Unabridged Podcast

Welcome to Unabridged, the podcast where teachers take on books! Every week, Sara, Jen and Ashley (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 each week.

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

Learn More

Support Unabridged

Jun 29, 2020
4 min

Fiction by Black Authors - Some Recent Favorites

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Looking for amazing fiction reads by Black authors? Here are a few of my recent favorites, all of which are adult fiction by Black women. These span a lot of genres and styles, so see the details below to find one (or more) for you! Brit Bennett's The Mothers - I'm here for anything Brit Bennett writes. This powerful story (realistic fiction) comments on the complex relationships between women and the way that women's relatio

19 views0 comments

Jun 24, 2020
27 min

131: 2020 Reading Challenge Check In

On this Unabridged episode, we consider where we are with our reading goals for the year, including how we're doing on the reading challenges we each selected back in January. We talk about the The Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge with @annebogel, Book Riot's 2020 Read Harder Challenge with @bookriot, and the Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge from @novelknight along with The Unread Shelf Project 2020 with @theunreadshelf. Want to listen to our original episode where we

27 views0 comments

Jun 2, 2020
4 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! June 2, 2020 featuring Bennett, Brown, and Johnson

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) As we struggle to learn more in response to the injustices we're seeing across the United States, we are highlighting three works by Black authors that are being published today. Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half Description from Publisher: "The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is di

16 views0 comments

May 20, 2020
22 min

126: Plugging into Bookish Communities Online with @readwithtoni from Instagram

In this week's episode of Unabridged, Ashley, Jen, and Sara talk with Toni about the power of developing an online bookish community. Toni--who posts @readwithtoni--shares her own bookstagram journey, what she loves about buddy reads, and the books (like Homegoing and All the Ugly and Wonderful Things) that have resulted in some great conversations. We also each share some great, bookstagram-made-me-do-it reads. Bookish Check In Ashley - Lyssa Kay Adams’s The Bromance Book Cl

32 views0 comments

May 18, 2020
2 min

Bookstagram Made Me Do It!

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Bookstagram has brought me so many good things that have enriched my life... and six of them are the gorgeous books pictured above (along with the three pictured on my TBR list at the bottom...), and SO many other books! Honestly, though, it is hard to keep up with all of the books that come across my feed, and it is tough to pick and choose which ones should make their way to the top of my towering TBR stack. I've always bee

27 views1 comment

Apr 7, 2020
3 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! April 7, 2020 - Alvarez, Carr, War

I (Jen) had a really hard time narrowing my choices today to just three--so if you scroll down, you'll find that I cheated and recommend a few extras (sorrynotsorry). Julia Alvarez's Afterlife Description from Algonquin Books: "Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted b

17 views0 comments

Mar 18, 2020
2 min

117: The Unread Shelf with Whitney Conard - Curate that Unread Shelf and Actually Get Them Read

In this episode, we had the wonderful experience of interviewing Whitney Conard from The Unread Shelf. She joins us for our bookish check-in (we're big Camille Pagán fans!), shares the origin story of The Unread Shelf Project, and offers tips to help all of us pare down those burdensome stacks of unread books. We round out our discussion with our "Give Me One" segment, talking about our favorite teas. Bookish Check In Jen - Camille Pagán’s Forever Is the Worst Long Time (on a

56 views0 comments

Feb 10, 2020
4 min

Best Reads of 2019--Sara's Picks

You are going to notice right away that my "Best of 2019" list isn't nearly as long as my counterparts. Honestly, 2019 was just not a great year of reading for me. I read a lot of books, but there just weren't a ton that really stood out to me. However, the ones that I did read, made a huge impact. I will say that I have read way more non-fiction this year than I have in other years AND OVER HALF (!) of the books on my list are non-fiction! My fingers are crossed for a more s

16 views0 comments

Feb 7, 2020
2 min

Sally Rooney's NORMAL PEOPLE Slow-Burn Fiction At Its Best--Sara's Review

I recently finished Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Oh my goodness, let me tell you, it was not what I expected going in. I expected a romantic story of two people trying to find their way back to each other. Well, this book really wasn’t that. Like, really wasn’t. At all. Thanks to @randomhouse #partner for my review copy! This book starts with introducing Connell and Marianne, two classmates at an Irish high school who couldn’t be more different. Connell is a smart, popular j

24 views0 comments

Jan 27, 2020
5 min

Best Reads of 2019 - Ashley's Picks

2019 was a great year for reading for me. Many of these books were not written in 2019, but they were new to me this past year, and they were phenomenal. From Michelle Obama's Becoming that I read in right at the beginning of the year to John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies, which I read very close to the year's end, I definitely read some keepers this year that I will be recommending and revisiting for a long time to come. These were all five bookish hearts books for me

26 views0 comments

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

394 views0 comments

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

9 views0 comments

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

18 views0 comments

Nov 15, 2019
2 min

Brittney Morris's SLAY -- Jen's Review

Thanks to Partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Brittney Morris’s SLAY in exchange for an honest review. The book released Tuesday, September 24. “What if someone made a [video] game that was just for black people?” (13). This question is at the heart of the brilliant YA novel SLAY, by Brittney Morris. Kiera Johnson, a seventeen-year-old student at the elite Jefferson Academy, is one of a handful of students of color, along with her sister Steph and her boyfriend Malcolm.

5 views0 comments

Sep 18, 2019
1 min

91: Book and Song Pairings - I'm Going to Go for It

We took on a new challenge for this episode, offering our ideas for songs that pair beautifully with books. While none of us would call this our wheelhouse (I don't think!), we loved hearing the others' ideas for songs that resonate, for books that somehow connect in a meaningfully way to the feeling or story of the song. We would LOVE to hear your ideas for perfect book-and-song pairings. Visit us on social media to share your ideas! Book and Song Pairings Ashley’s Picks D

6 views0 comments

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

3 views0 comments

Jul 24, 2019
1 min

83: Summertime Drink and Book Pairings - The Food, The Family, the Relationships

What says summer more than curling up with a good book and a nice glass of . . . something? Unabridged dives into book and drink pairings in this episode. We share some books we've read, some books we hope to read, and the drinks that pop into our minds (sometimes spontaneously, and sometimes after a bit of Googling). After you listen, head over to social media to let us know what you think of our recommendations and what you'd recommend! You can find us @unabridgedpod on In

3 views0 comments

Jul 17, 2019
1 min

82: Our Anticipated Reads of 2019 Update - Intentionally Weird

Back in January, we shared the books that we planned (or hoped?) to read this year. Now, it's time to share our progress. Have we read all of them? Nope. But we've made a valiant effort. (Or at least an effort.) What was on your TBR list for 2019? How are you doing? We'd love to hear about your successes and failures, the books you've loved and the ones that have disappointed you, over on social media. Check us out on Facebook and everywhere else @unabridgedpod. Books We've

2 views0 comments

Jun 26, 2019
1 min

79: Our Recommendations to Each Other - I Just Love This Book

The Unabridged crew took time in our most recent short episode (#unabridgedshorts) to recommend books to each other, which was fun . . . and a little scary! (It's weirdly vulnerable.) Check out what we chose to recommend for each other, and let us know if you have other books you think we'd would appreciate (or, of course, if you think we got something really wrong!). Jen’s Recs For Ashley - Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s Fruit of the Drunken Tree Sujata Massey’s The Widows of Mal

2 views0 comments

Jun 12, 2019
1 min

77: Our Summer TBR Lists - We All Know How I Like the Romance

We at Unabridged are SO. Excited. About summer! As unrepentant bookworms, we have been plotting and planning which books we can fit in over our summer break. We are therefore happy to share our Summer TBR lists with you (and with each other) in this #unabridgedshort. What's on your summer TBR? Let us know on social media (@unabridgedpod). Books Mentioned Jen's TBR List Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On (to prep for the sequel!) Harry Potter s

Unabridged Podcast

Scroll to the bottom to listen to our latest episodes!

Find us on your favorite podcast catcher or subscribe below!