Unabridged Podcast

Welcome to Unabridged! Ashley and Jen (shown left to right in the photo) talk books, share recommendations, and celebrate all things bookish. On our blog (see our posts below!) we share bookish faves, pub day shout-outs, show notes, and book reviews.

Want to get more involved? Check out our 2022 reading challenge, join our buddy reads on Instagram, or sign up on Patreon!

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24 hours ago
3 min

Benjamin Alire Sáenz's ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE: A Must-Read Book

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Oh my goodness, this must be a season of both re-reads and reading series books for me, and I'm loving both reading experiences. I re-read this one, Benjamin Alire Sáenz's Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), for our January Unabridged Buddy Read, and I fell in love with this brilliant, powerful, moving book all over again. In fact, I loved it even more the second time. We had a

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Jan 6
3 min

Carlos Hernandez's SAL AND GABI BREAK THE UNIVERSE - A Magician with a Special Trick

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) When I was scanning the TBR tag I've made on my Libby app (another feature I plan to use more actively this year as I work on being more strategic about my upcoming book selection - see more about that here...), I came across Carlos Hernandez's Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), which is a middle grade book in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint. I remember Sara talking about this one way back in episode

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Dec 23, 2022
3 min

Dani Shapiro's SIGNAL FIRES - A Novel of Possibility

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) If I'd read Dani Shapiro's Signal Fires (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) any earlier this year, it would likely be on my list of top books of 2022. Signal Fires is a book about possibility—both the ever-presence of possibility in the course of people's lives but also the ways that decisions can narrow those possibilities. It's about the ways that we understand the people who are around us and how they shape our own lives, the ways that we're all inte

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Dec 9, 2022
2 min

Zoraida Córdova's THE INHERITANCE OF ORQUÍDEA DIVINA - The Power of Family Magic

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) I listened to Zoraida Córdova's The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm) thanks to Libro.fm's ALC program, and I was so captivated by the story. This was the first book I'd read by Zoraida Córdova, but it will not be my last! Richly woven with a complicated mystery at its center, this is a beautiful story that unfurls over decades and generations all tied together by fate and choices made early on in the l

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Dec 18, 2020
4 min

Sofía Segovia's THE MURMUR OF BEES - A Beautiful, Whimsical Story about the Power of Love

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Wow. This one will definitely be one of my top reads of the year. I chose this, Sofia Segovia's The Murmur of Bees, as my book in translation pick for the Modern Mrs. Darcy challenge, which is the reading challenge I participated in this past year. Segovia is a Mexican author writing in Spanish, and her work was translated by Simon Bruni. (Check out our reading challenge episodes from the beginning of 2020 where we shared our

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Nov 27, 2020
3 min

Katherena Vermette's THE BREAK - A Multi-Generational Family Saga

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Katherena Vermette's The Break, which was the focus of the most recent @readwithtoni buddy read, is a brilliant novel set in Winnipeg and centered on a tragedy at the heart of a Métis family. The novel begins with a family tree, and that was definitely a sign of things to come. The narration alternates between ten characters—mostly women—whose connections aren't immediately clear. As the book unfolds, Vermette reveals gradually the subtle thre

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Mar 30, 2020
1 min

Roots of INTERNMENT: Perspectives on Internment during World War II

Samira Ahmed's Internment was our Unabridged Buddy Read for March and Book Club Pick for April. Our episode releases this Wednesday, April 1. In the novel, the protagonist and her parents are taken--in the near future--to an internment camp for Muslim citizens of the United States that is located near Manzanar. Frequently, Ahmed references WW II internment camps like Manzanar as historical context for her novel. Here are other sources--some own voices and some not--that provi

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Jan 22, 2020
2 min

Welcome - Introduction and Overview

Just getting started with Unabridged Podcast? Welcome! We're Ashley, Jen, and Sara, and we are teachers and podcasters who are passionate about books. We have four kinds of posts here on our blog. On Mondays, we post about our Bookish Faves, on Tuesdays we do Pub Day Shout-outs, on Wednesdays our episodes drop, and on Fridays, we post book reviews. (Be on the lookout on Thursdays, too; we sometimes have an extra post then!) There are many ways to connect with us! In addition

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Jan 17, 2020
2 min

Jami Attenberg's ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS, Jen's Review

Jami Attenberg's All This Could Be Yours is a stunning and incisive examination of the obligations we have as parents and as children to each other and about the way that loving someone is, in a sense, an obligation. It's also about what happens when someone is so horrible that he erases those obligations, that he eliminates the love others have. The novel centers on Victor, a man who is dying in the midst of a family he has abused and controlled for years. Though he excels

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Jan 8, 2020
1 min

107: Mary Beth Keane's ASK AGAIN, YES - I Had to Open Another Tin of Book Darts

In this Unabridged Book Club (#unabridgedpodbookclub) episode, we discuss Mary Beth Keane's Ask Again, Yes, the amazing multigenerational novel examining two families in a planned community. We make connections to Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, John Boyne’s The Heart's Invisible Furies, and Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, and we thoroughly discuss the intricacies of relationships over time and through generations as they are explored in the novel. Timeline Introduction

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Sep 20, 2019
2 min

Min Jin Lee's PACHINKO - Ashley's Book Review

Upon beginning this novel, I was immediately swept away by the tender, compelling story of the young Sunja, child of Hoonie and Yangjin, and their family's challenges as they worked to make their living by running a boarding house for people in the small village where they lived in Korea. When Sunja found herself in a position of dishonor and shame, I was moved by her resolution and her courage. As she makes the move to Japan, the story shifts into an exploration of Korean li

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Aug 28, 2019
2 min

88: Autumn TBR Lists - Shopping in My Kindle Closet

We'll let you guess just which one of us went shopping in her Kindle closet . . . and then cheated to share an extra book (or two . . . or three!) on this episode. Well, actually, we ALL cheated because we have SO many books coming out this fall that we're eagerly anticipating. As a sneak peek, we're including Peter Heller’s Celine, Rainbow Rowell’s Wayward Son, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys. Take a listen to our TBR lists, and then let us know what books you look f

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