Episode 358 || January Reading Recap
In this episode of From the Front Porch, Annie is recapping all of the books she read in January. Shorter versions of these reviews can be found on Annie’s personal Instagram page. The books mentioned in today’s episode are available for purchase at The Bookshelf’s website and there’s a Reading Recap bundle featuring Annie’s three favorite titles from this month’s readings, available at a discounted price.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our new website:
When You Get a Chance by Emma Lord
You Have a Match by Emma Lord
Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield (Back-ordered)
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon
The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon
The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband by Lizzie Damiola Blackburn
The Maid by Nita Prose
Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott
I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford
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.
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Transcript:
Annie Jones [00:00:01] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the south.
“‘We don’t have to grieve only those we know. Sometimes we grieve for that which was lost, that which was never allowed to be.’”
- Jamie Ford, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
[00:00:24] 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 January. If you are a new listener of From the Front Porch, welcome. I recap the books I read each month here on the podcast, and shorter versions of these reviews can be found on my personal Instagram: @anniebjones05.
[00:00:48] All the books I'll be sharing about today are available for purchase on The Bookshelf website. That's www.bookshelfthomasville.com and there is a reading recap bundle featuring my three favorite titles from this month's readings available at a discounted price for From the Front Porch listeners. You can learn more details at the end of today's episode or just go to our show notes and go to The Bookshelf website to access this month's bundle. Now, onto the books that I read in January. I get really excited every time we start a new year, and maybe that's a little silly given the current circumstances of the world, but I still got really excited when the calendar page flipped to 2022. And I could kind of evaluate what worked about my reading life in 2021, what didn't work and what I wanted my reading life to look like in 2022.
[00:01:38] You heard a little bit about my reading resolutions in last week's episode with Hunter, but what I think is really fun is to then look at January and see how those reading resolutions and intentions affected my reading life this month. I wound up reading 10 book this month. I incorporated audiobooks into my reading diet. That's something I did a lot in 2021 that worked for me, and so I continued that this month. And I also read a wide range, I felt like of genres, new releases, a backlist title, definitely a very different reading rhythm than I was experiencing, especially in the latter part of 2021. And I think that will always be true for my personal reading life. The latter part of the year is always more hectic and busy, and so my reading life certainly looks quite different at the end of the year than it does at the beginning, but it's really gratifying to kind of see how my reading resolutions have already affected my reading life this month.
[00:02:31] So here is what I read in January. I started the month with a young adult novel called When You Get a Chance by Emma Lord. I am so glad this was the first book I read for 2022. It is soundly a young adult novel featuring Millie, who is our spunky protagonist. She is at the cusp of like high school college trying to think about what comes next, which is a period in my life that I have both fond and horrifying memories of. And so I really loved looking at the world through Millie's eyes. She lives in New York City. She is an aspiring theater actress and loves the theater, and you can tell that Emma Lord, the author of this book, also loves theater because there is so much enthusiasm and there are Easter eggs kind of for musical theater all hidden throughout this book. So if you are at all theater adjacent or interested in theater, I would encourage you to pick this up even maybe if you're not a typical Y.A. reader.
[00:03:30] You might recognize Emma Lord from plenty of other books, including You Have a Match, which is a book I read last summer. I read You Have a Match and liked it, but I read When You Get a chance and loved it. I think this was the book Emma Lord was meant to write. You can again tell how much she probably loves musical theater. There is so much excitement and enthusiasm kind of woven into this book. Millie is trying to decide if she's going to continue life at her current high school to finish out her senior year, where she obviously plays a large role in the theater productions. Or if she's going to go to L.A. and feature and participate in an elite theater program out in L.A. So she's kind of torn. And the book is set the summer before this decision has to be made. There is a slight romance, and we'll talk about romance a little later in today's episode.
[00:04:28] But I am discovering that one brand of romantic comedy that I really do consistently enjoy is young adult rom-com. That isn't always true. I'm not saying I like young adult romance. What I'm saying is I like young adult rom-com. So if there's a comedic element -- and there certainly is in this book, there's really fun love interest. But I think what I like even more about this book was the friendships. So Millie has a dear lifelong friend. Their friendship is really lovely. And then Millie's relationship with her father is something really special. And I was trying to think what other father-daughter books we kind of get, particularly in the Y.A genre, an it was hard for me to come up with other comp titles. But this is definitely a father-daughter story. Millie's family doesn't know who her mom is.
[00:05:17] It's really the whole kind of propulsive plot of this book is that Millie doesn't know who her mom is, and so she embarks on this Mamma Mia esque journey to find her mom. And there are lots of, like I said, Easter eggs specifically relating to Mamma Mia tied up in When You Get a Chance. But the whole thing just unfolds really in a fun, charming, bright way. Like, the book cover for this book is bright hot pink. And that is the energy of this book. Like just vibrant, colorful, interesting, spunky, all the things and just a really fun way to start my reading year. So I highly recommend this one. It is a young adult novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think even if maybe you're a reticent Y.A reader, I still think this could be a fun one to try. It is called When You Get a chance by Emma Lord. Then I went the probably more literary route and I picked up the newly released book, Brown Girls. This is by Daphne Palasi Andreades.
[00:06:15] I picked this one up completely on a whim. We were doing inventory at The Bookshelf, I saw this on the shelves and I had not seen a copy. Like, I had not seen it in ARC format, but I was seeing some rumblings about it on, I think, on Instagram or somewhere. Like, I recognized this cover. And so I picked it up and took it home. It is definitely a novel, but it is close to novella. Like it is a thin book that you could read, like I did, in one afternoon. So I took this one home. And the book is narrated by a chorus of voices. A podcast listener wondered if it might be similar to The Mothers, and I think that is a good comp title. Like the Mothers is not fully narrated by this chorus; whereas, Brown Girls really is entirely driven by this chorus of narrators. You're never given one particular narrator to follow or protagonist to follow. Instead, it really is this collective unit. And I think that actually makes this book really unique and interesting.
[00:07:11] So Brown Girls is, in my opinion, a love letter to Queens New York. It is set in Queens. It follows the same group of women. Again, many of them unnamed or only referenced in the collective, and it follows them from girlhood well into adulthood. I loved this book so much I can't even quite put my finger on why, except that it's really poetic without being poetry, without being written in verse. It's very poetic, and there is something about that collective voice that just makes this story really unique and interesting. And you weirdly become attached even though you don't necessarily know fully individual personality traits or individual quirks of these characters. This book is not plot driven. I would say that it is character driven, and it's really -- if we're talking about The Mothers, I think that is a good camp.
[00:08:07] But the book I kept coming back to actually was Red At the Bone. That's a book by Jacqueline Woodson, and it is set in Brooklyn. So Red At the Bone is to Brooklyn, as Brown Girls is to Queens. And it's like Red At the Bone meets The Mothers, meets One Hundred and Forty-Fifth Street, which is a book I read last year that's almost a young adult short story collection. I think it would technically qualify as young adult or middle grade, it's by Walter Dean Myers, and it revolves around Harlem. And so these books are just deeply rooted in their neighborhoods. And so this book is not plot driven. I wouldn't even venture to say it is character driven. It is neighborhood driven. It is place driven. This is a book about a place and about the people who inhabit a place.
[00:08:57] And much like you can tell that Emma Lord loves musical theater, you can tell that Daphne Palasi Andreades loves Queens and grew up there and has an appreciation and an affinity for where she grew up. The tenderness with which she treats this neighborhood and with which she treats the female characters at the heart of the book is really quite stunning. And I know I keep kind of talking around this idea of a chorus of narrators. Again, I don't quite know how to describe it, except that as I was reading, I was very invested. So don't get me wrong, this isn't a book where you're kind of lost, you know exactly what you're reading. I read a book late last year, it releases in February, called The Swimmers. And that book is about a collective group of recreational swimmers. And yet you weirdly become attached to this group of people.
[00:09:47] And I very much became attached to these young women as I watched them from early childhood into womanhood and some of them motherhood. And just the different ways in which these women become is really fascinating and lovely. And I just really liked it, and I'm just constantly stunned. The Swimmers is another book that is pretty thin. I'm constantly stunned by these books where you can pack so much in in such a short amount of pages or such a short number of pages. I don't know how a complete story is told in such a well-rounded, complete way so quickly, but Daphne Palasi Andrades did it. And so I highly recommend. This is a debut book, it is called Brown Girls and it is outstanding. While I was reading these books, I was listening -- not at the same time. Let's not go crazy. I was listening to the book Dreaming the Beatles.
[00:10:44] This is by Rob Sheffield, and it is narrated by Rob Sheffield. He's an editor and writer at Rolling Stone magazine. Full disclosure, I picked this one up because I finish -- as many podcast listeners might know or Instagram followers might know, I watched Get Back, obviously featuring The Beatles. It's Peter Jackson's movie about The Beatles and kind of their final live performance. I watched that at the end of 2021 and became absolutely obsessed. I loved the Beatles when I was in high school. Many older millennials will recall the album One releasing while we were in high school. And so my mom was a big Beatles fan. I grew up liking them and then having a mini obsession my probably junior senior year of high school. And now that obsession is back full fledged. I am very invested in the Beatles narrative in a way that feels extreme for me and yet not at all, because I'm Enneagram five and I want to know everything about a thing.
[00:11:47] And so I have gone on a Beatles deep dive. I have no regrets. One of the things I did as part of this deep dive was listen to this book, Dreaming The Beatles. Look, I say all this to say I'm not like a Beatles superfan. Like, I'm not a collector. I am a 35 year-old who really likes the Beatles music and who loved the Get Back documentary. So if you are like me and you have a basic understanding of the Beatles, you have some knowledge of them as a band, some knowledge of their history and their story, I think you will find this really interesting. Whether if you're like a super obsessive fan, this might not be for you. I don't know. But I will say Rob Sheffield feels like a superfan, and he writes with such love. Gosh, all these authors do. Actually, now that I'm -- if there's a through line of my January books, I think it's that these authors really love their subjects, which is such a wonderful thing to get to say.
[00:12:47] So, anyway, Rob Sheffield is this music journalist. He clearly is obsessed and is obsessive about The Beatles, and I loved learning about The Beatles from him. I felt like I was in a, oh, I don't know, like a really fun master class or something about the Beatles and the music of that era, and also how it has affected and impacted our current music, and the ways in which The Beatles are really like -- even if you hate the Beatles, too bad, so sad they affect everything. That's what it feels like. So I really liked this book, and I loved the audiobook experience of it. I long one day to, like, listen to an audiobook that also incorporates kind of snippets like it would have been really fun to listen to this book, but also get snippets of the music he's writing about. But alas, that is not what this was. This is straight audiobook narrated by Rob Sheffield. I adored it. Thought it was really smart, well-written, interesting.
[00:13:44] He is funny. He's probably -- I would say probably Gen-X. And so he's -- I don't know. He's just a really great music journalist writing about the Beatles from a Gen-X perspective. I loved it. Thought it was great. I highly recommend it for Beatles superfans, but also for more novices like me. I compared it a little bit to the time I got really into SNL and read the SNL oral history. I just love reading about a thing. Like, I just loved going on a deep dive, and that's what this felt like. Like I got to go on a deep dive with the Beatles only led by somebody much smarter than I am, which is always great. Always my preference. That is Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield and I listened to that through Libr fm. Then I -- okay, this is something I did a lot in 2021 one and it worked for me again. It's working for me this year too. I read a physical copy of this book and also then listened to this book.
[00:14:35] So this is Olga Dies Dreaming. This is by Xochitl Gonzalez. It's a debut. Cannot believe it's a debut. These writers who are able -- and, you know, of course, that they're working diligently and fervently behind the scenes. But when authors debut with books as good as this, it's always just mind boggling to me. So Xochitl Gonzalez wrote Olga Dies Dreaming. I listened to this and physically read it. I did both because I wound up really loving it and didn't want to put it down. So the best way to not put it down was to listen to it while I cleaned my house. I loved discovering this after the fact, so I I don't think I got an ARC for this. I think I just stumbled across it on the shelf, and I really, really, loved how many different genres are somehow packed in this book. So our main character is Olga. She lives in New York. She is a wedding planner.
[00:15:30] She's a wedding planner to the stars kind of thing. Super high end weddings. There's a rom-com element. There's lots of family dysfunction. There's political intrigue. It's set against the backdrop of the impending Hurricane Maria, which hits the coast of Puerto Rico and deeply affects and impacts that region. There is a Russian mob element. Like it all sounds absolutely ridiculous that all of these things would tie so beautifully together, but it does. All of it. Like, there's no weak storyline. Instead, it all is woven together so perfectly and so well. So, to me, this is like if Jane the Virgin meets, Let's Not Do That Again. So let's not do that again is a book by Grant Grinder that comes out later this year. It is about a dysfunctional, I say, dysfunctional family. It's about a family, lots of dysfunction because of politics. And Olga has a brother, Pietro, who is a politician in New York.
[00:16:25] And so we get a lot of Pietro. It's interesting to me that the book is called Olga Dies Dreaming. She's definitely the main character, but Olga and Pietro both are at the heart of this novel, and their relationship is definitely at the heart of this book. They are these adult siblings kind of navigating adulthood without their mom. So their mom was a revolutionary. She was fighting for Puerto Rican independence, and there are glimpses that -- thought that woman, the mom in this book, is so polarizing and so interesting. And you get little snippets of her throughout the book and how her life and her decision making and her politics and activism affected her now adult children. I can't say enough good things about this book. Again, absolutely shocked that it's a debut and really loved how much territory it covered. I was highly entertained the whole time.
[00:17:20] Again, you've got Olga kind of planning these high end weddings. You've got Pietro running for office. I learned so much about Puerto Rico and their culture and the heritage of their people. And so I just thoroughly enjoyed it. I can't say enough good things about it. It is. Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez. Then I picked up Weather Girl. This is by Rachel Lynn Solomon. I adored her book that came out last year called The Ex Talk. Perhaps you're familiar with it as well. So this is Rachel Lynn Solomon's new romantic comedy. Although, this is when reading Weather Girl is what did make me kind of reexamine my own definition of the romantic comedy. And we're actually going to do a podcast episode about rom-coms in March, so stay tuned for that.
[00:18:06] But I've been thinking a lot about, do I really like a romantic comedy? What do I like about it? What makes a rom-com fall flat for me? And I think I am going to have to do a better job of recognizing books that are romances versus books that are romantic comedies, because I think my interest really does lie in the romantic comedy genre. And if the comedy is missing or if the romance part is too heavy, then it probably is not the book for me. I say all that to say I liked Weather Girl. I think readers will love it. In fact, I know some of my dear friends and fellow readers adored this book. It's about Ari and Russell. They are a TV meteorologist and a sports reporter, respectively. And so much like The Ex Talk talk, if you're familiar or not familiar, the talk was about these public radio co-hosts. And I just love this world.
[00:18:59] So I liked that it was a TV meteorologist and a sports reporter, love a sports reference, love sports adjacent books. So I thought that was really fun. And they work at the same TV station and their bosses -- or exes, like their bosses used to be married to each other and now are divorced. And so there's a parent trap element to this book. And the parent trap element to this book is where I cringed a little because I am very black and white when it comes to workplace shenanigans. So the thought of bringing your personal stuff to work -- look, I am an INTJ, boundaries are very important to me. So the thought of like bringing your personal life to work and then dating somebody you work with and also trying to get your bosses back together. There were just parts of it that were very hard for me, and yet I have to acknowledge, probably very fun for a different kind of reader.
[00:20:00] So Weather Girl by Rachael Lynn Solomon, it's got really two couples. It's got Ari and Russell, but then it's also got the kind of couple that's being parent trapped throughout the whole book. There is a lovely -- I don't want to spoil anything, but to me, there's a plot point that occurs towards the end of the book that really made me like this one even better. I felt like Rachel did a really good job of kind of keeping me on my toes as this book came to a close. So I really loved the kind of some of the plot elements, specifically toward the end of the book. I think there will be many readers who identify with the main character, Ari, and her struggles with depression. So we've got a neurodiverse character at the heart of this book, which I think is important. And I think Rachel Lynn Solomon does a very good job of unpacking that and dissecting that.
[00:20:46] And Russell has a young daughter who will remind you of Millie in When You Get a Chance. All of these books, turns out, are related to each other, which I kind of love. So, anyway, Weather Girl was probably more rom than com for me. And so if you're a romance reader, I highly recommend this one. If you are a PG prudish rom-com reader -- and I want you to know I say that with love, I am also prudish and prefer a closed door romance. This one might be a little too steamy for you. And so I just want to throw that out there. So, romance readers, I think this will scratch all your metaphorical itches. I use that phrase a lot, and I wish I didn't. And then for those of us who maybe have more PG sensibilities or need a little bit more, maybe more closed doors, I think some different books might work for you. But that is Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon, and I am glad I read it.
[00:21:38] Next, I picked up the book The Crane Wife. This is by C.J. Hauser. This book is not out until July 12th, and I'm sorry about it, but I want to tell you about it now because you can preorder it if you want to and because I just loved it and it's important to talk about it while it's fresh on my mind. So, C.J. Hauser, she's beloved at The Bookshelf for all kinds of reasons. She graduated from Florida State, which is right near Thomasville, right up the road in Tallahassee. And C.J. launched her first book with us a few years ago called The From-Away's. She wrote it and published that book around the same time I took over The Bookshelf, and so I certainly feel a kinship to C.J. Houser because of that. She was a good friend of her former podcast co-host Chris Jensen. And she also has written the book The Family of Origin, which I adored.
[00:22:27] So I love everything she's written. This is her new essay collection. You might be familiar with C.J., not just because maybe of her Bookshelf ties or her previous work, but because of her essay called The Crane Wife, which was featured in the Paris Review. It released or it came out, it was published a couple of years ago, and it absolutely blew up. Like, I think it was published in 2019, I want to say. And I mean, in as much as an essay from the Paris Review can go viral, this went viral, so you may be familiar with that. If you're not, I encourage you to google it. The Crane Wife from the Paris Review. This is now her essay collection that features that essay, but also several other essays. And I say this without a hint of hyperbole. Every essay in this collection is good like. And I want you to know that is really rare.
[00:23:13] In a short story collection or in an essay collection, I feel like there's always a dud or two, and it's nobody's fault. It's just like that one didn't land or didn't land with me. Instead, I loved every single essay. This one came across my desk. A publisher sent it my way. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I saw it on like -- at The Bookshelf, there's a set of stairs. My mail is left on the foot of the stairs. I saw this and immediately grabbed it. I was so excited. And I went home on a Friday night and I read this in one sitting. I read it while ate dinner. Like I could not put it down. I wept when it ended. The last essay is so profound. And Jordan got home, and then I proceeded to tell him all about it. I just can't say enough good things about this. There's an essay about the Philadelphia Story. There's an essay about robots. There's an essay about dads and gardening. There's an essay about a room for your own -- a room of your own, about a house.
[00:24:11] I mean, gosh, I just loved every essay in this book. I thought it was so good. I finished it and -- truly, I wrote this on Instagram, but I mean it. I immediately was like, "Can you give a book six stars?" Like, that's how much I loved this. I will not be shocked at all when this winds up in my top 10 of the year. And, yeah, I can't say enough good things about it. It's called The Crane Wife. It's by C.J. Hauser. I guess I want you to know that I would be saying amazing, wonderful things about it even if I had no idea who C.J. Hauser was. So even if I didn't read all of her other books or didn't know about her Tallahassee connections, even if she'd never set foot in The Bookshelf, I would adore this book. And I don't know any higher praise that I can say so I'll move on.
[00:24:54] Next, I read Yinka, Where Is Your Husband? By Lizzy Damilola Blackburn. I really wanted to pronounce that correctly because the book very clearly says how you're supposed to pronounce it when you open the first page. So Yinka, Where Is Your Husband? By Lizzy Damilola Blackburn, what a fine book. If you are looking for a Valentine's Day, Galentine's Day mood read for February, here you go. I want to pass this out like chocolate because I think truly almost anybody could like this book, particularly if you like, as we were just discussing, if you like romantic comedies. So this is a book about Yinka. She is a British Nigerian woman, and she is in her -- oh gosh, it's late 20s or early 30s, and she's unmarried. And her family, her mother in particular, is just desperate for her to be married.
[00:25:46] And the book opens with her at her sister's baby shower, and all of her aunties gather around and don't just pray for her sister and her sisters upcoming birthing process, or like her new baby. Instead, they pray devoutly and devotedly for Yinka to find a husband. And it's mortifying to her. It's embarrassing. And the scene is really striking. Like all while I was reading this book, I kept thinking, someone needs to buy the rights to this because it would make such an interesting like HBO show or Netflix show, because the way Lizzie Damilola Blackburn writes is really visual. Like, I could picture everything. And this scene of these women kind of gathering around this young woman and thinking that they're doing the right thing, but it's clearly so inappropriate and so devastating to her and humiliating to her.
[00:26:39] And so Yinka decides she has to take it upon herself to find a husband, and she needs to find a husband before her friend's wedding. And so she does what all, I guess, nerdy women do and she like creates a spreadsheet, and she tries to figure out a plan for meeting somebody. And, of course, the plan backfires and Yinka's terrible at it. Here's what I really like about Yinka. She is deeply flawed and yet really likable. I really liked Yinka, and yet I also was like, "Yinka, what are you doing?" Like, I wanted to help her. I wanted to jump through the pages and help her make better decisions. I also thought this was really interesting because it's really interesting to read a book that is about a person of faith. So Yinka holds her religious faith very dear to her. She is a virgin. She's never had sex, and that plays a role in how she dates and in who she dates.
[00:27:28] And I thought, it's just -- I don't know that I've ever read a book like this that wasn't like cheesy Christian fiction. I don't really know a nicer way to say it. And, instead, Yinka is flawed. Her relationships are flawed, but she also holds deeply to a belief system and has standards that she has set for herself and for the people she comes in contact with. It's really interesting. I found it to be really unique and unlike a lot of books that I had read. So I fell in love with her. But here's what I am always looking for in a good romantic comedy -- and I do think Yinka, Where Is Your Husband could be classified as a romantic comedy. I'm always looking for really good and interesting side characters. And some of -- maybe all of Yinka's friends and love interests are really interesting. They're not one note. They're not stereotypes. They're all really interesting women.
[00:28:25] Which is why in men and in the case of her love interest, which is why I keep saying it would make a great HBO show because I just feel like there's a lot that you could dig even deeper on with some of these characters. I just want somebody to buy the rights to this so badly because I think it would be so interesting. She references in her acknowledgments how much she loves the HBO show Insecure. Like you can tell she is somebody who has been influenced by a visual medium because of her writing. Anyway, really like this one. I think other people might draw comparisons to like Bridget Jones or something like that. Maybe a more a more PG Bridget Jones. This is definitely soundly PG. PG 13. And Yinka just felt really original to me and her friends are very believable. Her friendships are very believable. I loved this book. I can't say enough good things about it. I think many, many, people would really like it. It is called Yinka, Where Is Your Husband? By Lizzy Damilola Blackburn.
[00:29:20] Then I picked up a book recommended to me by Olivia. She read and loved the book The Made by Nita Prose. This is also a debut novel. So many good debuts this month. And I picked this up because of Olivia's recommendation. I love working with people who read because -- and really it's not just people who read. I love working with booksellers because Olivia knows if something is for me or not. It's the same relationship I have with Hunter. Like, I can ask Hunter, "I know you liked this book, will I?" And he will honestly say yes or no. And Olivia will honestly say, you can skip it or I know you'd really like it. And she told me I'd really like this one, and she was right. So many of you have picked this one up by now. I think it was like a Good Morning America pick. So you may already be familiar, but if you're not, this book is about a young woman named Molly.
[00:30:06] She's in her mid 20s. She is a maid at what we're led to believe is a really nice, beautiful hotel. And her grandmother has just died, and we quickly see that Molly is probably on the spectrum. She sees the world very differently, and she's really trying to navigate life without her grandmother. And so she continues working as a maid in this hotel. But lo and behold, within the first few pages chapters, she encounters a dead body in one of the rooms. And, obviously, a murder mystery ensues. Look, this is like a cozy murder mystery, but with depth and a very modern feel. So Olivia is definitely more of the expert on cozy mysteries or suspense thrillers than I am. But in my mind, this is like cuddle up under a blanket with a warm cup of tea and read about Molly and her grandmother. And yet I also finish this one and immediately was like, I got to talk to somebody about this.
[00:31:09] So it's a cozy mystery with modern sensibilities and some serious depth because there are some things that unfold and some things -- yeah, some plot points that unfold and some character development that you see that make you want to talk about it with somebody. There's just so much here. And I I've seen a lot of the cozy mystery elements unpacked about this book. Like, I think a lot of people really loved it for that element. But I also really want to talk to people about some of Molly's decisions and this found family. So she's lost her grandmother, but she immediately kind of finds these people to cling to and trust. And Molly's trusting nature and then, at the same time, her really practical nature. There's so much to love and to dissect about Molly. And I'm thrilled that this one is already speaking of things that have been turned into TV shows or whatever. This has already been sold as a movie. Florence Pugh is going to star. I think that's great.
[00:32:09] I think it'll be really fun. I loved this book. Highly recommend. Highly recommend it for your book clubs. Just because I do think there is a lot worth discussing when you finish this one. It is called The Made by Nita Prose. It's got the Annie and Olivia stamp of approval. This is what I love, I just love that this month the genres were all over the place. Like I felt like January -- if I could bottle up my favorite kind of reading months, I think January would be a good example of it. So after reading The Made, I picked up a bomb shelter. This is by Mary Laura Philpot. It does not come out until April. I believe the exact release date right now is April 12th. So I love Mary Laura PhilPot. I love her. I loved her book I Miss You When I Blink. If you have still not read that book and you are a type-A personality or or an overachieving eldest daughter, may I please give this to you? Perhaps you won't even need therapy anymore. May I please hand you, I Miss You When I Blink.
[00:33:12] I felt so very seen and understood when reading that book. That was her first collection of essays. And now she's put out the book Bomb Shelter. And here's what I think, I listened to Mary Laura give a talk with a couple of Simon and Schuster -- I think it was a Simon and Schuster rep and then a bookseller, and they were talking about how much they really liked, and they didn't want to say they had a favorite. But if they had a favorite they would favor Bomb Shelter. And I'm here to tell you that I Miss You When I Blink and Bomb Shelter are sisters. And I think I Miss You When I Blink is Joe, and I think Bomb Shelter is Meg, does this make sense? I don't know. It does to me because when I was reading Bomb Shelter, when I was reading, I Miss You When I Blink, I felt seen and understood. When I was reading Bomb Shelter I still felt seen and understood.
[00:34:08] And I also felt like I was listening to a big sister or like a hip cool control freaky aunt letting me know what parenthood could look like, because Bomb Shelter really is a book about motherhood, and it is beautiful and it is stunning. I am not a mother. I can absolutely read books about motherhood and not be a mom. I would like to, first of all, say that you don't have to be a mom to enjoy books about motherhood. But because of that, I felt like I was sitting at the feet of somebody with more life experience and more wide ranging experience than I currently have. And I'm really grateful for that. I love a book like that, but I think that's why I felt seen from I Miss You When I Blink. And then from Bomb Shelter, I felt like Bomb Shelter was more laying out a future that I have not yet lived. And I mean, that was really high praise, but that's how it felt while reading it.
[00:35:05] It is another collection of essays, but it is definitely rooted in Mary Laura's son and daughter. And really about an experience that happens -- no spoilers, but an experience that happens with her son, where she wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of her teenage son hitting the ground. And they realize that he's having epileptic seizures and he's never had them before, and they take him to the hospital and things unfold from there. And so the essays are really about letting go. And if you've read, I Miss You When I Blink, you understand, I Miss You When I Blink kind of lays out the personality quirks almost of somebody who, yeah, loves to be in control or is high achieving or is Elvis Daughtery. And then Bomb Shelter is like these are the consequences of that behavior.
[00:35:53] And I kept nodding along while I was reading. By the time I reached the end, I was openly weeping. It's fine, totally healthy. And, yeah, I just really liked this book. I will be hand selling this one to moms at graduation time, people who -- because it could be for dads to actually. Again, I don't think you have to be a mom to enjoy this book. But maybe people who are having empty nests for the first time, I think this would be a really lovely book for them. And then for people like me who worry about things that haven't even happened yet. I think this is great for that because it, again, it's like having an older, wiser sister or friend talk to you and take you by the hand and tell you things, and tell you what happens. I really like this book, it comes out on April 12. I'm not at all surprised. I liked it. In fact, this is one of those ARCs I had months ago and I've put off reading it because I loved I Miss You When I Blink so much and I was worried this wasn't going to hold up. And instead, it does.
[00:36:56] But it's a beautiful companion piece. I really think the two -- that's why I refer to them as sisters, the books really, to me, go hand in hand with one another. I feel like they need each other. So Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott out on April 12th. Then last but not least, I read a book called The Many Daughters of Afong Moy. This is by Jamie Ford. It's out on June 28th. So, again, when I look at January, I was able to read some like fun new release books, a back list title and then some books that aren't yet out. I liked my reading rhythm this month, and I'm really happy about it. It may not always be this way, but what a fun way to start the year. So The Many Daughters Of Afong Moy. You might be familiar with Jamie Ford. He wrote a book called Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. That came out a few years ago and I think actually was very popular when I first took over The Bookshelf.
[00:37:48] So it's like a book I missed. Like, I have not read it, but when I took over The Bookshelf, it was like a bestselling paperback at The Bookshelf. So you may be familiar with his work. I was not. Lucy actually recommended this to me. She had come across it, I think, in her wanderings. And I'm so glad I picked it up. To me, this is historical fiction meets bewilderment or great circle. The book is all about -- and I hope I'm going to pronounce it correctly. It's all about epigenetic inheritance. So this idea that we not only inherit character traits and genetic traits, but we also inherit trauma and we also inherit fears and joys. And so I'll give you an example because I actually think the author's note that starts the book is brilliant, and I think it's a brilliant way to start the book. So often I'd love a little note from the authors at the beginning of their work, and you get one from Jamie Ford.
[00:38:43] So he starts the book by talking about how he realized that his son was listening to some of the same bands he had liked growing up. But he had never told his son that those were his favorite bands. Like, they had never really talked about it. He just encountered his kid listening to the same music that he grew up listening to and loving. And it was something they'd never talked about. So it's just like this inherent trait that got passed down and Jamie Ford thought that was so interesting. And so he started doing some research into epigenetic inheritance, which is something that's very prolific in indigenous or Native American cultures, but not something that we talk about very often. I guess it's super mainstream. It's not something we talk about very often. And so then he based this book around the historical person, true historical person, of Afong Moy who was the first Chinese woman to come to America.
[00:39:34] Which someone on our patron feed once asked me if I like to let like confusion and science wash over me when I read a book or like historical references like wash over me or if I do research. And the answer is both. I am willing to be confused because I think the author knows what they're doing, and they can help me understand what I need to know. And then at the end of a book, I do a deep dive. And so as I was reading this book, I immediately kind of opened up some Wikipedia pages and stuff so I could read about Afong Moy so I could read about foot binding, different things that kind of play a role in this work. But the book isn't just about Afong Moy, it's about the daughters of Afong Moy. So what Jamie Ford does, is he takes a character of Afong Moy and then the book goes back and forth and across the decades and generations. Almost like, I feel like Home Going win in order. But almost like a book like Home Going where you're getting a different look at each generation.
[00:40:33] And so you get a look at Afong Moy's like great, great, great, great, granddaughter, but also her daughter, also her granddaughter. I cannot tell you how much I have loved this book, and it feels outside genre for me because it is very much rooted in historical fiction. But because of what it's dealing with science and psychology, it reminds me a little bit of Bewilderment by Richard Powers. And I love this book so much. I am in love with all of these women. They are so fascinating. And so you watch and you learn about the trauma that Afong Moy passed on to her descendants. But the descendants don't even know it because how familiar are you with your great, great, great, grandmother's traumas or your great, great, grandmother's fears? Like, I'm not. My grandmother's, maybe, but my great, great, great, grandmother? Absolutely not.
[00:41:25] And so you see the fallout and the consequences and the impact of these women's stories on the generations. I think it's brilliant. Gosh, I read so many good books this month. Anyway, it is not out until June 28th. I'm sorry about that, but you can again preorder it or at least keep it on your radar. It is called The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford. Just outstanding. Loved it so much. And those are the books I read in January. So if you liked hearing about those books and if you want to purchase any of them, you can find them all at Bookshelfthomasville.com. We link to them in the show notes. And if you want, I am doing a reading recap bundle that's going to feature three of these titles: When You Get a Chance by Emma Lord. Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades. And Yinka, Where Is Your Husband? By Lizzy Damilola Blackburn.
[00:42:18] And so you could buy the bundle of all three books and get a nice little discount, and you can access that reading recap bundle at bookshelfthomasville.com or by following the link in your show notes. If you follow us on Instagram @bookshelftville, I'd love to know what you read this month. I'm so curious what your first reading month looks like in 2022.
[00:42:40] This week, I'm listening to Going There by Katie Couric through Libro.fm. And it is so good. From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf daily happenings on Instagram @bookshelftvile. And all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website:
[00:43:05] bookshelfthomasville.com.
[00:43:08] A full transcript of today's episode can be found at:
[00:43:12] fromthefrontporchpodcast.com.
[00:43:14] Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music, which that's the perfect, warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
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