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Wednesday, November 30th 2022
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Your support means the world to us!
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The Calendar Room is Open!
2023 Calendars and Planners are available now, with more arriving daily!
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The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental novelist Kathy Acker, one of the most original and controversial figures in 20th-century American literature.
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Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a searing satire set amid the mayhem of the Sri Lankan civil war.
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The Evolution of Charles Darwin is an exciting biography of Charles Darwin’s legendary journey around the world on the HMS Beagle, and how based on this voyage Darwin developed his theory of natural selection. Preston draws on a rich range of historical documents, including letters, diary entries, and accounts by both Darwin and Captain FitzRoy to present a brisk and compelling “you are there” account of the five-year journey (1831-1836) that eventually culminated in the publication of the groundbreaking On the Origin of Species in 1859. This is a lively, well-researched account, filled with lots of personal stories and vibrant personalities, the epic story of an epic voyage as it unfolded, a seafaring adventure tale, tracing Darwin’s own transformation from amateur naturalist/geologist and adventurer to the most well-known scientist in the world, and the subsequent worldwide acceptance of his theory of evolution. Ed loved and highly recommends!
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Our annual roundup of the year's best books begins!
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This is a heartfelt love letter to Black women and their hair, hair not seen as a burden, but beautiful and deserving of meticulous care. Wash Day Diaries is a celebration of sisterhood and love between four friends as they deal with life’s ups and downs, including careers, family, dating, mental health, and of course, their hair. One of my favorite aspects is the rich illustrations with lush colors that portray each character’s unique style and mood. I felt charmed and seen reading this beautiful slice of life graphic novel.
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Shonen Note: Boy Soprano is a sweet and innocent coming-of-age story about a boy with a beautiful soprano singing voice who experiences the world through sound. Starting at a new school, he is caught between singing and the school choir or striking out on his own to be in an opera. As puberty approaches, his time as a soprano is limited, adding pressure to his decisions. Beautifully illustrated, this endearing manga makes for a charming, refreshingly pure read.
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It is the summer of 1979, and in Audrey Magee’s lyrical and brooding novel The Colony, two outsiders, one an English artist, the other a French linguist, visit a small, sparsely populated, rocky outcrop of an island off the west coast of Ireland, each in his own way striving to encapsulate the truth of this place—one in his painting, one in his faithful rendition of its speech, all with unforeseen and haunting consequences. The story is reminiscent of Anna Burns’ Milkman (yet totally different!), because "the troubles" in Northern Ireland feature here too, yet they remain a backdrop to a deeper, rural island story that is really about art and language and family and colonialism. This traditional island fishing community becomes a laboratory in which Magee dissects the gulf between what Ireland is and how the rest of the world fantasizes it to be (the sectarian violence claiming victims across Ireland is very effectively and dramatically rendered in short, sobering interludes interspersed with the main narrative.) Apropos of a novel dealing with art and language, Magee paints a vivid portrait of the island and its people (especially enriching is Magee’s portrait of James, a 15-year-old island boy seeking a bigger, better life). The novel’s ideas about language and culture are provocative and profound, but in a quiet way. And there is an elegant simplicity to the terse, direct dialogue; the pace of the novel is unhurried, the language often poetic, often strangely funny, with some inner thoughts relayed as streams of consciousness or ingeniously in bits of verse. Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize (it would be my favorite to win!), one of my favorite novels of the year, a novel I found near perfect and, honestly, didn’t want to end (trite I know, but true!), Ed loved and highly recommends!
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With this constellation of expansive essays on topics ranging from butchness, the border, and the poetics of adobe brickmaking to heartbreak, durational performance art, and Laura Aguilar’s lesbian bar portraiture, Raquel Gutierrez offers a deeply-felt ode to the transformative beauty of the Southwestern landscape and to her/their own bright tapestry of intergenerational queer community.
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The eponymous seven houses in these seven stories aren't what they seem. Someone or something is missing; a truth, a memory - something. Some houses call to the characters like sirens, some empty, others in an integrated dream-state. Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin's lynchian short stories of ghosts, obsessions, death, and familial ties unnerve - never taking the expected path and rather digs under the skin and reveals how fragile our sense of belonging and our connections with our loved ones truly are. A haunting collection of stories.
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The Rabbit Hutch opens like a doll's house; the novel takes its name from the low-rent apartment complex that houses the book's cast, all of them left behind in a fictional, yet convincingly crumbling, postindustrial Indiana city. The focus is on three teenage boys, freshly aged out of the foster care system, and their ethereal roommate Blandine, whose story ends just as the book begins. What follows pieces together their shared desire to transcend, and their desperate attempts to escape their lot. Deftly moving between multiple character perspectives, moments in time, and some big ideas about our shared existence in an era of decline, author Tess Gunty's debut novel is innovative and stylish, peculiar and poignant. Matty recommends if you like: 12th century mystics, animal sacrifice, the desolate industrial wastes of the Middle West, and literary voyeurism!
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Sometimes it takes a book of poetry to shake up the pieces of you. While reading Saeed’s Alive at the end of the World I was able to identify some of those pieces. I mean really examine them. When he writes about being haunted by grief, obsessing over rumors of icons being queer, confronting your own insecurities as a writer, as a friend, and as a partner. There were so many moments where I found myself reading a line and thinking to myself “I felt that''. It's not often that a poet's introspective collection of poetry allows the reader to also look within themselves. I’d recommend reading “Grief 213” (p. 18), “Saeed, or The Other One”(p.19), and “Okay, One More Story” (p. 48)
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Back in print! Primarily unfolding in the form of transcriptions from medical hypnosis sessions, this landmark work of supernatural mythology from 1966 is EVERYTHING! Sci-fi! Pop-psych! True crime! Romance! Body horror! American history! Sam recommends to believers and non-believers. P.S. THE UFO INCIDENT, a made-for-TV movie starring JAMES EARL JONES and ESTELLE PARSONS, is on YouTube. P.P.S. Excluding the appendix, this book is 420 pages long.
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These wildly imaginative short stories, each narrated by a different animal, turns something that could be gimmicky into something wondrous and remarkable. The common theme that ties these stories together is the destruction of the natural world wrought by humans. Left trying to survive in the Anthropocene, these animals have some thoughts and stories to share. At times harrowing, at times tender, this collection positively soars with beauty, insight and compassion. Shane loves!
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Lavender House, by Lev AC Rosen, is a wonderful period mystery with a queer twist. Set in 1952 San Francisco, it follows Andy Mills, recently fired from the police after being caught in the bathroom of a gay bar during a raid. Firmly on the path to self-destruction, he is hired by reclusive millionaire Pearl Velez to investigate the death of her wife Irene – the matriarch of a famous soap company. Andy is invited into their isolated estate where he meets Irene’s extended queer found family. A utopia hiding from the rest of the world, where folks can be themselves. And someone in that paradise might be a murderer. Part exploration of identity and acceptance in a horrific period for queer people, part detective noir, Lavender House is an emotionally charged and beautifully written novel. If you loved Knives Out, but felt that it needed to be MUCH gayer, this is the book for you!
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The New York Times
10 Best Books of 2022
The staff of The New York Times Book Review
choose the year’s standout fiction and nonfiction.
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In the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Unabridged Bookstore made an ongoing commitment to each month support and contribute to organizations that work towards achieving racial justice in America. Since June 2020, Unabridged has contributed over $29,000 to 30 difference organizations and we are now re-dedicating our ongoing commitment to support these kinds of organizations each month. Thank you for joining us in this commitment.
To honor the Black Lives Matter movement, and as part of our commitment to promoting the work of activists and organizations engaged in the fight for environmental justice and against systemic racism, social injustice, hunger, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, we choose to support the Poor People's Campaign and Broadway Youth Center this month:
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In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, we at Unabridged are renewing our support for the work of activists and organizations engaged in progressive causes.
We will continue to honor the Black Lives Matter movement with our monthly effort to highlight and donate to those engaged in the fight for social, environmental, and economic justice, and with reproductive rights at risk across the US, we will make an additional, monthly contribution to Chicago Abortion Fund and Midwest Access Coalition.
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Gift Cards are available for purchase on our website, by phone, and in-store, and can be used to shop the same ways! We can mail a gift card to you, to your friends and family, or we can hold it here in the shop where it will be ready on your next visit. Click here to send a Gift Card!
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