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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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