Episode 344 || October Reading Recap

It’s already the final week of October! In this episode of From the Front Porch, Annie talks about all the books she read this month.

To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our new website:

  • Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

  • Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

  • The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

  • Bewilderment by Richard Powers

  • Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

  • Middlemarch by George Eliot

  • My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

  • Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King

  • Writers & Lovers by Lily King

  • No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler

  • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

  • Untamed by Glennon Doyle

  • The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

  • So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow

  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

  • Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang

  • Chemistry by Weike Wang

  • Shoutin’ in the Fire by Dante Stewart

  • The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone

  • I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown

  • The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney

From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com. 

A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.

Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations. 

Thank you again to this week’s sponsor, Visit Thomasville. Whether you live close by or are passing through, I hope you'll visit beautiful Thomasville, Georgia: www.thomasvillega.com.

This week, Annie is reading Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout.

If you liked what you heard on today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on iTunes. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us on Patreon, where you can hear our staff’s weekly New Release Tuesday conversations, read full book reviews in our monthly Shelf Life newsletter, follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic, and receive free media mail shipping on all your online book orders. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.

We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.

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episode transcript:


Annie Jones [00:00:02] [squeaky porch swing] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. [music plays out] 

[as music fades out] 

“There are books that seem to comprehend us just as much as we understand them, or even more. There are books that grow with the reader as the reader grows, like a graft to a tree.” 

― Rebecca Mead, My Life in Middlemarch 


Annie Jones [00:00:46] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, I'm recapping the books I read in October. Before we get started, this is your weekly friendly reminder that From the Front Porch is a production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. As our store heads into the last three months of the year, we are well into the last two months of the year. We hope you'll consider shopping small. Our online store is always open and we'd be so happy to mail holiday gifts your way. Because of supply chain issues and potential shipping snafus, I, like everyone else, am encouraging you to shop now. Thank you so much for supporting our small business and others like us when you shop this holiday season.

And now back to the show this week, I'm recapping the books I read in October. October was a reading month that felt a little bit all over the place. I felt like I read a lot of books. I did read a lot of books because I'm recording this even earlier, so I'm not even quite done with my reading month and the books are all over the place. I took a picture last week on Instagram, and it was of two the books I read this month. It was of Shoutin' in the Fire by Danté Stewart and then the young adult novel from like the 80s or early 90's, The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney. I took this picture of those two books together and thought, this encapsulates what my reading life has felt like honestly this whole year.

And hopefully I'm not alone in that. I don't think I am based on the feedback we received from my and Hunter's episode about pandemic reading. If you also feel all over the place, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. But I think the things I am experiencing in my pandemic reading life are going to be top of mind as I recap the books I read this month, like as we listened to this episode, as you listen to this episode, I think you will hear the effects of the pandemic on my reading life because my books are all over the place, which is great because it means I'm reading a wide range of genres and authors. But it is a little like discombobulating when I look back and I'm like, Oh, my brain really was all over the place this month. That's accurate, because look at the books I read so OK. The first book I finished in October tail end of September, actually, because I did just get under the wire of like my quarterly deadline is Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, so I finished this at the end of September.

If you've been following along all year, you know that one of my reading resolutions was to read Jane Austen and to read specifically one Jane Austen book a quarter. So for the third quarter, I read Northanger Abbey. I read parts of this, but mostly listened to the audiobook version through Library FM, and the audiobook is narrated by Juliet Stevenson, who I know audiobook listeners will probably already know about her. But if you're like me and audiobooks are just kind of hit or miss for you, let me just say if you ever have the opportunity to listen to a book read by Juliet Stevenson, do it. She is a fantastic audiobook reader. I felt like I was listening to a play like the her ability to do all the voices and the inflections.

I just was so highly entertained and I have no doubt part of my love for Northanger Abbey comes from Juliet Stevenson's reading of it. That being said, Northanger Abbey might be my favorite that I've read of Jane Austen yet. If you're following along this year, I have read Persuasion. Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, those are the three I've read so far this year, and Northanger Abbey is by far, in my opinion, the funniest the snark. Yes, the protagonist is young, naive Katharine Moreland, and she loves gothic novels. And so it's kind of a satire about gothic literature. And then Catherine Moreland kind of becomes the character in her own gothic novel more or less. I also had many people DM me and say that Henry tell me the male protagonist. The male love interest is also like the best love interest in Jane Austen's books, and I'm going to have to keep reading because I do have a heart for several male protagonists, but I did not love the male characters in Sense and Sensibility. That book was perhaps rightfully all about those sisters.

I felt OK about the male protagonists in Persuasion. I love Mr. Darcy because in my heart of hearts, I am Mr. Darcy, and I also love and I've not read it, but I love the male protagonist in Emma. That being said, I really did appreciate Henry Tinley. He's like this quirky clergyman who is, well, read and he reads people a lot better than Catherine does. He's not quite so naive as her, so I just really I thought this book was so highly entertaining. If you are hesitant to dive into the classics, if you like me had not read a ton of Jane Austen before and you feel like you missed out. I actually think this would be a great starting point. It's not as long as the others are highly, highly entertaining. Laugh out loud, funny. Jordan and I then watch the movie after which I it didn't love the movie as much as I love the book, but I thought the movie was pretty entertaining and Jordan was dying laughing, and I told him I was like, This book was so funny, and I'm glad the movie kind of got that across the movie stars, I believe. Daisy Ridley. No, that's all right. Felicity Jones.

I was thinking it was just it was a Star Wars person, and it stars Felicity Jones. I think it's from 2007. Maybe. Anyway, it was lovely. The book is lovely. I'm glad that I read it, and now I have moved on to Mansfield Park. That'll be my last Jane Austen of the year, I believe. From Northanger Abbey, I went into the Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. This was my first by him. I know he's got a new one out this year. I read this on Nancy and Olivia's recommendation I was looking for like a book that I could just devour over the weekend. And I will say this is so funny to me and again shows the truth of this pandemic reading life. I wound up starting this one and liking it, and then one day while I was cleaning my house. So I'm off on Mondays and I was cleaning my house and I decided to listen to the audio book and I listened to it the entire day and finished it in one day. It was like a, I don't know, eight hour, seven hour audiobook. And I did really enjoy it. It is exactly what Olivia and Nancy promised me, which is a pretty fast paced. Although to get into that pacing, I really did have to listen to it, which I found it slightly surprising based on my personal reading habits.

But it is fast paced thriller. There's a twist that I did not see coming, which I appreciated. I feel like I'm constantly. I don't know if this is millennial nostalgia, but I am constantly comparing the thrillers I read to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. I don't know what that says about me, but I constantly am comparing the thrillers I read to that book because that book sticks out in my mind as so masterful. Like if you read that book before it became part of the zeitgeist, then you know what it was like to hit that twist and to just have your mind completely blown. And I think I'm constantly comparing the thrillers I read to that initial feeling of reading Gone Girl. And so in that sense, the Silent Patient to me is a little bit quieter, but I still think it's smart and clever. There's alternating voices. There's, in my opinion, the main character. And this might be because it's narrated by a male voice actor, but the narrator alternates between Theo Faber, who's like this clinical psychologist psychiatrist working at a mental hospital, and Alicia Berenson, who were introduced to in the first chapter, who is married to. She's an artist. She's married to this man who she loves, but this is no spoilers. She is found guilty of murdering her husband.

And ever since she murdered him, she has not spoken. Hence the title of the book The Silent Patient. She goes to live at this mental institution where Theo Faber takes this almost unsettling interest in her, and in her case, he's determined to get her to talk. And yeah, I found the audio book pretty compelling, pretty enjoyable for somebody who typically doesn't listen to a lot of fiction audiobooks, and I was totally satisfied with my reading experience. I wanted a thriller for the weekend, and that's what I got. So that is the Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. From there, again, I cannot. I, my mind is just I am laughing hysterically at the pattern of these books because there is no pattern. OK, next, I read Bewilderment by Richard Powers. This was on the National Book Award long list for fiction. I had in mind to read it, but really was pushed to read it by Hunter from Shelf by Shelf Fame. I thought that I would like it. He told me. I would love it.

I read it almost in one sitting. He is right. I utterly adored this book. You should know now. Richard Powers has written a lot of things, but probably he is most known for Overstory, which came out a couple of years ago and was a bestseller at The Bookshelf, a bestseller nationwide. Award winning people loved it. I did not read it. It was daunting to me in terms of page length, which I'm going to have to get over one of these days. But I did not read it, put off reading it, and at some point it became too late. Like, at some point I just felt as if it was too late to to read over story Bewilderment is much shorter. But I think gives you. And this is this is a layperson talking because I've not read any other Richard powers. But I would think based on the interviews I've read by Richard Powers based on the reviews I've read from other independent booksellers. If you are looking for a book that's going to introduce you to Richard Powers and his work, I think Bewilderment could be it because it's dealing with a lot.

My understanding is it's dealing with a lot of the same themes that he deals with in his other books, but it is shorter and a more compact story. I've also heard other reviewers and readers compare this one to a modern retelling of a modern version of Flowers for Algernon, which that book is referenced in Bewilderment. I have not read that book, and so those references may be somewhat lost on me as I read Bewilderment. But that book is mentioned in the book, and if you have read it, you probably will pick up on that and those similarities much more quickly than I.

He is struggling after the death of his mother, and Theo then takes his son, Robin, away on a camping trip, that's kind of how the book opens. The chapters in this book are so short, which is part of the reason I was able to finish it so quickly because every couple of pages, there's a new chapter and you're just, you're hooked. You're completely hooked. There's a lot about science and psychology in this book. he way Powers deals with science reminds me of the way Andy Weir deals with. I guess, I guess also science meaning meaning you do not get lost in the scientific language. Because you understand the gist, so you don't need to understand the logistics of brain science and psychology in order to appreciate what Richard Powers is doing in this book, if that makes sense. And in that way, it reminded me a little bit of Andy Weir. I loved this book so much. It's a father son story at the heart. Yes, it's dealing with climate change. Yes. Is dealing with the natural world. Yes, it's dealing with neurodiversity.

All of those things are important and good, but it's a pretty simple story about a father and a son and grieving the loss of a loved one and finding. The power to continue on and finding in yourself. Empathy and the ability to empathize, I I truly love this book. I think it could land in my top 10 of the year. I think it'd be a great book to gift this holiday season, like I immediately finished it and thought, I have multiple people, I can recommend this to. I, especially my brother does not listen to this podcast, but I especially think my brother, who is in love with the natural world and who is an educator. I think he would love this book. I was blown away by it. I suspect other readers will be, too. I don't. I mean, obviously, the critical consensus seems to be positive. It was on the long list for the National Book Award. Otherwise, I have not heard a ton of people talking about this one. Like I heard, there was so much buzz about over story. I haven't heard quite as much buzz about Bewilderment. I honestly think that's because of the year we're living through. But if you missed this one omitted when it initially came out, I would encourage you to pick it up. I really liked it. It's Bewilderment by Richard Powers. Next, I finished My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

I already covered my reading of Middlemarch by George Eliot and Patreon episodes, so I will not belabor that point here. But Hunter and I did finish Middlemarch and as our reward, we read and recapped My Life in Middlemarch. The it was sold to me as a memoir, but I would pitch it more as nonfiction biography by Rebecca Mead. Yes, their a personal memoir moments in here about Rebecca Mead and the impact Middlemarch had on her life. That's kind of the premise of the book, but it's honestly a really fascinating, well-researched biography of George Eliot and of the era in which Middlemarch was written. So as much as I appreciated the personal moments and the personal narrative that is kind of woven throughout My Life in Middlemarch. To me, it's really a book and a biography of George Eliot and about her writing of Middlemarch and her writing in general. A lot of readers and listeners have asked me if I think you have to read Middlemarch first. I do. And that's not. That's not me being some kind of literary snob. It's me honestly thinking about my enjoyment of My Life in Middlemarch, which I adored and loved. And I do not think I would have adored and loved it. I don't think I would have understood it without having read Middlemarch first. Now, I think others could disagree. In fact, I may have even read I'm trying to think, but I may have read some reviews by readers who didn't read Middlemarch and who thoroughly enjoyed My Life in Middlemarch as a memoir. And that is great, and that is fine. I, for one, am glad I read Middlemarch first. Middlemarch we utterly spoiled for you if you read My Life in Middlemarch before before you tackle the big classic.

But I cannot tell you how much my reading of Middlemarch was enhanced by reading this next. So last year, when Hunter and I read Anna Karenina, we rewarded ourselves with the young adult book Anna K, which was so fun and light and fluffy and great. This is not that, and several of our Patreon supporters kind of warned us of that fact. They were like, Hey, this is not some light, fluffy book, and it's not. It is very dense, though not entirely academic. Like, there is just a lot of rich text here. And so reading My Life in Middlemarch was akin to reading Middlemarch. Like I found myself marking several passages. Just kind of slowing down and rereading sentences. It was a book that I devoured, but that I also chewed on it. That makes sense. It was not. It was not something that I could just quickly fly through. I really had to sit with it for a minute, and I wept multiple times and I discussed that at length in our Victorian episode. I this this book is a treatise, a treatise on literature and the power of books, which I think is why some readers might be able to read it apart from reading Middlemarch. It's just also a lot about George Eliot and about why she wrote Middlemarch and what inspired her and her life, which I found fascinating.

I knew nothing about George Eliot, and now I feel now I feel like I do Hunter. And I talk a lot when we read these big classics about how we sometimes wish we were being guided through them by a professional, by somebody smarter and wiser who could help us understand the nuances of these books. And I actually think after reading Middlemarch, reading My Life in Middlemarch was exactly that. Like, I felt like Rebecca Mead was the professor I wanted without having to sit through, you know, a lecture series on George Eliot and Middlemarch. So if that is of interest to you at all and if you. Love a book so much that it has changed your life. I think you will find something to appreciate and love about My Life in Middlemarch, though I would encourage a reading of Middlemarch first. So that is My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. You can hear more of my thoughts on that on Patreon if you are so interested. I followed that book up with the short story collection Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King. This is a book I've been looking forward to a long time. I adored Writers & Lovers by Lily King. It was one of my shelf subscription selections I believe in twenty twenty. But maybe that was 2019. I truly have no concept of time anymore. Five Tuesdays in Winter is a little bit different because it is a short story collection, but I loved it.

What I love about short story collections is that you can read them at your leisure, right? You can read one story, put it down. But what I find myself doing a lot with short story collections is just reading them all the way through. And that is what I did with Lily King's Collection. I became enamored with her characters with her storytelling. The title story The Cult, where the collection gets its name. I think that might be my favorite in the collection, but it's honestly hard to say. And she does such a great job. I always impressed with authors when they can bounce from narrator to narrator. And so in a short story collection, right, you're getting all these glimpses at different people, at different characters, and occasionally you can feel like you're getting whiplash. I think that's why some people don't like short story collections because they really fall in love with the character. And the next thing you know you've moved on to another story entirely. I get that. I also typically or I can get whiplash from a short story collection.

What I think is so astounding about Lily King's talent is that I did not feel that way at all while reading this collection. Instead, I would finish a story and move on to the next family or the next group of friends, the next characters and become enamored with them and in all of them and laughing alongside them, crying alongside them. And then the next story came along and I was able to become fascinated by those characters as well. So I think I think there are some authors who really have a talent for that, and I think Lily King does. And so if you are a fan of Lily King's, you will not be disappointed by this. If you liked writers and lovers, you will like this and it'll be a little bit different for you because it's a short story collection. I loved this book. I can't wait to cancel it. Any bookseller, I think, will tell you. I think most booksellers will tell you this. I hope this isn't just a bookshop problem, I think. I think it goes beyond The Bookshelf short story. Collections are hard to sell. They just are, and there are a few I have read that I think are easily accessible and anybody could read and enjoy, and this is one of them.

So this collection is called Five Tuesdays in Winter. The title story from the collection, in particular, is one of my favorites, but I thoroughly enjoyed this entire book. It is by Lily King out on November night. OK. Earlier this month, and I just think it's always fascinating. When a book finds you at just the right moment, so earlier this month, I had had a rough week. I wound up having a pretty sleepless Friday night where I dreamed a lot, which is unusual for me. I felt the word I kept coming back. She was unmoored and I have felt a little bit out of sorts, honestly. A lot of this year, to just be perfectly frank. But for whatever reason, that particular Friday night, I had a lot on my mind and a lot weighing on me, and I wound up waking, waking up at like four in the morning on Saturday. And eventually, I read a lot of things like I read, Oh, I read the bad art print as one does, and then I wound up getting up early, like resigning myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get any more sleep. And I went to The Bookshelf because I was going to have to work that day anyway.

And I got to The Bookshelf intending to do some work, and instead I picked up No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler. It's a book I'd wanted to read. Kate Bowler is somebody I have followed on Instagram for a long time, but I had not read her previous book. I always intended to, but had not read her book called Everything Happens for a Reason and other lies, I've been told. Great title that always intrigued me, but I just never read it. But I followed her on Instagram and everybody, everybody. When somebody releases a book and you follow them on Instagram, you hear a lot about it, which is totally fine. That's what Instagram is for. And so it felt like everybody on my feed was talking about No Cure for Being Human. And after this sleepless night, I curled up at the front of The Bookshelf in a chair. You know, normally customers sit in and. In that probably two hours, I read three quarters of the book, I loved Kate Bowler's Voice, I want her to be my friend. I want her to be my friend and to talk to me about life. And she is just remarkably funny. If you're not familiar, this book is almost reminiscent of When Breath Becomes Air. If you remember when that book came out a few years ago, Kate Bowler at the age of 35, was diagnosed with colon cancer and was given not much time to live. Stage four colon cancer. They basically doctors kind of told her at the most. You've got about two years, and I assume everything happens for a reason. Deals with this diagnosis as well.

But this book talks about the fallout from that diagnosis and then what happens when you keep living and. How are you supposed to live after you've lived through something like that, after you've endured a diagnosis like that, after you've come to terms with your own death? What happens when you live? And I just thought it was such a fascinating question to kind of keep coming back to and. She writes so eloquently about because she's seen it right, she's seen it up close. She writes so eloquently about yes, grief, but also about just the darkness like which I think a lot of us are trying to grapple with right now. Hunter talked briefly on the pandemic episode about how he thinks people who have endured trauma previously are more capable of handling the pandemic than those of us. Who may not have endured trauma before, and I found that so interesting, and you can hear more of your thoughts on that in the previous episode, but but I thought that was an interesting hypothesis, right? And Kate Bowler. It's almost like, gosh, I'm thinking about Danté, I'm thinking about Danté and Virgil and how Virgil leads Danté through hell. And I feel like Ebola is Virgil. Yes. Is that an inappropriate? I don't know, but I feel like she has seen these things and has lived these things and is now graciously acting as a guide.

Through the traumatic moments of life and what happens on the other side of them. And that is a very long winded kind of odd way of just saying how grateful I was for this book at that particular moment in time, I think I would have enjoyed and appreciated this book at any point because I loved When Breath Becomes Air. I want books that give me perspective, particularly on my current moment. I want to be reminded of things that are happening outside of me. I talked about Bewilderment, dealing a lot with empathy. I think No Cure for Being Human kind of does the same thing. And anyway, I read three quarters of the book quietly at The Bookshelf and then later that afternoon I was doing Tallahassee deliveries with Jordan, and Jordan drove us home and I finished the book on my way home because I just couldn't stop reading. I just found it so comforting, so endearing. I immediately texted my mom and aunt because they had bought a copy. They had bought copies of the book and I love when my family kind of reads the same thing together, and so I can't wait to hear their thoughts. If you liked, it's like When Breath Becomes Air meets Untamed, almost.

There's like some elements of that a little bit. If you liked Glennon Doyle's Untamed, you might see some similarities there. Probably some Brené Brown. Definitely. There are Christian undertones. I do not think you have to be a Christian to read or appreciate cable their story or her words. Kate happens to be a professor, a history professor, I think on the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School. So there are there are some things about religion and specifically Christianity, but I think I honestly think anybody, anybody could read this and be. Oh, be amazed, I guess, at Kate story, but also reminded that case, or it could be anybody's story, which I think is the whole point of her book, which is we all are human and therefore we all are going to deal with illness, with grief, with tragedy, with trauma. And and what what do we do about it? So I really love this book. It met me at just the right moment. It is No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler followed that up with The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling, y'all. What a journey. October has been okay.

So The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling was a fine seasonal. Read everybody on Instagram. I feel like I don't know. I do not recall this many people talking about spooky season in 2020, so I don't know if this is just something we're doing now. But it's spooky season and I wanted to read some thrillers this month and then this rom com came to The Bookshelf and several of us were immediately curious about it. And so I took it home and read it. I read it before watching the movie Practical Magic, which I'd never seen. But Chela on staff encouraged a couple of us to watch it. Chela graciously earned me her DVD. This is why DVDs are important, and so I was able to watch practical magic after reading The Ex Hex, which was a very delightful pairing.

And if you like The Ex Hex then, or if you like practical magic, then you will like The Ex Hex. Like, there are some real similarities that I had no idea until I saw the movie, which I know practical magic was a book. But whatever you understand, if you like practical magic, the movie, I think you will like The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling. Vivian is our main character. She is a witch, but she's not super practicing her aunt and her mom. I definitely got Sabrina the teenage witch vibes. Like, Vivian's own mother was a witch, but did not really raise Vivian to harness her powers and to use her powers. But since her parents death, she has lived in closer proximity to her and her cousin, who are practicing witches who acknowledge their power and who use their power. And anyway, Vivian is.

The book kind of opens with Vivian being in college, and she falls in love with this beautiful, I believe Scottish, a gentleman named Reese and Reese is a wizard. I believe that is the appropriate term, and they fall in love and then they break up. And then naturally, Vivian and her cousin curse him. But it's kind of a joke, and it's kind of this playful thing because vodka and magic don't mix. Blah blah blah, you understand. The book flashes forward to Vivian in adulthood. Reece is coming back to town. And what do you know? Weird, strange, horrific. Things keep happening to him. Maybe the curse worked. So, so Vivien and Reese have really wonderful chemistry in terms of steam. A lot of spoons. A lot of spoons. I did skim a couple of chapters because of my more closed door romantic reading tastes. That being said, I thought the premise was very clever, very fine, especially for seasonal reading. And yeah, the setting is just lovely too. It's like this small town in North Georgia, it's very solid. So even though October is coming to a close, I think you could also enjoy this one in November.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Appreciated. It's a great rom com, very steamy if you like that sort of thing, and very enjoyable. The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling. Then why not dabble in why? So then I picked up the young adult novel So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix. This is by Bethany C. Morrow. Olivia had ordered these for the store and she immediately put one in my hands and she was like, I think you need to read this, and I saw it, and I said, I think you're right. So this publisher is doing something I think is really clever and interesting, and they're taking works of classic literature like traditionally considered traditionally classic literature. And they're asking writers of diverse backgrounds to take these classics and to interpret them through their own cultural lens. So these books that are typically written by white, often male authors and then putting the them in the hands of writers from diverse backgrounds and asking them to incorporate their cultural identity into the work. I think it's really interesting. They've done Little Women, Treasure Island and maybe Robin Hood is next anyway. Really interesting. So this is little women. Oh, you know what, though? I do have a bone, a bone to pick with that because I actually think this is just a really great work of historical fiction. So. But this book's intention was to be a remix of Louisa May Alcott. Little Women and Bethany C. Morrow writes it about this Black family living right at the end of the Civil War and into the post-Civil War era. The reason that I'm sitting here kind of oh hesitating was how to explain this is because, yes, it is rooted in little women. You've got four sisters Meg, Joanna, Bethlehem and Amethyst.

But. And you do have like, I guess, the traditional Little Women plotline, but the way Bethany Morrow has. Basically written this super powerful, interesting, well-researched work of historical fiction through a Black family's perspective in the post-Civil War era is truly mind boggling. And so although I appreciate the connection to little women and I think other readers will too. I also think this is just a great standalone work like I certainly think people like me who love little women who have an appreciation for it will see, like, I definitely saw the connections. I definitely saw some of the love stories coming. But but it is really about these four women unrelated to Louisa May Alcott characters. It's really about Meg, Joanna, Bethlehem and Amethyst and the different ways they have endured being enslaved and then coming out of enslavement. And I gosh, I thought it was so great. This is actually the kind of book that I think schools should require for required reading. Like, why not read? Yes, read Little Women, which I don't even think most school. I do not read little women in school. I don't think most schools that's considered required reading. But you could read little women and then read this like you could read them as a pairing, or you could read this as a standalone. I think that's what I'm trying to say.

This book stands alone. Like I told Olivia when I finished it, I was like, I loved it, but not even because of the little women tie in. I just loved it because I don't know the last time I read such a moving depiction of historical fiction from a perspective that I had probably never read before, like I had never read fiction. I had read some nonfiction, but I had not read fiction about. The post-Civil War era and what it might have meant to Black families and what they did next and where they went and where they called home. I loved this book so much because of how it opened my eyes and. These. Female protagonists, I just fell in love with them, and I wanted to know what happened to them. It's so great and it's and it's great. Yes, because of its play on Louisa May Alcott characters and plot, but it's also great on its own. So if you've never read Little Women, I think this book is fantastic if you've read Little Women. I think this book is fantastic.

I just can't quite articulate how grateful I am for Bethany Morrow's research. I think this book was probably. Meticulously researched, I learned about colonies that were kind of built as families were being freed and. I learned about oh gosh, I learned about the desire for some to. Go back to Africa and to go back to where their ancestors were from, I learned of the desire that some had to remain and to not just potentially move up north, but to even remain in the south because that's where their home was. I just learned a lot about. The Black familial experience during and after the civil war, you know what this reminded me of it reminded me of reading an American girl book. That's what it reminded me of. I felt like I learned so much like if you are of a certain age, I think you learned a lot from the Dear America books and from the American Girl books, right? I think we learned a lot about history, like half of what I know about World War Two or the or the Revolutionary War came from Felicity and Molly, right? And I think this book is kind of like that.

Like I, I was reading it and kind of taking it slow because I was learning so much. But you're all set. But it's also just a really good story that I was familiar with because of little women. So anyway, perhaps I raved enough. But if you liked American Girl books, if you like historical fiction, don't miss out on this. Like, I kind of also was like, Man, adult readers are going to miss out on this because it's a young adult book. It's got a very wide cover. But gosh, I think an adult reader should read this. I really do. I loved it. It's called So Many Beginnings: a Little Women Remix. It's by Bethany C. Morrow, and there are other classic remixes that this publisher has done and is doing, and I imagine those might be worth checking out as well. So, So Many Beginnings: a Little in Remix by Bethany C. Morrow. Then I picked up the ARC Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang. You will be familiar with Weike Wang from her book, Her Debut Chemistry. This is her new book coming out on January 18th. So yes, this is this is not coming out till next year. I'm sorry.

That being said, I really love this. I had not read chemistry, which is her debut. I had not read that, but was intrigued by this one had heard a couple of my publisher reps talk about it. And so when I received the RC in the mail, I decided to dove in and I'm so glad I did. You know, I can't decide honestly, if I want my. Pop culture, my books, my movies, my TV shows to address the pandemic, or if I just want them to pretend it never happened, I it's kind of hard for me to decide, but I think Weike Wang did it beautifully. So Joan is our protagonist. She is an ICU doctor in the opening chapters. Her father, who lives in China, has died and she goes and spends the weekend grieving her father. Then comes back to America. Her brother lives in America with her, not with her. He says he's very wealthy. Lives in this kind of giant house in Connecticut. She lives in New York, where she's the ICU doctor and their mother comes back from China just to spend a brief amount of time. All of this is happening in 2019. Late 2019, I don't even know that that is explicitly said. You just begin to realize that as the book moves on and the book is dealing a lot with what it's like to be an Asian-American and a woman in the medical field.

And I, you know, I really want a TV show about Joan, like, I really want a sitcom, not like a traditional CBS sitcom. I want like an HBO sitcom about Joan. I really do. Somebody, somebody in Hollywood picked this up because I think it'd be so interesting. She's just a fascinating character. And in fact, this is the first time in a long time this has happened. I finished the book This is this is going to be a standalone work of literature, but I finished it and immediately it was like, Oh no, oh no, I want more. Like, I could have read about Joan forever. And so I'm asking you, Hollywood, to turn this into something so that I can spend more time with Joan. She has this really interesting relationship with her neighbor. Her relationship with her mother and brother is fascinating. She's also still very much dealing with grief. There are some really interesting scenes with her boss and her coworkers, like there is so much rich here.

I cannot believe how much work uncovered in such a short because it's a relatively short book. And then the book moves into 2020, and as an ICU doctor, Joan finds herself kind of face to face with this new virus and also with some of the discrimination that is coming with the virus. I just felt like again, I have felt pretty ambivalent about books dealing with the pandemic, kind of like I have felt about books that deal with the 2016 election. Like, like I read so many that I'm kind of like over it and the pandemic. I feel like we're still living through. So I'm not quite ready for artists to tell me about it and yet. I loved this, I thought it was so well-written, so interesting, such an interesting perspective.

And again, I cannot tell you how much I loved Joan. I just want more Joan. And so if you like character development specifically, this isn't a particularly plot driven book, but if you just like really well-written characters and. Oh, gosh, I just I keep thinking about Joan, and I just want everybody to read about her, I loved her so much. So this is called Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang. It comes out January 18th, 2022. Then I picked up the nonfiction work, Shoutin' in the Fire by Danté Stewart, I follow Danté on Instagram. I don't know when I found him, but I followed him for some time and knew he was coming out with the book and knew I was going to read it when it came out. This released a couple of weeks ago. It is nonfiction. Danté is a oh gosh, a theologian. He's also writing almost like a sociologist memoir. Like, it's just a really interesting book because it weaves his personal memoir with really, I think, well-researched and interesting truths about the Black experience. Based on works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, even James Cone, I wrote.

I read his book The Cross and The Lynching Tree last year, and in some ways, that is what this book to me is most closely a comp to. Because Shoutin' in the Fire is Danté Stewart's memoir of being a Black man in often white churches, communities, universities and kind of his personal experience. But it's also deeply about Black theology and faith, and it actually would make a great pairing, I think, with The Cross and The Lynching Tree. Shoutin' in the Fire is less academic, but because it is less academic, it's perhaps even more accessible than the cross in the lynching tree. So I really appreciated Danté's words I love following him on Instagram. I find him to be very helpful there, especially as a white American Christian. And he writes in this book a lot about American Christianity and White American Christianity. I found his perspective particularly interesting because he has spent so much time in white spaces, so he talks a lot about his time at Clemson University and the ways in which he, I guess, kind of code switch and and really moved from being this Black Pentecostal guy who kind of worshiped in a traditionally Black way and then joins the white, you know, Christian student union kind of thing and winds up finding himself on white praise teams and just how he kind of morphed himself into who that group those groups needed him to be. He then ultimately becomes a teacher and occasionally a pastor at a predominantly white church in Georgia.

And so he writes, I think really beautifully too about the South. And he grew up in the south, I think briefly lived in California and I think is back in the south now and writes about that experience and also talks about the generational difference. He writes an entire chapter or two, maybe on his grandparents and their stories and what they're willing to share with him and what they never share with him. And yeah, what it's like to grow up in the south and then to go away and then but also to feel drawn to it. I just really loved this book. I thought it was really well-written, interesting, thoughtful, thought provoking made me. I do, like, put it down a couple of times to process, you know what I mean? Like, I would read a chapter or read a few lines and then put it down and kind of think about it because of my own identity as a white American Christian and what I have to learn at the feet of not only Danté, but the feet of James Cone. James Baldwin, like other Black theologians who I completely missed like my church upbringing, my Christian College Experience gave me none of that like I learned nothing about Black religiosity or Black Christianity, I learned nothing, which is really heartbreaking to say out loud, especially since I spent so much of my life enmeshed in Christian culture, like went to Christian school, then went to Christian college, and I think we all could guess as to why I was not introduced or taught about Black Christianity and Black theology in those white spaces. But it's still heartbreaking and still frustrating and anger inducing. And I think adapté Stuart writes really well about those feelings as well and what to do with those feelings.

So if you if you like books like The Cross and The Lynching Tree or, yeah, works by James Baldwin or I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown, I think I think Shoutin' in the Fire would be a great one to add to your list, so it's Shoutin' in the Fire by Danté Stewart. Then I followed that up with The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney. Do you guys have whiplash? I have whiplash, so the veins on the milk carton is a young adult middle grade novel written, I want to say, late 80s, early 90s. We are reading this for the young adult nostalgia book club that we've been doing this year. This was a book that I read and I recall loving as a child like loving. Let me tell you some of our favorite books from childhood hold up and some do not. And I am sad to say I'm not sure this one does.

However, I also did not remember that this was really the start of a series, and I think Caroline Cooney even writes a little author's note that she did not intend for it to become a series, which is shocking to me because the book ends on a real cliffhanger. Like, I finished it and I thought, Dang it, am I going to have to keep reading about Jamie? Like, I've already read this book, and now I'm like, Wait, did I read the rest of Jane's story? So if you are unfamiliar, I am so sorry for you. But but the book is about Jamie. Jamie is a young woman who is eating her lunch one day. She's about five and six years old. She's in your lunch in the school cafeteria, drinking from a milk carton despite being lactose intolerant. And she sees her three year old picture like she recognizes herself on the milk carton.

And I told Jordan what I really remembered of this book was that it was like a thriller and a suspenseful and like, Ah, Jamie's parents, Jamie's parents kidnapers like, that's what I remember. This book is actually deeply sad. Like, I think that's why it didn't hold up is I went into it expecting like a spine tingling October read. And instead, what I got is a book about family trauma. Like this is a book about a family who is going through it, and then you don't even get to see them go through it like, like. The problem is it just introduced in this book. And then Caroline Cooney, I think, resolves it or helps the family work through it in the latter books. But this one is just sad because Janey spends probably, gosh, three quarters of the book thinking her parents are kidnapers and trying to come to terms with that.

And so I did not find it to be the suspenseful, like, goose bump inducing book that I wanted it to be. And instead I found it deeply, deeply troubling and sad. I felt sorry for Janie. There are also parts that made me laugh because it's very dated, but I appreciate that. I mean, that's the whole reason we're doing a nostalgia book club this year. So so I liked those parts and I did not dislike this book. It just was not at all what middle school Annie remembered, which is really interesting and funny. And. Gosh. A good reminder that our memories can fail us like our memories are sometimes wrong. But. If you are like me and you read this as a middle schooler, perhaps it would be worth revisiting for you. If you've never read this, you may want to try it, but I would encourage you now to read the whole series because the first book really does. Just you will you will want to keep reading it like it just ends rather abruptly.

So this is The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney. And those are the books I read in October young adult books, historical fiction, nonfiction memoir National Book Award finalist Jan R.C.S. Classics like I truly feel like my reading life is all over the place, but maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe that's OK, because it sure did make for a kind of wild and wacky reading month. And and that's all right. I would love to know what you read in October. Make sure you follow The Bookshelf on Instagram @bookshelftville, where you can find the Instagram posts in our feed that talks about this week's episode. Please comment there with what you read in October. I would love to know. 

From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com. 

A full transcript of today’s episode can be found at www.fromthefrontporchpodcast.com. 

Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations. 

This week, what I'm reading is brought to you by Visit Thomasville, okay, it is officially... Oh, it's so hard to say, but I think it is officially the best time of year in Thomasville, Georgia. Yes, spring is beautiful. And there's Rose Festival and Road Show. And so you've heard me talk about those things and I do love those things. It's very celebratory. And the temperatures are like, just right. Fall, though, has always been my favorite regardless of where I've lived. And sometimes that's difficult now because I work retail. So sometimes fall is is no longer my favorite. But there is something magical about a small town in the fall.

And as of this recording, we are gearing up for the preschool Trick or Treating, which I think I talked about in a previous episode. We're gearing up for holiday open house. Like, my family is coming to The Bookshelf to decorate the store for Christmas in a couple of weeks. I can't believe it's already here. There is holiday open house. There's Black Friday, small business, Saturday, Victorian Christmas. Like there's all these special. There are all these special events and things on the calendar. And so I would encourage you if you are planning a visit to Thomasville or if you're looking for like a low key escape because this pandemic year has been hard and you need a soft place to land. I am biased, obviously, but I do think Thomasville would be the perfect place to visit. So coming up, we have a first Friday on November 5th and that will be a really fun time downtown where the shops will be open.

There will be an outdoor concert and you can kind of wander around our Stars Hollow town and experience all of the shops and restaurants and then walk over to the concert in the amphitheater. I can think of no better way to spend a full evening than later in November will have holiday open house. And that is also a really fun time to kind of get in the Christmas spirit and to feel... I'm just thinking we all on staff. I do think this is kind of our favorite time of year in Thomasville. There's just something really magical about it as all the shops start to gear up for the holidays. As the town starts to put up Christmas decorations when those lights hit the trees, man, we start to really feel like things are happening.

So to find out more about how you can Visit Thomasville or even maybe call Thomasville home, you can go to thomasvillega.com. This week I'm reading Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout. I'm very happy about it. Can you tell? As always, thank you to our sponsor. Visit Thomasville. Whether you live close by or are just passing through. I really do believe you would enjoy a visit to beautiful Thomasville, Georgia.

If you liked what you heard on today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on iTunes. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us for $5 a month on Patreon, where you can follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic and participate in live video Q&As in our monthly lunch break sessions. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch. We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.

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