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Wednesday, April 14th 2021
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Some email providers, including Gmail, may "clip" this newsletter.
To view our complete newsletter, click "view entire message" at the bottom of your screen!
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Per the recently updated restrictions for retail stores in the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, Unabridged Bookstore will continue to operate with limited capacity for in-store shopping. While at capacity, customers may have to wait outside before entering the store. With the health and safety of our customers and staff in mind, and with colder days ahead, we would like to remind you of the fast and safe option of ordering online or by phone for pickup at the front door, curbside pickup, or to have your order shipped to you, all without waiting in line!
Regular Hours:
Open Everyday: 10am - 7pm
for In-Store Shopping and Pickup!
For orders placed online, you will be notified by email when your order is ready;
please wait for your confirmation email &
read carefully before coming to the store for pickup!
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It's Independent Bookstore Day '21, and after the past year we are more excited to celebrate than ever before!
We are so thankful for all of your love and support, and so proud to have been part of Chicago's literary community for 40 years.
Visit us Saturday, April 24th, 2021 instore or online,
and to celebrate we're offering:
-10% Off your total purchase (instore & online)
-Free modern tote bag when you spend $100 or more (instore & online) while supplies last ($14.99 value)
-Exclusive titles available only for Independent Bookstore Day
-As a special thank you to our customers, we're holding a special 40% off sale on some of our favorite, autographed titles:
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To honor the Black Lives Matter movement, and as part of our yearlong commitment to promoting the work of activists & organizations engaged in the fight for environmental justice and against systemic racism, social injustice, hunger, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, we are contributing to Vital Bridges (Groceryland) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice this month. Click above to read more about each organization and how they work to achieve meaningful and lasting change in our community, then make your own contribution! For more info about previous months' partnerships, and to read our full statement, click here!
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Hough’s writing will break your heart... This is one of those rare books that will instantly become part of the literary canon, and the world of letters will be better for it.
-Roxane Gay
Searing and extremely personal essays, shot through with the darkest elements America can manifest, while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners.
As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe--to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile—but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family."
Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She's taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America—relying on friends, family, and strangers alike—she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self.
At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future.
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Ali Araghi’s staggering debut is a book about time, about stories, about what time and stories can and cannot do to save us. It’s a book about how wars, and nations, are made—not out of violence, but out of the people upon whom the violence preys. It’s about family, inheritance, language, fate. It’s a book about me. It’s a book about you, too.
-Kaveh Akbar, author of Pilgrim Bell
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Perfection in short story form, I am in love with every single word Bolu Babalola has written. So rarely is love expressed this richly, this vividly, or this artfully.
-Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie
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A gripping, superbly plotted novel, filled with surprises that are by turns confounding, disturbing and tremendously moving. For all its spellbinding narrative momentum, The Absolutist is, in the end, a sober meditation on the heartbreak that ensues when people and principles collide.
-Paul Russell, author of The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov
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In his impressive exposé the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe lays the blame [for the opioid crisis] directly at the feet of one elite family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma. The decisions that birthed and perpetuated the epidemic were not made by employees or a management team, he reveals, but by members of this cultured clan of physicians, long acclaimed for their arts philanthropy.
-Harriet Ryan, The Los Angeles Times
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Lispector had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before. One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century, in the same league as Flann O'Brien, Borges, and Pessoa--utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing. -Colm Tóibín
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A bruised and brave love letter from a brother right here to a brother now gone . . . a soaring, unblinking gaze into the meaning of life itself.
-Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
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Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers. . . . She writes with acuity, soul, and a kind of easy grace that probably kills her, about characters she has created to love. . . . Anything new by her is an excuse for wild, drunken celebration.
-Nick Hornby, The Believer
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Open Water is tender poetry, a love song to Black art and thought, an exploration of intimacy and vulnerability between two young artists learning to be soft with each other in a world that hardens against Black people.
-Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing
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Fiendishly clever, wildly engrossing, and both dark and timely, We Are Watching Eliza Bright is unlike anything I've read before. Osworth is a major talent with narrative tricks to spare. I devoured this book.
—Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
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A beautifully imaginative and feminist retelling of a fairy tale so often swept into the dark . . . Walter's debut was engrossing from page one, with a striking cast of characters, thrilling romance, and a world so vivid it will wrap thorns around your dreams.
-Roshani Chokshi, author of The Gilded Wolves
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Where’s it all going to lead? Who could have imagined anything like it? In the middle of Europe, in the twentieth century!
-from The Passenger, written in 1938 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
The Passenger is a brilliant masterpiece and a major literary event! With the pace of a thriller, it is a prophetic, visceral, chilling portrait of distrust and persecution in the “grindingly senseless absurdity" of 1930’s Germany. Infused with acerbic, Kafkaesque black humor and a looming sense of catastrophe, it is the indelible portrait of Otto Silbermann and his frantic, crisscrossing train odyssey across Germany, a Jewish man on the run, unable to leave, unable to stay, trapped in an all-too-real nightmare. Written by the author in 1938 when he was 23 (in its examination of existential dread and the meaninglessness of life, predating the existential masterpieces of Camus, Sartre and Beckett), the novel is remarkable in its prescience, eerily anticipating the horrific terror to come. Like Irene Nemerovski’s Suite Francaise and Hans Fallada’s Every man Dies Alone, it was written contemporaneously with the Nazi rise to power (in this case, after Kristallnacht but before the true horrors of WWII and the extermination camps unfolded), truly exceptional as a gripping novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity, but also potent as a work bearing witness, a testament to the darkest years of the 20th century. (And don’t miss Andre Aciman’s preface to the novel, detailing the tragic, heartbreaking backstory of the author’s life and the book’s publication!) Ed loved this extraordinary novel, and highly recommends! To read more or to order, click here!
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A woman named Nancy reflects upon her life in Chile while on her deathbed. This description is the simplest introduction to this emotionally searing, inventive, and complex work. Lloret isn't afraid to plunge readers headfirst into dark waters as we explore Nancy's life of mere survival rather than prosperity, where uncertainty, fear, and doubt are commonplace. Though a story of one individual, Nancy is also a story of our collective human experience and our shared uncertainty. One of the innovations of Nancy is the typography. The author's bold use of X's throughout the story is a jarring stylistic choice (are they crosses? graves? days marked off on a calendar? gaps in memories? scars....?) but help give the unsentimental and stark prose a destabilizing momentum filled with dread. Bleak but dignified, devastating but beautiful, Nancy is a punch to the gut. There are many novels that raise existential questions and deal with mortality and memory. There are few that do so with the power of Nancy . Shane highly recommends! To read more or to order, click here!
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I very much enjoyed reading Swimming in the Dark, which beautifully captures the exhilaration of sexual awakening and the sexually charged atmosphere of first love, with its yearning and desire, but also the fear and shame of living a duplicitous life, when the warmth of love gives way to feelings of sorrow, shame and despair. The novel is very much anchored in history, in 1980’s communist Poland, and what it’s like to “come out” in a closed political system marked by passivity and despair. Repeatedly mentioned in this novel, and read by both main characters, is Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, which it mimics in its confessional style and painful realizations. I loved (and recommend!!) reading them both in tandem, to appreciate their similarities—there is a searing intensity and poignancy to both, with a movement from innocence to danger, where desire becomes something frightening, wounded narrators in both seeking freedom and tranquility, but acknowledging there has to now be an unfortunate end. (also, both authors Baldwin and Jedrowski settled in exile in Paris!) Ed highly recommends! Now Available in Paperback, click here to read more or to order!
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Remember when you dreamt you were in love and when you woke, you felt the loss? That was me. -D.G.
In Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, we make the acquaintance of the anonymous writer behind the pithy, hilarious, eponymous character reigning via twitter; an 81 year old, matronly persona whose domain now extends far beyond the boundaries of her fictional home of Crooked Path, through the void of the internet, and into her readers’ hearts. While doling out wit and wisdom (140 characters at a time), “Her Grace” has accumulated a following of literati, celebrity, and any number of plebs just in need of some encouragement.
But this is not only the story of a quirky social media star. Behind the emergence of the Duchess is one woman’s attempt to find human connection through the digital wilderness. Though her identity remains a mystery, her real life story of struggle through divorce, a stifled career, and family difficulty sets the stage for her alter ego, and through the Duchess the world is introduced to a skilled writer with a deep love for humanity. Matty loves! Now Available in Paperback, click here to read more or to order!
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Entangled Life is a rich and colorful portrait of fungi, and succeeds because it is so unexpected—who would have thought that mycology, the study of fungi, could be so endlessly fascinating? What could be arcane Sheldrake explains in clever, affable prose, and his almost evangelical zeal for the fungal world easily draws us in to the weirdness of it all! It expands our concept of the living world and shows how fungi have been an integral component of human existence. The book is an endless source of wonder—reading it made me feel connected to a world that is more fantastic than I could ever have imagined. Ed loved and highly recommends! Now Available in Paperback, click here to read more or to order!
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Click through below to browse more of our favorite books!
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We're updating our website with pages dedicated to some of our favorite sections of the store so you can browse from home! Bestsellers, award winners, bundles of books to keep you reading - click below to browse!
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Remember that there is no membership requirement to attend our meetings - just pick up your copy of the book in the shop, and come ready for friendly discussion. To maintain a safe environment for discussion, book clubs will continue to hold meetings via Zoom.
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*A club where no one takes themself too seriously*
Join us in reading fun and exciting YA and New Adult books every 3rd Monday of the month. Grab a glass of your favorite wine and be ready to laugh, chat, and discuss the new new! Email unabridgedbookstore@gmail.com, for more info, or click here to sign up.
A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives. Join the Winers Book Club to discuss The Hill by Ali Bryan on Monday, April, 19th at 7:30pm!
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A reading group focusing on literature through a queer lens, hosted monthly at Chicago’s premier bookstore for the LGBTQ+ community. Alternating between the “classics” of gay fiction and contemporary, historically underrepresented voices, we read to explore queer experience across literary genres and eras! Email matt@unabridgedbookstore.com for more info, or click here to sign up.
This month's selection: Guapa by Saleem Haddad! Join the Queer Book Club on Tuesday, April, 27th at 7:30pm!
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*A club for all things speculative – from Science Fiction, to Fantasy, and maybe even a pinch of Horror*
Join us every 1st Monday of the month for a serious discussion of cool speculative works, or to just geek out over the pewpewlaserbeam! From cutting edge to classics, the goal is to have fun and explore as far as exploration will go!
This month's selection: The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks! Join the Speculative Book Club on Monday, May, 3rd at 7:30pm!
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Join our Fiction Book Club in a monthly meeting to discuss a wide array of literary fiction. With an eclectic mix of authors, themes, periods, and styles, this group will explore both classic and contemporary literature. Email matt@unabridgedbookstore.com for more info, or click here to sign up.
Join the Fiction Book Club to discuss So Big by Edna Ferber on Tuesday, May 11th at 7:30pm!
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To maintain a safe environment we will continue to host author events, readings, and book club meetings via Zoom. Click below to begin an order and to sign up to participate in these upcoming events!
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Wednesday, April 21st at 7pm
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From the author of Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things.
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You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
This year we are celebrating the life and legacy of Toni Morrison with a monthly reading initiative. Among her many honors, Morrison was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also the first black female editor at Random House before gaining acclaim for her own writing. This month's featured title is Song of Solomon:
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.
Each month for the rest of the year, we will choose one of Morrison’s eleven novels to feature. Each month’s chosen title will be 10% off, so get a copy and read along!
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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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Another great way to support indie bookstores, sign up at Libro.fm! Check out this list of featured audiobooks, and Libro.fm will give 100% of the sale to support Unabridged!
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And don’t forget to share what you’re reading! Follow us and share your thoughts on:
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