In this Unabridged Podcast episode, we revisit a favorite game that we've played on past episodes, Book Riot's Lit Chat Game. After our Bookish Check-in, we dive into the game and answer some impromptu questions related to our reading lives, all while recording our responses. In this episode, we leave you with a favorite store for our Give Me One segment.
Bookish Check-in
Ashley - Jennifer De Leon’s Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From
Jen - Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights
Sara - Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam's Punching the Air
Mentioned in Episode
Ibi Zoboi's American Street and Pride
Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk Lit Chat: Conversation Starters about Books and Life
Richard Adams's Watership Down
Stan and Jan Berenstain's The Berenstain Bears series
Russell Hoban's Tea Time for Frances
Anne Dewdney's Llama Llama Red Pajama
Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day
P. D. Eastman's Are You My Mother?
Elizabeth L. Cline's The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good
Give Me One - Favorite Store
Ashley - Plant Life Indoors
Jen - Stitch Fix
Sara - The Bluest Willow
(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)
Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.
Loving what you see here? Please comment below (scroll ALL the way down to comment), share this post using the social media buttons below (scroll down for those as well!), and find us on social media to share your thoughts!
Want to support Unabridged?
Check out our Merch Store! Become a patron on Patreon. Follow us @unabridgedpod on Instagram. Like and follow our Facebook Page.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store. Follow us @unabridgedpod on Twitter. Subscribe to our podcast and rate us on Apple Podcasts or on Stitcher. Check us out on Podbean.
Bookish Check-in
Sara shared her current read, Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam's Punching the Air. She says, "I was so excited to pre-orde this book. I love Ibi Zoboi, and I loved American Street, and I really enjoyed Pride, so I was super excited for this new release."
She had just started the book, but she shared a little bit about it: "Yusef Salaam is a prison reform activist, and this story is a story in verse. It is about a 16 year old who is imprisoned for something that he did not commit. . . . Ibi Zoboi has a gift, such a wonderful gift of writing, and it is so captivating. I love novels in verse, and where I currently am in my reading life, a novel in verse is perfect. We are going to do this for a buddy read coming up, so keep your eyes peeled for that."
Ashley talked about Jennifer De Leon’s Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From. She said, "I got this one on NetGalley. It came out in mid August, so it's a new release, and it's a really powerful story. Lily is the main character, Liliana, and she gets an opportunity to go to a really exclusive school. But then she is leaving her community and trying something new, and so she has some trepidation about that. She's navigating that situation, and also there is a whole story happening with her dad and what's going on with him.
"I don't want to give any spoilers, but there's a lot going on there, and she discovers a lot of truths about her family that she did not know. That is a heavy burden for her to bear, and so she is just navigating how to support her mom. She has two younger brothers that she is close to who are also navigating these family dynamics that are complex, and so there's just a lot happening there.
"I really loved this story. Through Lily, we see a lot of the struggles to fit in a community she feels both rejected in some ways by the other kids in the program that she's in. They have a lot of reluctance at accepting her. . . It also deals a lot with people's biases toward other people. So I think that it is well worth a read."
Jen was reading Helen McDonald's Vesper Flights. She said, "I am back in the classroom teaching at a school that has an environmental focus, and I realized that I have not read tons of environmental or nature books recently. So that has sent me on Google, looking for lists of books to read so that I can share them with students. This is actually a new release. Helen MacDonald wrote H Is for Hawk, which I just loved. That is a memoir, about her journey training a goshawk, and I know that sounds like a bizarre topic, but it was really, really lovely. So when I saw that she had an essay collection coming out, I was quite excited.
"I checked this one out from the e-library, and it is a series of essays where she is considering the way that nature has been sort of an anchor for her, and when things have happened to it, like there's a meadow that she really loves, that someone just mows down, killing the entire ecosystem. She's just writing both about what she cherishes about nature and also what happens when other people don't respect it in the same way that she does. There's one chapter or one essay about seeing a wild boar for the first time and what that's like. There are some that are quite short, and there are some that are longer, but she is just a beautiful writer, and the topic is feeling quite relevant to my life right now."
Main Discussion - Lit Chat Game
Today, we answered these questions, off the cuff, from Book Riot's Lit Chat Game:
Were you ever read to as a child? Is there a book you remember reading with someone? Do you finish every book you start? What makes you stop reading a book?
Give Me One . . . Favorite Store
Then, each of us talked about one of our favorite stores.
Please note that we a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Comments