Show & Tell: Stack the Shelves
Unstacked Digest for the week of March 17 -23
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
This week’s show and tell is going to be a little different1 because I have a very big thing I’m working on that I can finally share with you all. It is called…
Stack the Shelves
It is a special pop-up bookshop dedicated to supporting individuals and families impacted by the recent Los Angeles wildfires. This free community event will take place on Sunday, May 4th in Hollywood. We will have books, author signings, a kid’s corner, food, music, lawn games, special guests and more!
Attendees for this event are limited to those impacted by the fires, but there are a lot of ways you can help us make the day a huge success.
How can you support?
Donate - we are raising money so that every attendee can leave the event not only with books, but with a gift card to Octavia’s Bookshelf (a Black woman owned independent bookstore in Pasadena, CA) so they can continue to build back their libraries and get the books they want most. Donations will also go toward expenses for the event itself. We have partnered with a great nonprofit in LA, Los Angeles Room and Board, so that all your donations are tax deductible. This is the perfect way to support the event if you’re not in Los Angeles.
Volunteer - we need people in the Los Angeles area to come out and help us build a bookshop, do crafts with kids, load books into people’s cars, and much more. We will also need help on May 3rd and 5th with loading in and out of the event and getting everything sorted. If you’re willing and able you can sign up now!
Spread the word - please share information about this event on social media, with your communities. Make sure you favorite LA based authors and readers know about it and join in to support. In order to make this day what I know it can be, we need to get the word out.
If you work in publishing or are an author please help by donating copies of books. We need a whole lot of a books to make this event a success. We need backlist books, books for people of all ages, and cookbooks. Please spread the word and do what you can to get the goods sent our way. For more details email us.
Los Angeles based authors and public figures - we want you to come out and sign books, read to the kids, and generally be a part of this day. You can sign up below.
Brands looking to donate to this event we need you, too. Please email us.
If you were impacted by the LA fires, we will open sign-ups to this event in April. Please stay tuned for those details.
That is it for now, but please feel free to ask me any questions and spread the word. This is a huge project that I am really excited about2, but I know there is no way it can be a success without the support of basically every single person I know. Anything you can do means the world. Truly.
This Week in The Stacks
Update: Carless People was #3 on the NYT bestseller list this week. LOL @ Mark and them trying to sue her out of relevance. For internet people, the are really fucking dumb over there.
Torrey Peters came on the podcast to talk to me about her sophomore book, a short story collection, Stag Dance. She is officially my newest author crush.
For this month’s bonus episode I talked with Emily St. James about trans representation in pop culture and politics.
Books I Read This Week
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
A work of academic history that thoroughly outlines the active role white women took in slavery in the United States. This book is detailed as all hell, and that level of rigorous research is impressive in its own right, but it is even more impressive because Jones-Rogers crafts very clear and accessible narrative with it. I appreciated how she drove home the point that white women were economically benefiting from owning enslaved people and that their stake in ownership was common. I also love how she made sure to include the voices of the formerly enslaved, because so many historians have ignored those perspectives. There are moments where things feel repetitive, but mostly I chalk that up to the standards of academia as well as the fact that part of the work Jones-Rogers is doing here is to show the multitude of ways white women were willing and eager participants in chattel slavery. You simply can’t make that point without a multitude of evidence.
Fave of the week!
I’ll Love You Forever: Notes from a K-Pop Fan by Giaae Kwon
I admittedly know next to nothing about K-Pop, and while some knowledge might have been helpful in taking on this book it wasn’t necessary. This really isn’t a K-Pop book3, it is a memoir in essays that uses K-Pop as the anchor for Kwon’s own life and the things she grapples with. I’ll Love You Forever strikes the perfect tone for a fan’s manifesto, which is what I would call this book. It balances youthful exuberance with the coming of age questioning that is clearly a metaphor for fandom itself. My only real issue with the book, and maybe this is my own fault, is I simply couldn’t keep all the K-Pop references straight. Instead I let Kwon’s words and bigger picture thinking wash over me.
Housekeeping
Before I dive in here, I fully understand I am over exposed this week. But, to be fair to me, some of this stuff was recorded back in December 2024. I just think the universe felt like this was the week I should be yapping, a lot on the internet. So that is what you get. As the kids say, prepare to be SICK of me.
The folks at
let me come on and talk about what I love most and lease about talking about books on the internet.I gave book recs for sex positive books for the young people in your life (I also gave some recs for the adults, too).
My shereads.com column went up, and it is Required Reading for the cast of Love is Blind, season 8.
I got to talk to Ezra Kupor about books and being a book influencer for his amazing Substack
. I actually talked so much, Ezra decided it should be a two parter (this is the first time this kind of loquacious exception has been made…I am honored and ashamed).
This month on NPR’s Here & Now I talked about what books to read for Women’s History Month.
I gave advice to families about being nice to each other over on Dear Prudence.
Coming up in a little over a month is the LA Times Festival of Books, and as usual, your girl will be there. This year I am on The Mainstage4 in conversation with actress, comedian, and author Jenny Slate. This goes down on Sunday April 27, no tickets needed.
Things I Love…
Book News
The National Book Critics Circle handed out awards this week. They are quickly becoming one of my favorite literary awards around when it comes to nonfiction. Last year they gave the nonfiction award to Roxanna Asgarian for We Were Once a Family and this year it went to Challenger by Adam Higginbotham. Do you think if they pick a book I love next year they have to rename it the “Traci Would Approve Award for Excellence in Nonfiction”? I sorta feel like they gotta do that, legally.
Another bright spot was friend of the pod Hanif Abdurraqib winning in the criticism category for his beauteous book, There’s Always This Year. It should be said that Hanif is on critical acclaim streak that is pretty much unmatched by anyone else. Like for real, who else has had a three book streak like this? The closest I can think of is Imani Perry, especially if Black in Blues gets the respect it deserves this year. Who would you add to this list?