The Bookstore

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

Our next book discussion will be The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. 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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 egregious cultural appropriation and outright stereotyping/tokenizing.

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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 experience, (possible) sexual assault

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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 suicide, euthanasia, Alzheimer's, war, none of which we go into great detail about

Our next book discussion is The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, 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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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, @sejsejlija

Our next book discussion, as chosen by our Patreon Patrons, will be Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov. 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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 Bookstore Challenge 2023, you can find Instagram graphics for your story or grid in this Google Drive folder. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie. 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 this Google Drive folder. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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. 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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 store or library. Or you can take one of our highly specific (to our own tastes) recommendations that we offer to you in this episode.

Books Recommended:

Fight Night by Miriam Toewes Quartet and After Leaving Mr. McKenzie by Jean Rhys Evil Flowers by Gunnhild Øyehaug Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei (this is also on Hoopla) The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard The Mount by Carol Emshwiller (this is also on Hoopla) Collision Course: The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm by Alvin Moscow

Our next book discussions will be A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab and All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. 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 this Google Drive folder. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon

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 with multiple sclerosis.

Judith Heumann's website

Content warnings (for the book and the episode): violence against women, murder

Next time we'll be reading A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab, 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. You can also join us on The StoryGraph to see what others are reading for each month and get ideas for your TBR: The Bookstore Challenge 2023.

Get two audiobook credits for the price of one at Libro.fm when you sign up using the code BOOKSTOREPOD.

Website | Patreon