Episode 396 || October Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in October. As always, we’re offering a October Reading Recap Bundle, which features Annie’s three favorite books from this month.
Get your October Reading Recap Bundle or your favorites of Annie’s October reads on our website:
People Person by Candice Carty-Williams
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
What Cannot Be Lost by Melissa Zaldivar
Super Bloom by Megan Tady
Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica
My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
Night Film by Marisha Pessl
The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel
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. Everyone loves fall in Thomasville, Georgia! When it’s time to getaway, we have exactly what you need! Find romance, explore historical sites, dine out, shop, and make time to relax and unwind. There’s no better getaway than a Thomasville Getaway! Whether you live close by or are passing through, I hope you'll visit beautiful Thomasville, Georgia: www.thomasvillega.com or @thomasvillega on Instagram.
This week Annie is reading The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel.
If you liked what you heard in 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 and follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are... Donna Hetchler, Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle C, Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, Laurie Johnson, and Kate Johnston Tucker.
Transcript:
Annie Jones [00:00:01] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South.
[00:00:25] "Agnes shook her head. To know what a person has done and to know who a person is, are very different things." Hannah Kent, Burial Rites.
[00:00:39] 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. If you're a regional listener of From the Front Porch, you may already know that Southern writer Shawn Dietrich is coming to Thomasville on Tuesday, November 1st. Tickets for this Bookshelf-sponsored event went so fast, we had to switch venues. And now instead of hosting Shawn, (who you might know as Shawn of the South) at The Bookshelf, we are hosting him at the Thomasville Center for the Arts. This is a huge deal for us.
[00:01:13] And with expanded room for seating, tickets are still available on the Bookshelf website for just $15 general Admission. Doors open at 6:30 on November 1st and Shawn will begin his performance at 7:00 followed by a book signing. He's currently on tour for his latest book, You Are My Sunshine. And if you're new to Shawn's work, you are in for a treat. Find out more about Shawn and his writing on his website. Shawndietrich.com, then grab your tickets for our November 1st event at www.Bookshelfthomasville.com.
[00:01:46] Well, who could believe that October is over? We are wrapping up October. And I wanted to, of course, recap the books I read this month. It is as so many Instagram, TikTok people have commented it is a spooky season, and I definitely read some spooky books, but I also feel like I expanded the definition of spooky season and kind of read some spooky adjacent literature. A lot of the books I read this month I really enjoyed and I cannot wait to talk to you about them. I was looking at this list and I was really pleased. This is going to sound so kind of counterintuitive to my life as a bookstore owner, but I'm pleased with how many backlist titles I read this month. This is the time of year when I'm not really reading for 2022 Shelf Subscriptions. I am still trying to work my way into 2023 Shelf Subscription Selections. But it feels a little bit like my reading life in general is hit or miss. This is the busiest time of year in The Bookshelf. It's quarter four and retail is busy. And so it's really about just what do I want to read. And I had a lot of fun with that this month. And a lot of these books I read, I read because I wanted to. That is always the case. I don't finish ARCs that I don't like. You all know this if you listen to the podcast. I finish books I like. I talk about books I like. But there is a work element. There is a job element associated sometimes with reading ARCs. And so it was nice this month to just read books and to see if I liked them, did I enjoy them? And I don't often get to dive into backlist titles. So that was kind of a fun aspect of my reading life this month.
[00:03:28] Okay, first up on my list was a newly released book that I wanted to finish in time for Fall at Lunch. But I started it, put it down and then picked it back up. It is People Person. This is by Candace Carty-Williams. You might recognize that name because of Candace Carty-Williams first book, her debut novel, Queenie, which came out a few years ago. This is a blast from the past. We selected Queenie as our book club selection for our knitting book club that we did in partnership with our local yarn shop, Fuzzy Goat. We hosted an event called Stitches and Stories where we would listen to audiobooks while knitting. Really a lovely, lovely, thing that we just have not had the capacity to bring back post-pandemic, but it was really enjoyable. Queenie was one of our selections. It was laugh out loud funny. I did not finish it, but the parts that I listened to, especially in that book club I enjoyed, I heard that book I think billed as similar to Bridget Jones Diary, and I would say that that is pretty accurate. People Person is very different from that. And for me that was a good thing because as much as I appreciated the parts I read of Queenie, I was more drawn to the story that Candace Cathi Williams is writing in People Person. So People Person is about a family. The Pennington family, specifically Cyril Pennington and his five children, who he had with four different partners. Cyril has five children, they're all half siblings. The story really focuses on Dimple, who is approaching or at 30 years old, and Dimple is kind of in a crisis. And she winds up reaching out to these half siblings that she doesn't really know and they kind of all come together to help her. If you like dysfunctional family stories, this is perfect for you. I adored specifically the first half of this book. I will admit that I found that the second has to be slightly slower, but I think I could be in the minority for that. I've read really great reviews of this book by lots of readers I trust, and so I think partly it was just where-- my head was in some weird spaces.
[00:05:34] Late September or early October, I was very stressed with Bookshelf stuff. And so I do think that our mental state affects our reading lives and it would be silly to not acknowledge that. So I loved and adored the first half of this book. I thought it moved really quickly. The second half is a little less plot driven and more focused on the sibling relationships, which I think is typically something I would really love. So if you are like me and you like dysfunctional family lit, I think you should try this one. I do not want to give too much away and I'm so glad the publisher did not go into too much detail about what happens in this book because, as a result, I was so pleasantly surprised and there were moments where I was gasping out loud. So I want you to go in the same way I did. And so I'm not going to say much more, but I will say Dimple and her four half siblings they were a little hard sometimes to keep track of, but they do all have their very distinct personalities. Their relationships are really interesting. And Candice Cardy Williams does not shy away from the difficulties, some of these siblings with her characters have with one another. There's some sibling rivalry or tension between specifically that dynamic between maybe oldest and youngest. But these are people who were not raised together. And until these I love there's this great scene in the opening few pages where these half siblings meet for the first time and they're younger. They're in their childhood pre-teen years and they meet each other and they don't know who each other is. And then Cyril kind of explains to them that they belong to each other.
[00:07:09] And there is immediate tension and confusion there. And I also like that there are different dynamics at play. So not only in terms of typical sibling rivalry, but also Dimple's mother is an Indian woman and one of her half siblings has a white mother. And so there's also some racial conversations that I think are really interesting and deep and nuanced. I really appreciated those. Look, I just like a dysfunctional family story. I think Candice Carty-Williams did a really great job. I was pleasantly surprised by this book just because Queenie was more in the maybe romcom genre and so this is different, and that means I can't wait to see what Candice Carty- Williams does next because now I'm like, oh, what will she do? This is so different. This did remind me-- I was trying to think of a comp title and the best comparison I can come to is all This Could Be Yours, which is a great backlist title by Jami Attenberg. I love that book. It was set in Louisiana and there was a really complicated father figure at the heart of that novel. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, he dies. And so they all kind of have to gather around and hold this funeral for this person they didn't really like or know very well. And People Person is dealing with those same themes. The setting is quite different. It's set in England. This book was published in the U.K. first. But I love all these people. I think you will especially find yourself sympathizing with Dimple. Again, she's kind of the main sibling that we kind of see a lot through her eyes. And she's a wannabe influencer. She struggles a little bit with self identity, with kind of figuring out who she is. You can't see me, but I'm saying this all with a smile on my face, because the more I think about these people, the more I realize I really did like them and I liked reading about them. So that is People Person by Candice Carty-Williams.
[00:08:57] Next up-- and this was pretty fun. I was sent a book by Zibby Books. You all probably know them from Instagram, from the publishing work they do from Zibby Owens, who kind of started this publishing company. One of our listeners and one of my online friends works for Zibby and sent me kind of a bound manuscript of a book called Super Bloom. This is by Megan Tady. It comes out in May. So, look, this was early release. I told you I was reading a bound manuscript copy, which was so fun. I still get really excited about ARCs, do not get me wrong. I love ARCs. It is a real perk of the job and a younger version of me would not believe that I get to read books before they're even published. That is very exciting. But I think because I've been reading ARCs for so long, now the magic that was kind of reserved for ARC reading has now been moved to bound manuscripts because it feels so heroine in a Nora Ephron movie. I don't know how else to describe it. But to sit in my bed and hold a bound manuscript made me feel like I work in publishing and that was very exciting to me. I think it would be so cool to work at publishing. I'm sure I'm romanticizing it just like I used to romanticize owning a bookstore. So, nevertheless, I picked up this bound manuscript called Super Bloom. It's being published by Zibby Books. They graciously sent me this copy. It is about a massage therapist who lives in Vermont, and she works at kind of this resort spa. And we know immediately she is struggling through the aftermath of the death of her boyfriend, the very unexpected kind of accidental death of her boyfriend. So this is a woman struggling with grief, kind of navigating her way. She has really found herself in a stuck place. I don't know how else to word it. She's stuck. She doesn't really like her job very much. She doesn't really know what to do with herself. And she's not performing well at her job as a massage therapist. And she is given this client named-- I love this character name. I just had to say it-- carmen Bronze.
[00:11:06] Carmen Bronze is a romance writer. Kind of a prolific romance writer who is notoriously difficult. And she comes to the resort and is given a massage. And even though the massage that Joan gives Carmen is terrible, Carmen kind of takes her under her wing and asks her to give her the down low on what happens at this resort. Because Carmen Bronze's next romance novel is going to be set at an elite spa. And so she needs Joan Johnson, this massage therapist, to kind of give her all the details of her work. And Joan agrees. But Joan also realizes, as she's kind of keeping these details for Carmen, hmm, maybe she has it in her to write her own book. So this is a story about grief. It's also a story, I think, about ambition, about writing, about creativity and the creative process. I really liked those aspects of the book in particular. There is a slight romance element, but it feels very slight to me. I would more compare this to Linda Holmes latest book, Flying Solo. I think that's the best comp I could get for this one. I especially liked the tension and the relationship between Joan, our main character, the massage therapist, and Carmen, the romance writer. Carmen, of course, almost feels like a stereotype, like this kind of stereotypical, difficult woman who's successful and ambitious. A little bit like Working Girl. One of my favorite movies. And so, anyway, I appreciated that. But those characters then are given more deaths than that. So Carmen Bronze kind of starts as a stereotypical figure and she's given more to do, which I really liked. I think this book is really fun. I'm excited for you to read it. I'm grateful that I got to read such an early copy. I thought that was really fun and exciting for me. And I think you'll enjoy this one. So it is called Super Bloom by Megan Tady. It is best compared, I think, to Flying Solo by Linda Holmes. So if that's a book you enjoyed and liked, I think you might enjoy this one as well.
[00:13:18] Okay. Then, as you may know, I put this on Instagram, I talked about it on last week's episode of From the Front Porch. I went to the library, which is something I don't often do because I own a bookstore, not because I don't like libraries, just because I own a bookstore. And so on a recent fall day, I decided to take myself to the library and to just see what books I might want to read. So I checked out four books, I was able to read two of them this month-- which felt great. I really was not sure if I would read any of them. I just kind of went and thought, let's give this a go. And then I read two of them and that feels successful to me. So the first book from the library that I read was Local Woman Missing. This is by Mary Kubica. I've never read Mary Kubica. She is a new to me author, though certainly not new to me in terms of knowledge. We are very aware of Mary Kubica at The Bookshelf. We sell a lot of her books, but I had never read her. Our customers love her and our customers enjoy her. But I picked up Local Woman Missing while I was at the library. She's written many suspense thriller books. If you're like me and you're new to her, she's written so many. But Local Woman Missing and the Good Girl are two that have done really well at the Bookshelf. Basically, the premise of local woman missing is that two women in the same neighborhood go missing kind of months apart. So one woman goes missing late at night while she's out on a walk, and then another woman and her six year old daughter go missing. And, of course, that immediately sends this neighborhood into overdrive because now there's a child. It's obviously terrible that these women have gone missing, but now there's a child involved.
[00:14:56] First of all, I love this book. I flew through it. I think I read it in a day, maybe a day and a half, which was exactly what I wanted. I felt like, okay, good. I did it. I understood the assignment. I completed the assignment. I felt great about it. So I read this very quickly. It was very suspenseful without being too terribly spooky because I know not everybody is in the spooky books. I thought this was a great suspense thriller. I was talking to Olivia about it later because I was curious. I went to the library and I think I texted a couple of my friends just to see if they'd read Mary Kubica. But then I kind of was like, no, I'm not going to do any research. I'm just going to get these books. I do so much research when I read. Meaning I look up reviews or I try to get a sense of where the story might go, what I have time for, etc. And so when I went to the library, I kind of just had no rules. And so after I read it is when I asked Olivia about it. And she had read this book and also loved it. So I feel like Olivia is really our thriller-suspense expert. It's a genre I enjoy and I especially enjoyed pre-Bookshelf life, but I don't always get to dive in the way I want to. And so it was kind of fun to get to talk to Olivia about it and to realize that she really likes this one too. It's told in alternating voices and timelines. I was never confused. It's never confusing. I thought the story was pretty straightforward. Reminds me ever so slightly of something like Long Bright River, maybe a little bit more commercial than that. Basically, you follow along through the investigation and the book goes back and forth in time because the past is when these two women and the little girl went missing, and in the present a young woman has come forward and been found and she claims to be the six-year-old girl who went missing before. So there's a cold case element. I mean, it felt like the very best episodes of Law and Order SVU. As you might know, I've seen almost all of them, with the exception of maybe the current season. That was something Jordan and I did in the pandemic. It was a real labor of love there at the end that not all Law and Order SVU episodes are created equal. But this book felt like the very best of that kind of investigative show or that serial show. So I really like this book. If you've never read Mary Kubica, I think this would be a great place to start. Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica. It's a backlist title out in paperback.
[00:17:19] Okay. Then to continue kind of spooky-suspense season, I brought home a copy of My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. During the pandemic, I read what at the time felt very out of genre for me, which was Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. Just that title alone, I was not sure what I was getting into. And I read it at the height of the pandemic while I was trying to, I believe, do some research for a summer literary lunch. And I started it, as I often do. Some of these little lunch picks is I'll start them and try to decide if I want to make time to finish them or if I've read enough to talk about it. And I fully intended to just read enough to talk about this one. And instead, I am pretty sure, if I'm not mistaken, I read that entire book by the pool on that same day. And so Grady Hendricks has a special place in my heart for helping me endure some real dog days of the pandemic. Our staff at the Bookshelf loves Grady Hendrix. Olivia and Keila in particular have read most, if not all, of his books and really recommend them. My Best Friend's exorcism just appealed to me-- I will be very honest-- because of the cover. The cover looks straight out of the eighties. It just felt fun and nostalgic. Keila gave it her stamp of approval. Olivia gave it her stamp of approval. So one weekend I took it home. We had an extra copy at the Bookshelf and I took it off the shelf and went home with it. It is set in the eighties, just as the cover would suggest. It's 1988 and Abby and Gretchen are very best friends. I really liked this book. Here's what I loved about it, the way Grady Hendrix-- and I don't know how he does it. No offense to men, but it is shocking to me when men understand how female friendships work. And Grady Hendrix has written so well about this friendship between Abby and Gretchen. He writes about how they first met when they were in the fourth grade and kind of how their friendship grew until they were in high school and they were best friends alongside two other young women. And the writing about these friendships just felt so realistic and so true to life and true to my life experience. Until, of course, Gretchen starts behaving oddly and of course no one really takes her behavior seriously. They think she's on drugs or they think she's just being a teenager, that kind of thing. But Abby thinks there's something more at play.
[00:19:52] And she-- I mean, the title, You know... She reaches out to an exorcist to try to see if something demonic is wrong with her friend. I could take or leave the exorcism parts of this book. To me, the book is about Abby and Gretchen's friendship. I know we talked about this book a couple of episodes ago. If you liked the book by Quan Barry, We Ride Upon Sticks. This feels very similar to me where, yes, there is certainly witchcraft in we write upon sticks. Yes, there is certainly demonic activity and exorcisms. There is an exorcism in My Best Friend's Exorcism. The heart of the book to me is really about Abby and Gretchen and their friendship. And I was deeply moved, which is a very weird thing to say about a book that the paperback edition literally looks like a videotape. It literally looks like a book you would have picked up in the eighties, like a choose your own adventure horror story. But I wound up being deeply moved by this book because really it's about two friends. Grady Hendrix writes really interestingly. I think he's a Southern writer and he writes really interestingly about the South. Some of the decisions he makes in writing about the South, specifically during the eighties, I find a little head scratching. But overall, I really like this book. I read it in an afternoon, which again is what I was looking for this month. So it fit the bill. So that's My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. Obviously, October is coming to a close, but I really liked that one and I think it would be worth adding to your list for next year. Or perhaps you're like Staffer Keila and you just read spooky books all year long, in which case go to town, this would be a good one.
[00:21:37] For my book club this month, I was the host this month, and I was tasked with picking a suspense novel. But our book club is filled with all kinds of readers, many of whom don't necessarily love suspense-thriller. So I wanted to think kind of outside the box, and I wanted something similar to Finlay Donovan. And Olivia kept talking about Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. And boy, did I just thoroughly enjoy this book. I loved this book. One trick I have learned for reading my book club books on time is audiobooks. So I did not do a lot of audiobooks this particular month. I just not read or listened to a lot of audiobooks in October. But I did listen to Killers of a certain age because I'm realizing that's how I can do my book club reading. So I listened to this one on Libro Fm. The narration is fantastic. It's a great audiobook. I think it would probably be equally enjoyable in print format, but for what it's worth, I listened to it and I really liked it. If you're not familiar, this book is about four retirees, retired women who go on a cruise. And you realize that they are retired assassins. They are exiting the assassin field and they go on this retirement cruise. Their company kind of forces them to go on this cruise. And while they're on the cruise, they discover that perhaps they might be targets for an assassination hit. So already I was intrigued. Already it sounded great. I love an older protagonist. I love for spunky, very different, very interesting women, which I think Deanna Raybourn did a really good job of there. The main character is a woman named Billy, Mary, Alice, Helen and Natalie. Here's what I really liked about all of them. They're all really different and they're all lovable and obnoxious. Like, there were things about Billy that drove me absolutely up the wall, but that was true for kind of all the characters. They just felt very real.
[00:23:37] They felt like real women. They felt like real people who are complicated and interesting and annoying and delightful, like all of the above. And I think that's really hard to do. I think it's really hard to paint pictures with such nuanced stroke. So I really love that aspect of the book. I don't read a lot of spy novels, and that's what this book really felt like. It very much felt like family. Finly Donavan, but it felt like a spy novel because you were going back and forth in time to also seeing these women in their younger years-- I don't want to say at the height of their career, because I don't think that's necessarily true. But maybe as they were starting out in their careers in their twenties and thirties and it felt like alias in that way, like these women kind of getting into character and then committing these assassinations. I thought it was just so clever and interesting. I also loved what kind of contributed to the spy feeling of the book was the plot traverses a lot of different places. So part of the book is set in New Orleans and that setting is really rich and interesting. Part of the book is set outside London. So it just felt like I was traveling with them. I think Deanna Raybourn did a really good job of not only making this book about people, but she made it about place, which, again, I think is hard to do. And so I loved traveling with these women and going alongside them. And I don't necessarily recommend this, I immediately watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith after reading this book because I just kind of was still in that zone. It was fine. I loved it when I was in high school. It's okay on the rewatch. But this book I just thoroughly enjoyed. As of this recording, I have not yet hosted my book club. I'm hosting it tomorrow and so it'll be interesting to see. But already I've gotten some texts from book club members and, again, not every book hits with every book club member, but it seems like a lot of people have really liked this one and that makes me very happy. And I thought, I think this would be a great book if you don't necessarily like spooky books, but you wanted to read something that was fun, lighthearted, but still had an element of suspense to it. I think this would work for you.
[00:26:00] Olivia read this and loved this. I think it was one of her shelf subscription selections this fall. Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. And, again, I listened to it on audiobook, but I think it would be equally enjoyable in print format. I picked up the book Night Film. This is by Marisha Pessl. This was one of my library books. So this is the second library book I read and it's thick. Oh gosh, I wish I had it in front of me. I think it's about 500 pages. It felt shorter than The Goldfinch. But it was heavy, so I checked out the hardback book from there. It was literally heavy, is what I mean. And I say that because I typically when I travel, travel with ARCs. Why would I ever have need to travel with a library book? Never, because I travel with ARCs or paperbacks. And the reason I do that is so that if I finish them, I can leave them and then bring home the books that I've inevitably bought at the local bookstore of wherever I've traveled. So that is what I typically do. That's kind of my standard M.O. when I travel. But when I left on a recent trip to New England, I was in the middle of Night Film, which is this thick library book that I got. And I thought, gosh, I could just put it down and take a different route. But I really was invested and I knew I wanted to finish and I was afraid if I put it down, I would not pick it back up again. So I took this book with me. I picked this one up at the library for a couple of reasons. So, first of all, very fun. When I was in New York a few years ago, I picked up a blind date with a book at the bookstore Book Culture, and it was very fun to get to do that. And now I know why all of you love it. And the book I wound up picking was Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which is a book by Marisha Pessl. And I really love that book. If you like campus novels, I think you'll like that one. It was a little quieter, as I recall, like I did not fly through it, but I really liked it when I was done. I also was familiar with Marisha Pessl because and I confirmed this, I fact checked this. Turns out my memory was correct. Night Film was released in 2013, which was when I was a baby bookseller.
[00:28:20] So I came to the Bookshelf in Tallahassee in 2012 and then took over the Bookshelf in Thomasville in 2013. And Night Film was one of those books that I'm pretty sure was like an indie next book. It was beloved by booksellers. I was kind of seeing it everywhere, but I never picked it up. So when I saw it at the library, I thought, well, maybe now's my chance. And I recalled that it got good reviews. So this book is about Scott McGrath. He's kind of a disgraced journalist who lives in New York. And part of the reason he's disgraced and he's fallen from grace in the eyes of his colleagues in the publishing world, is because he was an investigative reporter who decided to look into the life of this man named Cordova. And Cordova is like this film director of these really intense horror movies, like so intense that some of his movies aren't even shown in theaters. They're dark and gory and they kind of have this cult following and they're shown in, like, these underground theaters, that kind of thing. And so Scott McGrath catches wind, he's kind of given this tip that Cordova is also leading this really gross life that needs to come to light. And so Scott kind of puts Cordova on notice, but then doesn't have the evidence to back it up. And so, as a result, his journalistic integrity is kind of sullied. We're kind of given this as the book begins. And the book also opens with the suicide of Ashley Cordova, the daughter of this film director. And when Scott hears about it, he decides that maybe her suicide is a little suspicious because of his work he had done and the research he had done on Cordova's life. He is curious about Ashley Cordova and he wants to investigate and see if maybe something nefarious or suspicious happened. So here's what I didn't know about this book, and part of the reason I keep talking about like the length and how thick it is, this is because not only is this, yes, maybe a traditional suspense novel, but all throughout the book are these really realistic illustrations and graphics of newspaper articles, of newspaper clippings, of journalistic recordings like transcripts, also all different format. So it's a very much a tactile experience.
[00:30:52] I do not know what this would be like in audiobook format unless they did a little bit like Acts of Violet. So that was shocking to me. It was very fun to me to open the book and to start reading and then to get a few pages in and realize, oh, this is a newspaper article. And I cannot express to you how very realistic this book felt. I thought Scott McGrath was real. I thought Cordova was real. Marisha Pessl does a really good job of making Cordova, this film director, seem very accurate, true to life. You feel like you could have watched a movie directed by him. She weaves in references to real films, to real directors. And so you really kind of get lost in this world and you kind of think you're on the investigation with Scott. One of my favorite aspects of the book is that Scott McGrath winds up joining forces with kind of these two people who are adjacent to Ashley Cordova's death. So one is the cook Czech girl who is the last person to see Ashley Cordova before she commits suicide. And then one of them is like this young man who wound up attending this wilderness camp with Ashley Cordova when she was a younger woman. And so they kind of form this ragtag team of investigators, which I really liked their dynamic. I liked those three people working together. This book is not like Local Woman Missing where I read it in one sitting. This book took me a minute. It took me some time. I'm so glad I took my time with it. I really liked it. It was very unusual. Felt very original. I can't remember reading anything quite like it before. I think it was incredibly well written. It felt certainly like a literary suspense. And then I know I mentioned Acts of Violet, and that's because of the different storytelling mechanisms Margarita Montemayor used. And certainly those mechanisms are at play in this novel. It's very different from Acts of Violet, but kind of similar in terms of storytelling. I liked it better than Acts of Violet, for what it's worth.
[00:33:00] I think Olivia would love this book, but it's a backlist title, and so I don't know that she has time for that right now. But if you're an Olivia reader, I think this would appeal to you. Yeah, I really liked it. I'm glad I finally picked it up. It felt serendipitous and it felt kind of full circle like, oh, that book has maybe not been on my literal TBR for 10 years, but it's been in my brain sloshing around up there. And so it was fun to kind of pick it up off the shelf on a whim and read it. So that's Night Film by Marisha Pessl. Then I picked up another backlist title, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. So I picked this one up for two reasons. First of all, this came recommended to me years ago by my friend Juliana. Juliana, if you're listening, I finally read it. We can talk about it. I'm excited. I read this book on her recommendation, and I loved it. Before I talk about why I loved it, I do want to mention where I got it because that's very important to me. I think you can tell, I love kind of setting the stage for where I found these books and how they found me. So Burial Rites was a book that had been recommended to me for a long time by Juliana. When I was at Book People in Austin this summer, I picked up three books: Jaws, Outlawed, and this book, Burial Rites. But I knew my friend Juliana had told me Burial Rites is a cold weather book. And so I had no intention of reading Burial Rites right off the bat. I just bought it because I thought maybe this is the winter, maybe this is the time when I will read it. And look, it is not winter in Thomasville, Georgia. But when I went on my aforementioned trip to New England, I took Night Film and I took Burial Rites because I thought it's going to be chilly up there. This is a backlist title I'm interested in. When I looked at my shelves, it was the one that kind of spoke to me to take it with me. So those are the two books I took on my trip, and I finished Night Film while I was in Boston and started Burial Rights on the plane home. And I loved it. Juliana was right.
[00:34:58] So this is a book that is historical fiction based on a woman named Agnes, who was the last woman executed, last person executed in Iceland. So set in the 1800s, Agnes is accused of murder and arson, or at the very least, an accomplice to murder and arson. And she and her two accomplices are sentenced to death. One of them wins an appeal-- to put it in our modern terminology. But then the two of the suspects remain sentenced to death. And the book is set with Agnes leaving prison. And, instead, she is instructed to live with a local family whose father, the husband, the patriarch, works for the government. And they want her to live there until it's time for her death. And so Agnes goes to live with this Icelandic family and lives with them until her execution date. I love this book so much. I'm struggling to figure out how I want to start talking about it. I read the physical copies, so the names to me are very difficult to pronounce. I am unsure of their pronunciation, but I do know our main character is Agnes, and I do know that this is historically accurate, that Hannah Kent did a ton of research. There's some great information in the back of the paperback edition about the research Hannah Kent did and kind of where she got the idea for the story. One of my favorite elements of the book, and this will not be shocking to anyone who knows me, is that Agnes is ordered to meet with a priest, so she has to regularly meet with a priest before her execution date. And so Toti is an assistant priest. He's not even fully trained. But she requests Toti this reverend, and he doesn't know why she's requested him. But they begin meeting together. And Toti takes a very unusual, unorthodox approach. And instead of simply leading her to Christ or trying to get her to be comfortable with the idea of her death and the idea of the next life, he realizes the best he can offer her is to let her tell her story.
[00:37:28] And what unfolds is so good. This book is so good. I'm sure you've probably already heard of it. Many of you have may have already read it, but I am so glad. This is when I met it. This is when I read it. It reminds me a lot of two books, two other backlist titles I read and really enjoyed. The Second Mrs. Hockaday and The Confessions of Frannie Langton. The Confessions of Franny Langton is a book I read earlier this year and then wound up picking it as part of our partnership with the currently rereading podcast. If you're familiar with that partnership that we did with them as their indie presslist pick for, I think, August and it wound up being one of our bestsellers in August, which was fun because it's a backlist title. But if you read that book and really liked it, I would encourage you to read Burial Rights. Juliana's right, it is a great cold weather book. It is set in Iceland. I felt like I was there. I have never really been intrigued by Iceland as a place to visit until one of the people I follow on Instagram I think went there a year or two ago and witnessed the volcano, the kind of live volcano that was erupting. And the landscape was so beautiful and now I've read this book and I'm like, oh, I want to go. I want to go visit Iceland. I really like this book. Juliana was absolutely right. There's a lot to like about it. It's unique, historical fiction. Its setting is rich. Its family dynamics are interesting. The family where Agnes stays is really torn up over her arrival and some of the family wishes that she had never come because they're terrified of her. She's a murderer, after all. And then some of them feel like it's their responsibility, their civic responsibility to provide her with a place to stay. And then, obviously, I love the faith elements between Toti, the priest, and Agnes as she approaches death. I love this book, Burial Rights by Hannah Kent.
[00:39:23] Last but not least, I keep referencing my trip to New England and I did get to go with my cousin Ashley. We went to New England together as part of Cheer Her on Weekend. Perhaps you are familiar? I was not until last year, but there is a podcast called Cheer Her On. The tagline is-- let me see if I can get this right. "Look her in the eye, tell her the truth. Cheer her on." Which I think is lovely. I was not familiar with the podcast until last fall. Erin Moon, who you may know from Podcast fame, but Erin Moon and I traveled together to London a couple of years ago. She was speaking at Cheer Her on Weekend and I thought, well, that sounds delightful. Cheer Her on Weekend in New England, let's go. So Ashley and I bought tickets and then pandemic stuff happened and we bought tickets, we bought our flights and then could not find a place to stay. It was kind of like nothing was coming together. And so we reluctantly canceled, backed out. Melissa Zaldivar, the host of Cheer Her on Podcast and Cheer her on Weekend, graciously said, "I'm so sorry you can't come this year, but if you want you'll have spots at next year's weekend." And so Ashley and I flew to New England, we flew to Boston, and we spent the weekend with a bunch of strangers and taking tours of all kinds of things in New England. I absolutely loved this trip. It was a real gift to me. I talk about it more on Instagram, if that's your vibe, if you're interested in that. But what you should know, how this matters to you is Melissa Zaldivar wrote a book called What Cannot Be Lost. And a year ago, when I first signed up for Cheer Her on weekend, I started following Melissa on Instagram and I realized that she not only was a writer, but she was a tour guide at Orchard House, which is Louisa May Alcott's home in Concord, Massachusetts. And I loved the way Melissa talked about and wrote about her experiences as a tour guide at Orchard House. And turns out she was writing this book called What Cannot Be Lost, and she was writing the story of her own personal grief and the loss of her dear friend and tying it to the grief of Louisa May Alcott and the loss of her beloved sister, Beth. I have read a biography that I really loved about Louisa May Alcott. I am looking around because I feel like you're going to want to know the name of it. Please hold.
[00:41:40] Okay. The biography I read about Louisa May Alcott and loved was called Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. And It's by Harriet Riesen. It's really hard to find. I think it might be out of print. So that's a warning for you. But that is the book that I read and loved a few years ago. I had the opportunity to visit Orchard House shortly after college. I went with two friends, but as I recall, we did not take a tour. We kind of just wandered the house, wandered the grounds. While on this trip, thanks to Melissa's skills, we toured Orchard House. I went on the tour twice. Which is just honestly all you need to know about me. Poor Ashley. I came out of Orchard House and she thought I'd been wandering the The Gift Shop that whole time. And I looked and I was like, "No, I did the tour twice." And she looked at me so deadpan, she could be so deadpan, and she was like, "Of course you did." Yeah, I took the tour twice. I loved it. And I love this book. So What Cannot Be Lost, like I said, is Melissa's very personal story of the loss of a dear friend and also other losses that she experienced at the end of 2019. And in a season of her life, which I think many of us have been through seasons where it just feels like one loss after another, you know what I mean? It's the loss of a loved one. Maybe it's the loss of a job, maybe it's the loss of a relationship, the loss of a faith home. And so she writes really beautifully about loss and grief, and then she ties it in to her experiences as a tour guide at Orchard House and as kind of this Louisa May Alcott scholar because she's the tour guide, because she's doing all this research and she's-- I said staying. She doesn't live at Orchard House, but she spends a lot of her time there. And so you learn a lot about Louisa May Alcott, a lot about little women and a lot about Jesus. This is a Christian book. In case that has not already been clear to you, I do want to tell you that it is a Christian book. She writes a lot about Jesus. And I love it. I loved this book the whole Cheer Her On weekend. This is not an advertisement for Cheer Her On weekend.
[00:43:48] But I really needed a weekend that felt like a a deep breath. I want to say a breath of fresh air, but that's not really what I mean. I felt like this weekend was a deep breath. And reading this book was a deep breath. We all have losses, right? And I was talking to Jordan about this, the past three years have just felt like a lot of loss, haven't they? And so to read a book-- this is interesting. I'm also reading-- I've not finished yet, but I'm reading the book by Rachel Held Evan Sister called A Hole in the World. And it's kind of about grief, traditions and the way we cope. And so I do find myself I've always liked books about grief, and I think that's because of some of my own losses I've experienced. But I also think it's a little bit my personality. Anyway, I have found myself especially recently maybe drawn to these books, and I think it's because I don't quite have words for the last three years. And the ups and downs and the hardships and the losses and also the graces and the good things that we've experienced, it just feels like a lot. And so I'm really grateful for writers who are navigating those themes really well. And I think Melissa's Zendivar is navigating those themes really well. I really like this book, and I think many people will find it a comfort. The cover's gorgeous and I just like books about little women and I loved reading more about Louisa May Alcott. I loved learning this wasn't-- maybe it's not an overarching biography. It's not like the Harriet Riesen book I referenced, it's more like here is what Louise's relationship with her sisters looked like, particularly her sister, Beth. And here's how Beth's death affected the Alcott family, affected Louisa May Alcott's ambition, affected her career and affected her storytelling capabilities. And I thought that was fascinating. So the book is called What Cannot Be Lost by Melissa Zaldivar. Cheer Her On weekend is something I would recommend to you. I'm sure they will do-- I hope they will do another one. And I just loved exploring New England. This was the perfect book to kind of accompany that journey. I bought this book while I was in New England and then read it on the trip and on my way home. What Cannot Be Lost by Melissa Zaldivar. Really such a lovely group of books. I love doing these recaps so much because it's a way for me to kind of reflect back on what I read and why I read it. I love analyzing that so much. I'm sure that's the Enneagram five in me, but I love not only listing them out but like thinking, wow, how did these books kind of accidentally tie in together? What were the themes that I read this month? I love it.
[00:46:21] So thank you for giving me the opportunity every month to kind of recap these. As usual with our reading recap episodes, we're offering a reading recap bundle for October. I love choosing these bundles. I specifically try to pick a mix, if I can, of hardback paperback. It's all about what's in stock and available. That's the other thing. And, look, with backlist titles, that's harder than you think. So this feels like a fun, eclectic stack. This month's bundle is $58. It includes People Person, that's the dysfunctional family drama by Candace Carty-Williams. Burial Rites, the backlist titles set in Iceland by Hannah Kent. And What Cannot Be Lost, the book about Little Women and Friendship and Grief by Melissa Zaldivar. You can find the entire October bundle online through the link in our shownotes. Don't forget that bundle is the price of three books, but includes kind of a 10% discount. So when you buy the bundle, you get a discount. You'll find that bundle online through the link in our show notes or go to Bookshelfthomas.com click or tap podcast and shop From the Front Porch. From the Front Porch picks are also featured weekly on our stories homepage.
[00:47:31] This week, what I am reading is brought to you by Visit Thomasville. Everyone loves Fall in Thomasville, Georgia. When it's time to get away, our small town has exactly what you need. Find romance, explore historical sites, dine out, shop, and make time to relax and unwind. There's no better getaway than a Thomasville getaway.
[00:47:50] Look, I just spent an entire weekend in the leaf peeping capitals of the world. I just spent an entire weekend in New England. But let me tell you, I came home to my quaint, small southern town and thought, well, this is pretty great too. The leaves here are changing. It's very different. It's different from New England, but the leaves are changing. I am wearing a long sleeve shirt. My heat is on in my house. It is a delicious October day. And as beautiful as New England is, it was just as lovely to come home and to get to see the magic of where I live. And let me tell you a logistically lovely thing about Thomasville, Georgia. And this is on my mind because of where I've just been. Look, Massachusetts is beautiful. I will go back. I love traveling to New England in general. I have been a few times, never in the fall. So this was a treat. But I love going there. Here's the deal. When you visit Thomasville, Georgia, there's parking for you. There is parking for you. Sometimes our small town citizens don't think there is parking. But I assure you, we know nothing about parking woes. You know nothing until you visit these larger cities or even these small towns that just have so many tourists during the fall. And so their infrastructure isn't really built for that, whatever.
[00:49:08] Thomasville is not crowded. There is parking. That not crowded thing, though, is pretty special that you can still come to a place and explore museums and shops and really good food, really good restaurants. But it's not crowded because it's kind of off the beaten path, and I don't think we really celebrate those places enough. My parents are on an anniversary trip this fall and my dad obviously influences the way I travel. And I saw on his Instagram this weekend that he posted: It's amazing what you can find when you hop off the interstate. And I think that is true of Thomasville. It's amazing what you can find when you choose to travel a little bit off the beaten path. As a reminder, there are some fun fall events coming up in downtown Thomasville. Specifically since we're still in spooky season, I do want to tell you that Saturday, October 29th, our downtown is hosting a movie night. The movie is Hocus Pocus. It is going to be hosted at the Thomasville Amphitheater. That will be beautiful and lovely. In November, we have holiday shopping downtown, including downtown's holiday open house. I cannot wait to tell you more about that. These are lovely times to come visit where I live and I would love to share it with you. So thank you again to our sponsor, Visit Thomasville.
[00:50:24] This week, I'm reading The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel. To find out more about how you can visit Thomasville, just go to Thomasvillega.com to plan your fall getaway. From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf's daily happenings on Instagram @Bookshelftville and all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website: Bookshelfthomasville.com. A full transcript of today's episode can be found at Fromthefrontporchpodcast.com.
[00:50:56] Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music which sets the perfect, warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations. Our executive producers of today's episode are Donna Hetchler. Cami Tidwell. Chantalle Carl.
Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:51:12] Nicole Marsee. Wendy Jenkins. Laurie Johnson. Kate Johnston Tucker.
Annie Jones [00:51:18] Thank you all for your support of From the Front Porch. If you'd like to support From the Front Porch, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your input helps us make the show even better and reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone, look for From the Front Porch. Scroll down until you see 'Write a Review' and tell us what you think.
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