The Bookstore

Action Items - US Campaign for Palestinian Rights  Action Items - Jewish Voices for Peace This week was an extra week for October (yes, technically it's November, apologies, I've had some personal stuff going on), so we had our Patreon Patrons pick the book and they chose Ursula K. Le Guin's  The Dispossessed .  The novel is one of the six major novels of The Hainish Cycle. Though The Dispossessed...

Action Items - US Campaign for Palestinian Rights  Action Items - Jewish Voices for Peace Free Ebooks - Haymarket Books Open Letter from ArabLit Recommended titles: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli and Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women edited by Jo Glanville * *These are NOT affiliate links, The Bookstore will NOT receive commission from Bookshop from any purchases made while visiting these...

Our first book for October's prompt to read a book set in an alternate dimension or different planet is Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug . This is a dreamlike, speculative novel about a woman who is pulled into an alternate universe. Content warnings: None that we can think of. Our next reads will be Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney. You can find them at your local bookstore or library and r...

Just a teeny tiny mini episode about Becca's experience at the Detroit Bookfest this past summer.  Our next reads will be  Present Tense Machine  by Gunnhild Øyehaug and  Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney. You can find them at your local bookstore or library and read along with us. If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2023, you can find  Instagram graphics for your story or grid in t...

We read Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara. This short story collection was first published in 1972 and features 15 stories, and the incredible voices of folks in New York City and sometimes in the rural south. Content Warnings (for the book, less so for the episode): sexual assault, child abuse, murder Our next reads will be Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug and Babel-17 buy Samuel R....

Our first book for September's prompt to Read a Book with an Animal in the Title is  The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li . We loved reading about this obsessive, codependent relationships between two girls in post-war France.  Content warnings: mentions of violence and sexual assault (not graphically described) Our next book discussion will be on  Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara . Get it from your...

For our last book in August, Corinne picked Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo . Content Warning: racism, abuse, alcoholism  Our next book discussion will be The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li . You can find it at your local bookstore or library and read along with us. If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2023, you can find Instagram graphics for your story or grid in this Google Drive folder ....

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine follows several generations of a family in the Colorado area. Fair warning, we have some criticisms about this book's writing, so if you loved it, you may want to skip this episode.  Content advisory: violence, sexual assault, racism Our next book discussion will be on  Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo . Find it at your local library or bookstore and read along with...

Or: A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, five languages , And Three Major Religions, not counting the minor sects . Told by the DEAD, supplemented by the AUTHOR, drawing from a range of BOOKS, and aided by IMAGINATION, the which being the greatest natural GIFT of any person. That the WISE might have it for a record, that my compatriots REFLECT, laypersons gain some UNDERSTANDING, And Melancho...

July's prompt for The Bookstore Challenge 2023 is to Read a Book Over 500 Pages,  and/or a Graphic Novel. Our pick for the 500 pager is coming up later this month, but in the meantime, we have a graphic novel,  Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton .  Is it this generation's  The Jungle ?! We think so!  Content advisory: sexual assault, sexual harassment, workplace safety, capitalism Ou...

This week we read Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block (both can also be found in the anthologized book Dangerous Angels). These books were massively popular with off-beat teens in the 90s and have a huge following. Will they still manage to charm jaded 30-somethings in the 2020s? Content warnings for the books: some dark themes including sexual assault and addiction. Also some really...

Becca's DNF book pick for June's prompt is  The Namesake  by Jhumpa Lahiri .  The novel is Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection,  The Interpreter of Maladies .  Our next book is actually two books, Weetzie Bat  and  Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block. Find it at your local bookstore or library (it's on Hoopla!) and read along with us. Content warnings: near-death experi...

As chosen by our Patrons (plus Corinne), our extra book for May is  Time Shelter  by Georgi Gospodinov .  Gospodinov is Bulgarian, thus fulfilling the prompt to read a book by an author from a country you've never been to, as neither of us have been to Bulgaria. And as a bonus,  Time Shelter was announced as the winner of the International Booker Prize recently! Content warnings: mentions of suici...

Corinne's pick for The Bookstore Challenge 2023 prompt to "read a book by an author from a country you've never been to" is  An African in Greenland  by Tété-Michel Kpomassie . Kpomassie writes about his childhood in Togo and his fulfilled ambition to move to Greenland and experience life there.  Content warnings: animal death, addiction Mentioned in the episode is a Tiktoker who lives in Svalbard...

Becca's pick for May's prompt to read a book by an author from a country you've never been to is  The Fawn by Magda Szabó (the country is Hungary). We are already fans of hers from reading her later novel Abigail , and we're thrilled to read another classic Szabó exploration of a complicated and flawed woman. Content warnings: Deaths, both animal and human If you want to read along with The Bookst...

We've got mixed feelings for this debut about a young immigrant woman trying to find love and community in the Midwest. This week we read All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. Content Warnings: sexual violence In May we will be reading books from or about a part of the world we've never been to. Becca's pick, The Fawn by Magda Szabó , is up first. Followed by An African in Greenlan...

Content Warnings: violence, self-harm, so much blood, sexual violence, we also swear If you really enjoyed this book, we're sorry, you may want to skip this one. A Darker Shade of Magic is a contemporary fantasy novel that's short on background info, long on every trope, and not a series we will be continuing. Our next book discussion will be All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. Y...

April's challenge prompt is to read a book recommended to you by a bookseller or librarian. Ideally, you'd ask a bookseller or librarian for one, but also we know there's a lot of reasons you may not want to do that and that's ok! There are other options, like reading something a favorite bookstagrammer or booktok account has recommended, or picking a book off of a recommendation display at the st...

So Lucky by Nicola Griffith  is an amalgamation of genres, part autofiction, part disability activist story, part metaphysical, and part crime thriller. Mara Tagareilli is a martial arts master and heads up a successful and important AIDS non-profit in Atlanta. She and her wife of many years have just split and after she collapses while getting a jug of milk from the refrigerator, she is diagnosed...

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon is a 2017 science fiction novel about the class and race structure on a generation ship making its way through the universe toward the promised land. It features a well drawn main character and a lot of confusing world mechanics, so hang on, because we have some questions. Content Warnings (for the novel and the episode): physical violence, sexual assault,...

This week we read the classic noir novel, I n a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes . We love it for subverting typical noir tropes and tackling American machismo at the same time. March's promopt for the 2023 Bookstore Challenge is to read a book by an author with a disability or about disability. Becca's pick, An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon , is up first. And then we will be reading So...

For February's prompt to Read a Western or Pulp Fiction/Noir, Becca's pick is True Grit by Charles Portis. The novel was a bestseller immediately upon publishing in 1968, and has been adapted twice into movies. We loved this entertaining, funny, action-packed story that is essentially just about a girl bent on revenge.  Next time we'll be reading Corinne's pick, a noir/pulp fiction novel titled  I...

For January's prompt, to read a book published in a year ending in 3, Becca had us read The Charioteer by Mary Renault. It was published in 1953 and known for being one of the first popularly published novels about positive homosexual romance. Despite some language differences between two Americans in 2023 and a British woman in 1953, we really loved this story. For February's prompt of reading a...

Hello, this is our first episode of the year! January's prompt for The Bookstore Challenge 2023 is to read a book from a year ending in 3. Corinne's pick is  Maud Martha  by Gwendolyn Brooks , published in 1953. It's out of print in the US but you can still buy in the UK, and you should! Bernardine Evaristo says it's wonderful and do you need a better endorsement than that? If you want to read alo...

Hello, this is our last episode of the year. We made it! This Year in Review is much like the ones from past years, we go over what we did, what we accomplished, any surprising trends we noticed, and have some fun with picking superlatives.  If you want to read along with The Bookstore Challenge 2023, you can find I nstagram graphics for your story or grid in this Google Drive folder . You can als...