Shelf-involved Podcast

This week we’re talking about a favorite setting in coming-of-age-stories: summer camp. We have our own camp experiences, and we have, as always, many thoughts on why this is such an effective and fun to read setup for a YA novel.

We’re so excited to talk about our first book club pick of the season, Again Again by E. Lockhart. We’ve been a fan of E. Lockhart’s for a long time, and this newest release blew us away. Spoilers ahead for a not-so-spoilery book. We hope you enjoy the discussion.

This week we’re talking about some of favorite trans characters in YA. This is still a wildly underrepresented group in YA, but we’ve seen some great books come out recently and are super excited to talk about the good representation and #ownvoices stories we’ve seen.

This week we're talking about mythical creatures! Vampires, sirens, chimaera, all of them! We really enjoy reading about fantastical elements grounded in real world and contemporary settings and all of the interesting implications of having humans interact with.... non humans. 

This week we’re talking about dark academia, a favorite sub genre of ours that we sum up not so elegantly as “boarding school murders.” But really it’s a fascinating genre full of power dynamics and examinations of the class system and we are extremely here for it.

We’re back and so excited to be talking about YA for our fourth season! We’re still living that socially distanced life and recording from our separate houses in Portland, but talking to each other through the phone about books is a salve to this weird, weird time. In this episode, we’re talking about our favorite books we read during the break.

It’s our last episode of season 3! And we want to leave you with summer reading recommendations. But in light of everything that’s happening in our country and the continued violence perpetrated against the black community, we wanted to take an opportunity to elevate black voices. So our reading recommendations for you today are all black authors. We love these books, and we hope you do too. Check out the show notes on our website if you’re looking for more suggestions. 

This week we’re talking about friend breakups in YA, a new trend we’re seeing and loving! We think these breakups are so formative and often times more heartbreaking than romantic breakups, and we have a lot of thoughts on these types of stories.

This week we’re talking about YA books with excellent squads, groups of friends where each character is fully realized and the group as a whole is incredibly memorable despite not being the center of the story. It’s hard to pull off and it’s one of our favorite things to read!

This week we’re back with the final book in our Book Club series. We’re talking about Saba Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes, the first book in a fantastic series that will finish this year. Like with all our Book Club discussion episodes, light spoilers ahead.

This week we’re talking about magical realism and the roots in the Latinx community and the way the genre has evolved and sometimes been misconstrued. We are not experts in this genre, but as always, we want to learn, so if you have suggestions for us, please write to us and let us know!

This week we’re talking about a genre we may or may not have made up! We’re looking at books where the main character, in order to process grief, sets out to figure out a mystery involving the person they lost. It’s fairly common in YA and we love to see it.

We’re back with a recap of what we’ve been reading (and watching and listening to) during our podcast break, which timed up with, you know, a global pandemic. Strange times, and if you’re not reading right now, no judgement. But if you’re looking for some comfort or some escapism to get you through these days, we’ve got suggestions.

This week we’re discussing the next book in our book club series, With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. To get in on the next book club discussion, visit our website at shelfinvolved.com/bookclub.

This week we’re talking about meet cutes, a classic rom-com trope that we think matters even more in the context of a book. We’re talking about our favorite ones, twists on the trope, and why we care about this plot device so much.

This week we’re talking about YA characters with secrets. We’re focusing on books where the main character has a secret from everyone else in the story, but the reader is in on it. It’s an interesting (and common) plot device, and we talk a lot about how important stakes are to this device and why it’s so great when it’s done well.

We're back with another episode in our Catching Up series and discussing the classic coming-of-age novel from Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle. 

This week we’re talking about teen pregnancy in YA. We’re narrowing it down to books about characters who go through an entire pregnancy and deal with the aftermath of either motherhood or adoption, to keep the scope of our conversation focused.

In a follow-up to our Bad Boys episode, this week we’re talking about Bad Girls. It tends to be a more complicated (and rare) trope with girl characters in YA, and we’re very interested in the reasons behind that.

This week we’re talking about royalty in YA, specifically books where normal characters meet/fall in love with royals. We are extremely here for this trope, probably because of our shared tweenhood obsession with The Princess Diaries.