to set aside the barbarian lifestyle in favor of opening a coffee shop in a bustling magical city.

What You Are Looking for is in the Library, Michiko Aoyama (translated by Alison Watts)
Find it at F. W. Olin | Read the e-book
Tokyo librarian Sayuri Komachi has a gift: her book recommendations are able to provide readers with exactly what they need. What You Are Looking for is in the Library is a relaxing love letter to libraries, books, and readers.

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book
While it may not be a relaxing read, Rest is Resistance is an ode to rest and the transformative power of opting out of grind culture. Author Tricia Hersey connects our current obsession with productivity to systemized patterns of racism, misogyny, and anti-humanism.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Listen to the audiobook
A self-aware robot meets a space monk, and together they set off on a journey to answer the question: what do people need?

As always, happy reading and good luck in the November Reading Challenge! Make sure to tell us about your book before the end of the month for a chance to win the prize drawing. And for additional chances to win, log your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too!

Box by Box: Inventorying the Cambridge Women’s Center Records

Since last fall, the processing team has been focused on inventorying unprocessed collections. Inventories allow staff and researchers to learn more about what’s in a collection, help locate materials of interest, and help staff strategize further processing or digitization work, as resources allow. A previous blog post described inventorying the Stull & Lee records. Currently, processing assistants are inventorying more recent donations to the archives. Over the next few months, we will be featuring collections our staff has found particularly interesting to inventory in their own words.

Cambridge Women’s Center Records

By Aleks Renerts, Processing Assistant

I recently worked on the creation of an inventory for the Cambridge Women’s Center records. The Center was founded after a group of female protestors occupied an underutilized Harvard-owned building on International Women’s Day on March 8, 1971. They demanded affordable housing, child care, and equal access to education. The movement gained local publicity and heightened awareness, and donations in support of the sit-in allowed the group to purchase a property at 46 Pleasant Street in Cambridge, from which the Center still operates.

The Cambridge Women’s Center records offer a picture of how the policies, goals, and actions of the Center have changed over time. Volunteers at the Center established programs to address domestic violence, racism, access to healthcare, housing and job opportunities, sexual abuse, and other issues affecting women. The records include newsletters, flyers, calendars, meeting notes and memos, and planning documents for activities that demonstrate the impact the Center has had on the community, and offer valuable perspective on feminist thought and activism from the 1970s to the present.

An example I found particularly interesting were the documents pertaining to the inclusion of transgender women at the Center. A changing perspective on trans individuals can be read through meeting minutes and updated policies. At its inception, the Center was not open to transgender women who had not “completed” medical transition, fearing that the presence of non-passing trans women might negatively impact other women at the Center. As these beliefs were challenged and discussed over time, the Center adopted a trans-inclusive policy as early as the 2000s, realigning the mission of the Center to be supportive and welcoming to all women regardless of personal histories.

Below is a glimpse at some of the records.

Two scanned pages of a document
A brief history of the Cambridge Women’s Center and its relation to broader feminist mobilization, circa 1980s. It links the founding moment of the Center to social and labor movements from the 19th century to the present, and discusses early initiatives by the Center’s founders.
Two scanned pages of a document
Shift journal, 2005. Women who answered the phone for the Cambridge Women’s Center helpline would take notes here. There are many fascinating entries discussing who called and for what reason, and a general sense of the internal functioning of the Center. Although the majority of callers were recorded as anonymous, there are a few entries that include names. Those names have been redacted to protect privacy.
Two scanned pages of a document
Transgender Committee meeting notes, early 2000s. This summary discusses the evolution of a trans-inclusionary mindset at the Cambridge Women’s Center.

To find out more about accessing the Cambridge Women’s Center records, email the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections at archives@northeastern.edu.

Aleks Renert (he/him) is a graduate student at Simmons University in the dual MA degree program in History and Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archives Management. His academic background is history, with a focus on the Hispanic world and histories of class, gender, and colonialism. He received his BA in History from McGill University.

Tastemakers Archives Provides a Glimpse into Music Format History

Cover of Tastemakers magazine, Issue 16. It pictures a woman standing on a ladder under a tree picking CDs as though they are apples. The main headline is "Music for Free: Streaming stations for your listening pleasure and spotify is coming"

One of my recent projects was to digitize the very first issues of Tastemakers, Northeastern’s student-run music magazine, which began in 2007 and is still running today. Since the 2010-11 academic year, all issues were created in a born-digital format, so they were easy to add to the Digital Repository Service earlier this year. However, the first 19 issues were not, so it was my job to scan them on our Bookeye scanner and turn them into PDFs ready to be made accessible.

Since the issues in question date from 2007 to mid-2010, they fall exactly in the transitional moment of the music industry when legal streaming was still a novel concept, but CDs had fallen largely out of fashion in favor of iPods and other portable mp3 players. Consequently, as I was going through the magazines, I found an assortment of pieces that are retrospectively funny because we, in 2024, know the outcomes of all their speculations (most of which didn’t happen).

The articles I found fell into two broad categories: devices and streaming, both of which provide an interesting (as well as amusing) look at the future we imagined music would have at that time.

Article headlined "USB Devices...The New CD?"
Tastemakers, Issue 9, page 13

Let’s start with devices. The two pieces I found are on the potentiality of USB sticks and microSD cards as the dominant form of physical media to replace CDs. The USB article discusses a few bands and artists circa 2008, including Matchbox Twenty and Jennifer Lopez, who released albums on USB sticks embedded in rubber bracelets, primarily as a marketing gimmick. The author wonders whether if the technology will catch on in earnest or remain a ploy. At the time, vinyl was already starting to make a resurgence as the go-to medium for people who want their music on a physical object, and that group is comprised primarily of people who care deeply about the auditory and visual technical details of their music. So, I think the bracelets were never really going to work, since a group of mp3 files on a rubber bracelet couldn’t match up to either the quality or experience of vinyl on a record player, and thus eliminated their theoretical primary market. (It’s also funny to imagine collectors’ storage for a bunch of rubber bracelets. Would you keep them in a basket? Individual cases? One of those divider boxes for sorting hardware? On a pegboard on your wall?)

Article headlined "Good Idea/Bad Idea: Selling Music on SD Drives"
Tastemakers, Issue 12, page 17

Meanwhile, the microSD card piece talks about an attempt in late 2008 by major record labels to supplant (or at least supplement) CDs with pre-loaded microSD cards, branding as slotMusic, that can go into any phone or mp3 player with a corresponding card slot. This one is interesting because it could have possibly been successful, but only in a universe where Apple wasn’t already the dominant force in the portable music player market. iPods were well established as everyone’s favorite internet-based mp3 player, and the iPhone was already becoming the most popular phone, which combined the two via a built-in iTunes app and completely removed the need to even have a separate device for music. Even if they had managed to carve out a market around Apple, rapid increases in storage capacity would have also rendered them useless within a handful of years. While 1GB was a significant amount of storage for the size of a microSD in 2008, 128GB microSDs were introduced in 2014, which is a 127,000% increase in about five years. They didn’t stop there. Today, microSD cards are available in sizes up to 1TB, which is big enough to fit 1,000 slotMusic cards on a single item. So, slotMusic never really stood a chance.

Now, on to streaming. Over the course of three years, Tastemakers published five different pieces about then-current and upcoming streaming services, effectively culminating (though not knowingly at the time) in a piece about the European launch of Spotify. Nearly all of the platforms mentioned are now entirely defunct, with some exceptions including Spotify and Amazon mp3 (now Amazon Music). The other remaining platforms now provide internet radio and recommendation sites, rather than streaming music, a fact that does not seem coincidental. Here’s a breakdown:

Chart titled "Streaming Service Breakdown" and contains a list of past and present streaming services and their pros and cons
Sources: Issue 3, page 8 (Ruckus); Issue 7, page 16 (FreeMusicZilla); Issue 5, page 15 (Spiralfrog, Amazon mp3, Grooveshark, The Hype Machine, Blip.fm); Issue 16, pages 20-21 (Last.fm, Songza); Issue 6, page 20 (Seeqpod)

It’s also amusing now to think of Spotify as the hip new platform from Europe. Their article quotes other American journalists who had received early-access press accounts describing Spotify as “the world’s biggest iTunes collection” and “an almost infinite jukebox.” It sounds quaint in today’s world, but then you can’t describe something with words that don’t yet exist. Reading their predictions from 2009 about whether Spotify will be successful while others failed is like listening to someone try to predict the ending of a TV show that you’ve already finished.

Two-page spread article headlined "Music for Free: Spotify is Coming"
Tastemakers, Issue 16, page 22-23

I sat for about 30 minutes trying to think of something to speculate for the future the way that these articles speculated about streaming. The conclusion I came to is that I don’t think there are any more technological advancements that music needs to make; you can get a device that fits in your pocket with up to 1TB of space and provides access to anything on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. Either that, or, like the writes of Tastemakers in 2007-2010, I cannot even conceive of what is yet to come, exactly because it has not come yet.

Box by Box: Inventorying the Theater Offensive Records

Since last fall, the processing team has been focused on inventorying unprocessed collections. Inventories allow staff and researchers to learn more about what’s in a collection, help locate materials of interest, and help staff strategize further processing or digitization work, as resources allow. A previous blog post described inventorying the Stull & Lee records. Currently, processing assistants are inventorying more recent donations to the archives. Over the next few months, we will be featuring collections our staff has found particularly interesting to inventory in their own words.

Abe Ryebeck surrounded by archival materials and an interested audience
Abe Rybeck (center, blue shirt) discusses the history of the Theater Offensive at a recent NUASC event, June 2024. Photo by Grace Millet.

Theater Offensive Records

By Julia Lee, Processing Assistant

I was excited to inventory the Theater Offensive records after meeting the company’s founder Abe Rybeck at a recent Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (NUASC) event. Rybeck explained to a group of curious staff and guests the backstory of several Theater Offensive items on display and their connections to the activism he was engaged in during the 1980s. As an undergraduate theater major at Northeastern University, I learned about and participated in the Boston theater scene, so working with these records was particularly special, as they represent the history of a community I have been a part of.

climACTS POP! program
climACTS benefit program cover, 2008. The Theater Offensive records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

The Theater Offensive is an LGBTQ+ theater company that has engaged in performance and activism, often simultaneously, since its founding in 1989. The company works to support and uplift LGBTQ+ youth artists, especially BIPOC, in Greater Boston. NUASC has received several donations of records from the Theater Offensive over the years; the particular donation I inventoried includes materials primarily from the 2000s and 2010s and demonstrates the Theater Offensive’s continued efforts to call attention to the LGBTQ+ issues that Rybeck discussed. The intersection of sex positivity and community theater is evident from the name of their yearly benefit to support their programs: climACTS! These benefits make up a significant portion of the donated records, documented through publicity and planning materials.

A person dressed in a cowboy shirt and hat kisses the hands of a person wearing a blue blouse and headband
Noelia Ortiz Cortés (left) and Abe Rybeck in Immaculate Infection, circa 1999-2000. Photo by Craig Bailey. The Theater Offensive records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

A small section of materials chronicling the Theater Offensive’s predecessor, the United Fruit Company, even more directly support Rybeck’s accounts of the company’s “guerilla theater” protests in the form of dramatic, often satirical, public performances meant to call attention to societal issues. Even performance art can be clearly represented in material artifacts, whether it is captured in photographs, like the one of Rybeck and Noelia Ortiz Cortés in Immaculate Infection (right) or in items like the Fenway Official Cruiser Membership Card.

The card references the Back Bay Fens, which Rybeck explained was the location of many performances, as gay men often congregated in the area. Rybeck’s explanations of the company’s activism and beliefs are also echoed in the letter and order form addressed to a “fan” of the United Fruit Company. The order form in particular mentions the Hunks of Nicaragua Calendar and Homo Milk Carton, which were both displayed at the recent event and discussed by Rybeck.

Archival materials laid out, including a Hunks of Nicaragua Calendar of a pamphlet about Homo Milk
Hunks of Nicaragua calendar and the Homo Milk Carton from the Theater Offensive records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

Overall, I appreciated how the records fit into the arc of the Theater Office as an organization. It contains not just material from the company’s earliest days, but also reflects nearly two decades of the Theater Offensive’s evolution that leads to and shapes their programming and ideals today.

Learn more about how to access the Theater Offensive records by emailing archives@northeastern.edu. You can also browse digitized Theater Offensive content in Northeastern’s Digital Repository Service or check out a previous blog post about Theater Offensive records written by Grace Millet.

Julia Lee (she/her) is in her first year of the Simmons University Library and Information Science graduate program. She received her BA from Northeastern University with a combined major in English and Theatre. Her final Northeastern co-op was as a digital assistant for the Massachusetts State Archives.

2024 Reading Challenge Update: September Winner and What You Read This Month!

We’re one month into the fall semester, and the weather is starting to turn cool in Boston. It’s a great time to pick up a good book!

This month, Kim Kennedy is the lucky winner of the prize drawing. Kim will receive a digital gift card to Frugal Bookstore in Roxbury, Mass. Frugal Bookstore is a Black-owned community bookstore that emphasizes BIPOC authors and stories.

Big congratulations, as well, to everyone who read a book this month and told us about it. There are three months left in the 2024 Reading Challenge, so keep reading! Hint: for more chances to win, make sure to track your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too.

The September theme was “a debut book by a Massachusetts author.” Here are some of the books you enjoyed:

What You Read in September

Cover of The Song of Achilles

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book

“I don’t normally gravitate towards myth retellings, but this one hooked me from the first page. Lyrical and beautiful!” — Bianca

“A book that left me with no words. I was happy and sad towards the end, bawling my eyes out. Finally they were together.” — Suchita

Cover of The House of Seven Gables

The House of the Seven Gables, Nathanial Hawthorne
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book

“I had visited the House of Seven Gables [in Salem, Mass.] about 5 years ago, but only now did I get the chance to read the book by Nathanial Hawthorne. Many of the physical places and things I remember from my visit were mentioned in the book and well done! You would not have to visit the place to get a full picture as Hawthorne describes it so well!” — Michael

Cover of The Namesake

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book

“This is a beautifully written story of the struggle to belong in a different culture than your own. I learned a bunch about Bengali culture and hope to read Lahiri’s short story collection too.” — Courtney

Cover of The Midcoast

The Midcoast, Adam White
Listen to the audiobook

“My grandparents are year-rounders in Damariscotta, Maine, so I grew up spending the summer there! It was so cool to read a book that I could really understand the niche and I loved this book!” — Sam

“Great story about local issues in Maine, family intrigue, social and economical status structures, and the lobster trade (spoiler alert — not lucrative!)” — Michal

Cover of Rules of Civility

Rules of Civility, Amor Towles
Find it at F. W. Olin Library

“Who knew Amor Towles was born and raised in the Boston area? Not me. It felt a little against the theme because this book is so clearly a love song to New York City, but I wanted to read it, so I read it and, like his other books, really, really enjoyed it. Five stars!” — Jodi

And What to Read in October

October offers a chance to pick up that historical fiction or history book you’ve been wanting to read: “a book about a time in history you’d like to know more about.” Here are some suggestions! Need more ideas? Check out this list of titles from the Massachusetts Center for the Book and Northeastern’s own curated selection of e-books and audiobooks!

Cover of By Hands Now Known

By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, Margaret A. Burnham
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Listen to the audiobook

Northeastern’s own Margaret A. Burnham, Distinguished Law Professor at the Northeastern University School of Law and founder of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, brings the Jim Crow era to life in all its horrifying, heartbreaking detail. By Hands Now Known traces the history of the Southern legal system, and its failure to protect Black citizens, from 1920-1960.

Cover of Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, Geraldine Brooks
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book

Set in rural England in 1666, Year of Wonders bills itself as “a novel of the plague,” which probably explains why it saw a resurgence in popularity in 2020. But it’s also a novel about loss, love, community and humanity, and the levels of heroism to which everyday people can aspire when faced with extraordinary circumstances.

Cover of When Crack was King

When Crack was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era, Donovan X. Ramsey
Find it at Snell Library | Listen to the audiobook

The crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, and the accompanying “war on drugs,” is, as author Donovan X. Ramsey points out, a deeply misunderstood and vilified era. Ramsey takes readers beyond the fear-mongering headlines of the Reagan era and uplifts the voices and stories of the people caught in the grip of the drug trade. When Crack was King was nominated for 2023 National Book Award.

Cover of The Enchanters

The Enchanters, James Ellroy
Read the e-book

Set in Los Angeles in 1962, The Enchanters is a classic pulp fiction, capturing the grime and glamor of 1960s Hollywood. Disgraced former cop turned private eye Freddy Otash is tasked with solving a mysterious puzzle involving a kidnapped starlet, the Kennedy brothers, and Marilyn Monroe. The Enchanters was named a 2023 NPR Best Book of the Year.

Cover of Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II, Elyse Graham
Listen to the audiobook

Before the CIA, there was America’s Office of Strategic Services, an organization set up on the brink of World War II. Rather than career spies or political actors, the OSS was staffed by academics: literature professors, historians, librarians, and other scholars who suddenly found themselves spying on Nazis and infiltrating enemy territory.

For readers in Boston who need more book recommendations, you can stop by the Snell Library lobby in person on October 15 and 16 for Reading Challenge stickers, bookmarks, and books to check out, and friendly librarians who love talking about books!

As always, happy reading and good luck in the October Reading Challenge! Make sure to tell us about your book before the end of the month for a chance to win the prize drawing. And for additional chances to win, log your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too!