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 2023 reading challenge, join our buddy reads or book club on Instagram, or sign up on Patreon!

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Apr 21, 2020
3 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! April 21, 2020 - Finney Boylan, Rai, Tran

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Here are three books coming out today that I'm looking forward to reading! Jennifer Finney Boylan's Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs Description from Celadon Books: In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking column went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving

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Apr 15, 2020
29 min

121: Learn More about Yourself by Exploring Enneagram Books

In this episode, we have a great time discussing what we've each learned about the enneagram. We each chose a book (Ashley chose Millenneagram: The Enneagram Guide for Discovering Your Truest, Baddest Self, Jen chose The Essential Enneagram, and Sara chose The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery) to read that explored the enneagram, and we did our best to figure out our numbers. It was an adventure, and we had fun sharing with you! Stick around for our bo

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Apr 14, 2020
4 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! April 14, 2020 - Moore, Jimenez, Jamieson

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Here are three books coming out today that I'm excited to read! Wes Moore's Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City Description from Publisher: "When Freddie Gray was arrested for possessing an 'illegal knife' in April 2015, he was, by eyewitness accounts that video evidence later confirmed, treated 'roughly' as police loaded him into a vehicle. By the end of his trip in the police van, Gray was in a coma from which he would never r

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Apr 13, 2020
2 min

Comfort Reads: The Long List

by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books) Last week, we released episode 120 in which we recommended books that could be Comfort Reads for you during this very stressful time! Check out my long list of recommendations, and let us know what books you'd recommend to round out these lists. What other books are bringing you comfort? Books to Escape Sarah J. Maas’s House of Earth and Blood Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone Elana K. Arnold’s Damsel Brigid Kemmerer’s A Curse So Dark

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Apr 8, 2020
24 min

120: Find Your Way Back to Reading with Comfort Reads

In this episode, we talk about what kinds of reads are bringing us comfort during these challenging times. Sara shares her love of cookbooks like Michelle Smith’s The Whole Smiths Good Food Cookbook, Ashley shares her love of poetry including the grief anthology Kevin Young’s The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, and Jen shares some great fantasy reads that she's loving including Sarah J. Maas’s House of Earth and Blood. We'd love to know what you're reading that is

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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

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Apr 3, 2020
2 min

Ada Calhoun's WHY WE CAN'T SLEEP - This Book Speaks to Me! - Jen's Review

I cannot tell you how many photos of Ada Calhoun's Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis I texted to Ashley and Sara, accompanied by exclamations like "This book is speaking to me!!!" and "I started Why We Can't Sleep and have been compelled to book dart 7 times. I'm on page 6." I do not KNOW the last time I have identified so strongly with a book. I put Why We Can't Sleep on hold at the library immediately after hearing Calhoun's interview with Roxanne Coady on the

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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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Mar 11, 2020
1 min

116: Anne Bogel's DON'T OVERTHINK IT - I Always Have the "Over" Problem

In this episode, we have fun discussing Anne Bogel's Don't Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life and its application to our lives. Although we don't go in depth about her other books, I'd Rather Be Reading and Reading People , we enjoyed reading and discussing those way back in episode 43. Bookish Check In Jen - Stuart Gibbs’s Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation Sara - Jessica Simpson’s Open Book Ashley - Anthony Doerr’s A

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Mar 9, 2020
2 min

Nine Great Audiobooks for Your Ear Enjoyment

In this bookish fave, we're talking all things audiobooks! These are some amazing audiobooks that I (Ashley) thoroughly enjoyed. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Six and Brittney Morris’s Slay both have a cast of narrators for the different characters' perspectives. All of the others, including Michelle Obama’s Becoming and Angie Thomas’s On the Come Up, both of which were highly recommended to me as audiobooks, have single readers. I loved all of these books! Which bo

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Feb 27, 2020
3 min

Anne Bogel's DON'T OVERTHINK IT: There's Still Time! - Ashley's Review

Phew! Anne Bogel’s amazing new book, Don’t Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life, left me with a lot to think about and plenty to celebrate as I reflect on the tips learned and consider what is most important. Thanks to #partner Netgalley for my early ebook copy; publication date is March 3, 2020. There’s still time - don’t forget to preorder now to support Anne Bogel and to improve your quality of life! What I loved Friend

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Feb 26, 2020
2 min

114: Read Alike Ideas and Lit Circles - I Think the Risk Is Worth the Reward

In this episode, we're discussing the benefits of using Read Alikes within book clubs and within the classroom. We touch on some of our favorite YA lit books, such as Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give, as well as classics like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. We talk about strategies for making read alikes work and ways to manage the difficulties in order to reap the rewards of exploring a variety of books centering around one theme. Bookish Check In Jen - Jojo Moyes’s The Giver o

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Feb 25, 2020
3 min

Anne Bogel's DON'T OVERTHINK IT: Procrastinate No More! (and Pre-Order Today) - Jen's Review

Thanks to partner NetGalley for the digital ARC of Anne Bogel’s Don't Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life. The book releases on March 3. I learned so much from Anne Bogel’s new, brilliant book Don’t Overthink It. (One thing I learned is the likely reason I have procrastinated writing this review: as a perfectionist, I want my review to be perfect, and since I know I can never fully communicate just how relevant and powerf

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Feb 19, 2020
2 min

113: Why Teach YA? - There's Nothing I Want More than for Kids to Love What We're Doing

In this episode, we focus on classroom teachers and talk directly about how and why we incorporated Young Adult literature into our classrooms. We talk about series we saw our students loving like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, and Veronica Roth's Divergent, and we talk about seeing our students fall in love with books. From classics like S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders to A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants, we talk about using YA lit in our clas

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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

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Feb 3, 2020
1 min

Best Reads of 2019 - Jen's Picks

Oh, friends. I gave 51 books five stars in 2019, so this was tough for me! Ultimately, I settled--somewhat arbitrarily--on a top 15, ranging from middle-grade reads like Kelly Yang's Front Desk to Michelle Obama's brilliant memoir Becoming to a stunning multi-genre novel in Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive (which I really need to re-read!). Anyway, here are 15 of the books I loved in 2019, in COMPLETELY random order (you can find reviews for all of them on Instagram,

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Jan 31, 2020
3 min

Nick Bilton's AMERICAN KINGPIN: High-Suspense Narrative Nonfiction - Sara's Review

Oh, boy! Do I have a book for you. This book is a true-crime, narrative nonfiction, and it is fabulous. It is Nick Bilton’s 2017 Bestseller American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road. So, here’s the thing, if you don’t like true crime, you still might want to give it a go. If you don’t like nonfiction, you might still want to give it a go. If you read John Carreyrou’s 2018 New York Times bestseller Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon

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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

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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 20, 2020
3 min

Read This! (Non-Book Edition)

Here are some of my (Jen's) favorite things to read: Book Riot is my favorite bookish site--I devour their articles every day, I listen to more than one of their podcasts, and this year, I’m taking on their Read Harder challenge.Their stated mission is to “innovate fresh content and services to [their] readers amplify marginalized voices, and challenge [themselves] and [their] community to be inclusive," which is right up my alley. Two Bossy Dames sends out a weekly newslette

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