Episode 406 || Annie's Favorite Books Ever
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie tells you all about her favorite books ever! Don’t forget to join our bookish Patreon community and get your copy of Bleak House if you’d like to join our Conquer a Classic Book Club this year.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our website:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott (unavailable to order)
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
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.
This week, Annie is reading Decent People by De’Shawn Charles Winslow.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. 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, Kate O’Connell, 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.
[00:00:24] "She was thinking about the way she'd always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of how, without any one of these people, the world is a subtly but unmistakably altered place. The dial turned just one or two degrees." Emily St John Mendel. Station Eleven.
[00:00:54] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And Happy New Year! I am kicking off this New Year with a recap of my top 10 or so favorite books.
[00:01:07] As 2023 begins, I wanted to remind you about what we're doing over on Patreon. When you support From the Front Porch at the $5 level, you receive our monthly Conquer a Classic recap episodes. This year, we're recapping Charles Dickens Bleak House, reading one section together at a time. For $5 a month, you also have access to our monthly Q&A sessions designed to fit around your lunch breaks. We chat about books, small business, nail polish, travel, you name it. We cover it in these 45 minute or so video sessions.
[00:01:41] Then for $20 a month, you can join our Patreon Book Club, where various Bookshelf staffers host conversations about some of our monthly shelf subscription selections. We're meeting next week to discuss Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson.
[00:01:57] We also offer a $50 a month tier where you receive access to all of the above, plus discounts and early access to events and special products. You'll hear the names of those who support us at this level at the end of every episode. They are our executive producers and ourn true patrons of the mission of The Bookshelf and From the Front Porch.
[00:02:16] To find out more about how you can support us this year on Patreon, there are yearly support levels rather than monthly, if you so choose. Visit www.patreon.com/Fromthefrontporch. There's a link in the show notes too. Now back to the show. This is an episode I've wanted to do for a very long time because one of the questions I think every reader gets asked, probably more frequently than not, is what is your favorite book? And maybe if somebody is willing to be generous, they might even ask what are your 10 favorite books of all time? Mostly people are just asking for the one, but I think true readers know it's hard to pick just one. So what are our ten favorite books of all time?
[00:03:01] And I've debated doing this episode because this list is always influx, right? And I think about when somebody asks me what my favorite movies are, I have no problem naming those. And I think it's because I watch fewer movies than I read books. I read a lot of books. And when I look back at my top 10 lists from the last few years, there are some contenders for favorite books of all time in those top 10 lists of more recent years. But a favorite book to me is different from a top 10. A favorite book means it's a book that feels personal. It's a book that carries weight in your life. It's a book that has stood through different seasons and has marked you for whatever reason. So this is a list not of my top 10 books of all time, but my favorite 10 books of all time. And this list does change, but a lot of these books have been on my list, some of them since childhood, and a couple of them are more recent, but they've been on there for a few years. So this will be interesting.
[00:04:06] I wanted to start the year with this episode because I also thought if you're new to From the Front Porch, knowing my 10 favorite books of all time might help you know, oh, what are Annie's tastes? What kind of books am I going to hear featured on From the Front Porch? So if you're a new listener, I think this is a great episode to kind of start with and to see what's the vibe over on From the Front Porch. And I also thought-- maybe, maybe, I don't know, we'll see how the year progresses. But I thought this could also be a topic that we address throughout the year with different guests I have on the show, with people like Hunter or Olivia to kind of ask them, hey, what are some of your favorite books of all time? Even if you don't have a top 10, do you have a top five? Do you have a top three? I actually think a list of 10 is kind of hard to come up with. Hunter and I talk about this in our end of year episodes, but I think it's easier in some ways to come up with the top five. Ten almost should be 12 and that's why I said at the beginning of the episode, this is ten-ish. And it's really 10, but then a couple of authors I couldn't narrow it down. And so this is 10 to 12 titles that I consider some of my very favorites.
[00:05:16] When I sat down and made this list, which it took me a couple of days to kind of figure out, okay, what books do I want to include, which books come close but they don't ultimately make the cut this time? I really say often here on From the Front Porch or in Patreon conversations that I may not remember-- and I'm butchering the famous quote-- but I may not remember the characters names or major plot points, but I will always remember how a book made me feel. And so when I came up with this list, I came up with the list of 10 to 12, and I did some cursory background info to make sure I remembered characters, names or whatever. But I really wanted to not do too much research and not do too much digging because then I could more easily tell you why these books are in my top 10 or 12. Like, it's not because I remember the exact plot points or the exact characters names, it's because I remember where I was when I read it. I remember what kind of impact the book had on me and why. I remember reading it in conversation with a group. I just have all of these feelings and emotions kind of tied up in these few books. I do try to give you basic plot points, especially if you're not familiar, although a lot of these books I think you will be familiar with. But I also did not do a ton of deep diving into each of these titles because I really wanted an accurate representation of why they're on the list.
[00:06:50] So those are all my caveats. Those are all my caveats as to why these books are in my top favorite books of all time. I think I'm going to want to say top 10. But, again, these are favorite books of all time because I think there's a difference between the most well written books I've ever read and my favorites, right? Your readers know what I mean. There are books that we just really love even if maybe they're not the best written books we've ever read. So that being said, let's dive in. I think some of these books are going to come as no shock to you. I think most of these books will come as no shock to you. At the end, I'll kind of maybe recap the themes that I saw come up in these top 10. Again, I don't think it will be a surprise to longtime listeners of From the Front Porch, it was not a surprise to me. I'm nothing if not consistent. So one more caveat, these books are in no particular order, right? Creating a top 10 or a favorite list was hard enough. I could not rank them. And so these books just exist to me in a group, in like a cloud of bookish witnesses to my life. And they are not ranked in order of favorites because they're all my favorite. They all exist in the same tier to me.
[00:08:08] So first one I want to talk about is, of course, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. You have heard me discuss this book at length. If you listen to From the Front Porch regularly, Hunter and I mentioned this book frequently. It's a book I read for the first time several years ago. I don't think I read it as a newly released book because I have the paperback edition, and so that lets me know that I bought it as a backlist title. So this was not a book I read upon its immediate release. Instead, I think I just discovered it. I'm not even 100% sure where I bought it. Did I buy it at the Tallahassee Barnes and Noble? Did I buy it on a trip to Sundog Books in Seaside? Who knows? Who's to say? All I know is that I picked this book up and it became an immediate treasured favorite. And that is pretty consistent across this list, by the way. Yes, I have to think about things. Yes, it takes me a minute. I'm an Enneagram five, it takes me a while sometimes to process something, but often I know immediately if a book is going to be beloved by me, if a book is going to be treasured by me. And this is one that I just immediately absolutely adored. If you're not familiar, this is an epistolary novel of sorts. It really functions as the journal, the fictional journal, the fictional letters of the Reverend John Ames. He is writing to his son more or less. He's writing to his son on his deathbed. And he's been the long time rector, pastor, caregiver for a community in Gilead Iowa. And the book really functions as a reflection of the reverend's life, of his life in community with these people. He thinks about faith. He thinks about death, legacy. He's writing all of this to his very young son, who will probably never really fully know who his father is because of his age. And I find the whole thing to be poignant and beautifully written.
[00:10:16] It won the Pulitzer the year that it released, and I have since reread it. So as I go through these books, I'm going to try to address which ones I've read, which ones I haven't, why or why not that is because I'm not a huge rereader. But during the pandemic, during 2020 and some of 2021, I did wind up revisiting a few of my favorite books or books that I thought were my favorites, partly out of comfort, partly to get out of reading ruts, partly to focus on anything-- just anything. And so I did reread Gilead. I had not reread it since I first read it. And I was worried that it wouldn't hold up. That's part of the reason I don't reread a lot of books because I really like books to kind of exist in the landscape in which I read them. And I like to remember them there, I don't always like to revisit them. But I reread Gilead, revisited it, and I'm glad that I did. It held up to my second reading to some scrutiny. And upon finishing, I immediately asked my dad to read it. I said, I really think you're going to love this book. This book means a lot to me. I'd love for you to read it. And he did. And he also read it and loved it. Part of the joy of rereading and why I imagine other people love it, is because you do get glimpses of your past self, right? So upon rereading, I found my old notes-- and I am not precious with my books. And so I write in my books, I kind of tear them up-- literally tear them up. And it was fun and interesting and poignant to visit my old self. And that is what the spirit of Gilead to me is all about, is having grace for your former self, figuring out what your life has meant and examining those things.
[00:12:04] Several themes that pop up in Gilead, pop up in my favorite books of all time. These ideas of faith and doubt, grief. It turns out father-son dynamics play a role in a couple of my favorite books. And I think that's because familial relationships are really important to me and I have really close knit familial relationships, and so I enjoy reading about those. And I frequently see myself in those. And as someone who also lives in a small community and who has called this place home now for almost 10 years, I think I also find Gilead's themes of small town life and commitment to a place really important. I, for now, choose to stay. I have lots of friends who have wanderlust and who travel a lot or who move a lot. And I love to travel and I love to go places, but for now my call is to stay. And so I especially love Gilead because of this priest's desire or this reverend's desire or call to stay put and to serve this community. And what staying has meant for his legacy. What staying has meant for his life. There are so many passages in this book that I find beautiful that I underlined, and so I also think beautiful writing is something that's very important to me. And Gilead and Marilynne Robinson certainly have lots of beautiful passages worth memorizing, worth holding close. So Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I was going to say a more modern classic, but I believe Geliad was released in 2004, so not all of these books released in the fifties or something like that. Gilead released in 2004.
[00:13:54] And the next book plays on a lot of those same themes. It's A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza. So I read this book when it first came out as a debut novel, and also the debut of I think Sarah Jessica Parker's publishing imprint. I think Hogarth kind of gave Sarah Jessica Parker her own imprint. Now I'm kind of wondering, does she still publish books? I don't know the answer to that. I should know the answer to that, but I don't. Anyway, this book released in 2018, I read it as an advance reader copy. And immediately was, like, this will be one of my favorite books of all time. I just immediately knew. And I think it's for the same reasons Gillian plays a part. Although I will say, I think A Place For Us is a little bit more plot driven than Gilead. Gilead is all about reflection. It's all about beautiful writing. This is beautiful writing, but it's also a story. So this book is about an Indian Muslim family living in California. And, to me, at the very heart of this book is the battle between tradition and modernity and what life looks like for first generation Americans versus family members who have immigrated over and who bring a lot of the traditions from their homeland to America. So at the heart of the book is a family of five and one of the siblings is getting married and two other siblings kind of show up on the scene. And, of course, you get the mother and father. All of the dynamics are so nuanced and rich. All of the different family dynamics. So you get a lot of the sibling dynamics, but you also get sibling to parent, you get father-son, you get mother-daughter. All of the family dynamics are so richly portrayed. I cannot wait until Fatima Farheen Mirza writes another book. We're waiting. We're patiently waiting.
[00:15:46] Although I do think I have something for debut novels. There are several debut novels on this list, and I think that's because there's magic in that, right? I think there's some serendipity sometimes that plays a role in these first time novelists and the work that they produce. So, to me, A Place For Us is special also because a lot of the books I read tends to deal with the Christian faith. I'm a Christian, and so I gravitate admittedly toward books about a faith that I recognize. And I love reading books about faith and doubt, faith and science. But this was really wonderful for me to read because it was about a different faith. It was about the Muslim faith. And so I got to see how a family lives out their own complicated feelings and their own complicated knowledge and understanding of their faith and how very similar it is to the feelings I have about my own faith and my own struggles that I have with faith and belief. And I found their battles to be very familiar and very personal. And so that is another reason I think I was drawn to this book, was it opened my eyes to a faith I didn't know very much about. And I loved watching this family, an older generation and a younger generation, grapple with what bits of their faith they were going to cling to and hold on to and which they were going to kind of leave behind and to wash their hands off. And as a person of faith, that is something I'm always thinking about. Like, what am I going to cling to? What truths am I going to hold dear and which ones am I going to let go because they're too mysterious, they're too big, or they're too troubling? Like, which ones am I going to just kind of kind of leave behind with the traditions that no longer hold value? So I loved this book. In many ways it reminds me ever so slightly of the Broadway production Fiddler on the Roof, which is a play that means a lot to my dad, it means a lot to my family. And I think anyone who lives in a large extended family and who's matriarch or patriarch holds dearly to tradition. I think anyone for whom that feels familiar will appreciate not only Fiddler on the Roof, but will appreciate A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza. So the debut novel came out in 2018. I absolutely adored it. If you've never read it, I would encourage you to pick it up. It caused a lot of attention when it debuted, so it's not like this is a hidden backlist treasure. I think this is a book several people have read and enjoyed, but I'm one of them and I love this book very much. A Place For Us.
[00:18:30] Next, a kind of complicated duo, To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. I wanted to include both of these and I feel like I am in the minority when I reference Go Set a Watchman. So I think we are all familiar-- because of high school English class, we are all pretty familiar here in America with To Kill a Mockingbird and with Harper Lee. We might be less familiar with Go Set a Watchman. Although, I think anyone watching the Today Show around this time was aware of what was going on. So famously, Harper Lee only wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. That was the only book she ever wrote, she ever published. It was an immediate success, beloved by generations of people, required reading in American high schools, and beloved by me as a 10th grader when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. This is a book that I have reread, and I adored this book. I loved the unique narration. I loved Scout. Oh, I loved her so much. I loved spunky young women characters. You'll see that with the several of the remaining books on this list. And I loved the southern nature of it and the complicated history of the South that Harper Lee addresses. Does she address it perfectly as an adult reader in 2023? I can say no, she does not, which is why I like to include Go Set a Watchman when I talk about To Kill a Mockingbird. So Go Set a Watchman was really the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. So Harper Lee did not go on to write any other works, but she did have drafts of things including this draft that was really her first attempt at something like To Kill a Mockingbird. As Harper Lee aged and grew older, there was often some discussion about what to do with her unpublished works. And boy, do I love the legacy of Harper Lee's sister Alice. And when Alice died, I think, perhaps Harper Lee's estate was kind of taken advantage of.
[00:20:42] And so ultimately Harper Lee also died. And the book that was essentially the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird was released and published as Go Set a Watchman. Now, when it was released people were angry because maybe this elderly woman had been taken advantage of, maybe this wasn't something she ever would have wanted released to the world. I was pretty new at bookselling in Thomasville, so I had already worked at The Bookshelf in Tallahassee. Now I was working and running the store in Thomasville. And of course, as a bookseller, you wonder what is right and fair and you also know what is going to make my store money and help me pay my bills. And selling Go Set a Watchman certainly did that. I remember it being extremely popular. It was all over the literary landscape, all over the news, daytime television, nightly news. It was a big deal when it released. So a lot of people had complicated feelings about it, and rightly so. I took a copy home-- no advance reader copies of this one. I took it home, I'll never forget it, and read it in one sitting, did not move from my grandfather's big blue chair and loved it. And was very much in the minority in loving it. Here's why I loved it. I loved it because in the book Scout is an adult woman rather than a young child and I recognized her immediately. I thought, oh, of course, this is Scout. And so I loved seeing that character as an adult and realizing how-- I keep using the word complicated. I think I just really like complicated characters and complicated books-- but how complicated she was. I also appreciated it as a work of literary history, and I also appreciated it as a more accurate portrayal of racism in the South.
[00:22:39] In the book, our beloved hero Atticus Finch is more racist than one might have hoped. And I think a lot of people were broken-hearted over that. But I think if you live in the South you know that that's the way it is and that that's a pretty accurate portrayal of what our heroes look like and what our heroes sound like. And it makes them fraught and flawed and a little less our heroes. And so I recall now I've not re-read Go Set a Watchman. I've re-read To Kill a Mockingbird, though not recently. I just, I believe, re-read it in college and maybe my early twenties and Jordan had never read it. And so I think I revisited it when he read it. I've not reread Go Set a Watchman, so I can't express to you whether or not it still might hold up to scrutiny. But I do feel like it was a less rose colored view of what the South is, was, could be, and a less rose colored view of who our parents might be, who our grandparents might be, who our ancestors might be. And for that reason, I really loved it. And when I thought about what to include on this list, I can't change the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird meant a lot to me as a 10th grader, that it meant a lot to me as a young adult, that reading Southern fiction like that opened my eyes to a whole different way of storytelling and a whole different way of talking about our people and our places. But I thought Go Set a Watchman exists as the perfect accompaniment. And so if you have never read because maybe you read the closest version or maybe it's not required reading in schools anymore-- I think locally it is. But maybe you've never read To Kill a Mockingbird. If you choose to read it, I would read it alongside Go Set a Watchman. I really would. And again I am not sure that that's the-- at least when Go Set a Watchman w released. That was not the feeling. That was not the public sentiment. But it is one that I think I stand by. I really think these two function well together. I don't think Go Set a Watchman was ever intended to be released, but since it was, I like reading it as an accompaniment to To Kill a Mockingbird and as a complicated look at this place I call home. Right. So To Kill a mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.
[00:25:13] Next, another more modern book, The Mothers by Brit Bennett. I love this book. You might recognize Brit Bennett from her, I think, pretty blockbuster hit from a couple of years ago, The Vanishing Half, which I think last I heard was supposed to be an HBO max series maybe. But I adored her debut novel, The Mothers. This is a book set in California. The characters are, I believe, Nadia, Luke and Aubrey. Nadia is a 17-year-old. She's a teenager. She's a teenage girl working at a cafe, I think, or a restaurant. And she winds up getting pregnant by a local pastor's son. He's kind of a superstar, like a former high school athlete, like a homecoming king type figure, and especially beloved in this church community because he's the son of the pastor. And Nadia gets pregnant and chooses to have the baby. And what results is how this decision, how this child, and how this pregnancy kind of rocks this church community and this small community. How it affects Nadia as a woman versus how it affects Luke as a man. I appreciated this book because and for the same reasons that I appreciated Gilead. So Gilead is set in this small community in Iowa. This is set in a small community in California. Not only is the town perhaps small, but really what it is, is the church community is small. And the book gets its title from the fact that throughout the novel you get a glimpse, you get the voices of these church mothers, and they almost function like this Greek chorus. And they help tell Nadia, Luke and Aubrey-- there's a really devout friend named Aubrey. And the church mothers wind up really telling the story and moving the story along in a really beautiful way. In some ways, it reminds me of a book that I think could be high up or maybe in my top 20 favorite books of all time. Olympus Texas kind of plays with Greek mythology in a similar way-- not entirely the same way, but in a similar way. And so if you liked Olympus Texas, but you have never read The Mothers, or if you liked the Vanishing Half (which is a very different book) I would encourage you to go back in Brit Bennett's backlist title, she's written The Vanishing Half and The Mothers. But I encourage you to read The Mothers. I adored this.
[00:27:50] I loved The Vanishing Half, but The Mothers is my favorite of Brit Bennett's work and I can't wait to read more of her. I really hope we're going to get more out of her. I think that we will. Both of her books have been really popular, but The Mothers I just had never read modern literary fiction writing about the Christian church in such a realistic way, specifically perhaps the black Christian church. And so I just felt like it was both familiar to me as somebody raised in church culture, but also obviously different from my very white church culture that I was raised in. And so I loved getting to see that and getting to further understand that community. But again it just felt so unusual to read. I feel like I read about church culture as a kid. I don't read a ton of "Christian fiction" anymore. But as a teenager that's where I read about church culture, was in Christian fiction. I had no idea that we could write about church culture in literary fiction, that it was something valuable to unpack and to discuss in award winning literature. Do you know what I mean? I just didn't know that that was possible until Brit Bennett took this thing and made it beautiful and accessible and literary. And that is what I love about The Mothers. I love the story. This is, again, one of the more plot driven books on my list. So I loved the story of these three people. But if you were to ask me, Annie, why did you love the mothers? Why is this book in your favorites list? It wouldn't necessarily be because I remember Nadia, Luke and Aubrey. It's because of those church mothers. It's because of the women who are at the heart of the book from whom the title comes. That's why I adored this book and that's why it's in my top 10. The Mothers by Brit Bennett.
[00:29:52] Next up, the Road by Cormac McCarthy. This is a book that I read for the first time in 2022, and it was one of my favorite surprises in my reading life last year. I read this book alongside Hunter McLendon, we read it as part of Backlist Book Club. You can hear that episode in the show notes. I'll put a link in the show notes. I really did not know if I was going to like this book. It was a Pulitzer winner. It's one of my brother's favorite books of all time, but I just kept putting it off. I just thought, old white man, like, why do I need to read this? Because it's amazing. Because it's beautiful. Because it is impactful. Because it is post-apocalyptic literature in the way post-apocalyptic literature should be. It's post-apocalyptic literature at its finest. There's one more post-apocalyptic book on this list and the reasons I love it are the reasons I love this one, which is it's about the end of the world, but it's not really. It's about the end of the world, but really it's about fathers and sons. Really it's about survival and what true survival looks like. Really it's about grief. Really it's about choosing to live. It's about society and where society breaks down. I love this book so much. I made Jordan watch the movie when I finished this book because I thought, oh, now I need to watch the movie. The movie is fine. I think the movie, by comparison, is probably actually quite good. I think it got good reviews when it was released. But I'm telling you, I think one of the unexpected joys of this book was I knew what I was getting into. I knew it was a post-apocalyptic story. I knew it was going to be dark. I kew it was going to be bleak. That's what I had been told, but I did not know how absolutely gorgeous this prose would be.
[00:31:57] It's gorgeous and sparse. There's no quotation marks, there's no chapter breaks, and I wasn't bothered by any of that. It added to the breathlessness. It added to the whispering quality of this book. I loved it. Hunter had read this. I think this was his sixth time reading it and also finally loved it. He had a complicated history with this book. You can hear more about that in the Backlist book club episode, but he wound up loving it. I'm telling you, I know when I finish a book if it's going to be like favorite books of all time worthy or top 10 of the year worthy. I know. And maybe this sounds silly, I think I've said this before and I stand by it, one of the ways I know a book is going to be like an absolutely all time favorite for me is if I hug it and I don't want to stop touching it. So I don't read a ton of e-books-- I don't read any e-books. What am I saying? I don't read any e-books. I listen to some audiobooks-- shock to no one, right? I love the physicality of a physical book. I love to touch it, smell it. I love the whole entire tactile experience. And when I finished the road, I did not want to let it leave my sight. I hugged it to my chest. I flipped back through the pages. That is how I know. I mean, if I want to recount the entire plot to Jordan Jones and if I hold a book and never want to let it go, those are the ways that I know, oh, this is probably going to be a favorite. This is one of my favorite books of all time. I just could not believe how tender it was. I wept when I finished-- which is also often how I know. I loved this book. It was a wonderful surprise out of 2022 reading and it has landed a spot in my favorite 10 of all time.
[00:33:47] Next up, Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. This is a book I read right before I began my work as a bookseller and manager of The Bookshelf in Tallahassee. I do not know where I heard about this book, how I came across it. No, I really don't know because this was like a pre podcast world, a pre-internet world. I read this in 2012, maybe 2011. And I picked it up and this book actually also is like one of my personal-- all of these books came to me at a particular time in my personal life. And one of the things I remember about crossing to safety is I had read it, loved it adored it. Pretty sure I blogged about it, as one did back in 2010, 2011. And then when The Bookshelf opened up their second location in Tallahassee, and I began wondering if I could possibly maybe volunteer there or work there. I went to The Bookshelf website and the owner at that time had her bio on the site and she listed Crossing to Safety as one of her favorite books. And I just felt like, oh, this could be meant to be. And here we are. Fast forward 10 years and here we are. So crossing to safety also holds some weight with my kind of personal history. But let me tell you why I love this book. This was the first book I read where I thought, wait, there can be books that are just about people to whom nothing happens. So many books are filled with death and destruction ( I just mentioned The Road) or characters who have been through something truly traumatic and they're dealing with the outcome of that. I love books like that, so I read a lot of books like that where people have just been through the absolute wringer and maybe their families are broken apart or their towns are broken apart. And I love books like that. There are books on this list with themes like that. But Crossing to Safety is about two dear friends and their marriages. So it's two couples and their marriage, their work in academia. They're moving from I think-- is it Vermont? Anyway, they move a couple of times, as I recall in the book. I'm not even going to tell you their names because that is not what was important to me.
[00:36:24] What was important to me and the reason it lands a spot on this list is because I had no idea a book could just be about plain people. I probably used to use the term normal people and that's no longer a term I would feel comfortable using. But people to whom nothing bombastic or climactic happens. It's just a book about friendship and marriage, and nobody gets divorced. And it's not about infidelity. It's just about friendship and marriage. And I really did not know that was possible. It still feels a little bit impossible, right? I think a lot of the books I really like deal with infidelity or deal with sickness and death and grief. I mean, I love a book about grief, but there is something really profound because a lot of us are fortunate enough to live a life that's kind of drama-free. And although I know that that is a privilege, it can also sometimes feel dull, right? It can sometimes feel like nothing ever has really happened to me. And I understand that that is a very first world, very privileged thing to get to say. But I loved that there was a book written about two couples. It goes back to that idea from Gilead about staying. Two couples who stay in friendship, who stay in relationship, who stay in their marriages. And I love that book for that reason. Now, I've not reread it and perhaps I should because I have listed it. I immediately knew it was in my favorite books list of all time. I immediately knew. And so I name it frequently when somebody asks me what my favorite book is. I will frequently mention Crossing to Safety. I probably should reread it to see if it still holds dear and still holds true to me. But I loved it and that is why. I loved it. Because it was just about these two couples, their friendships, their quiet lives. Quiet is a word that comes to mind. I do love a quiet book, and this is definitely one of them and that's why it's on this list.
[00:38:32] Okay. I feel like I've got to move quicker now, but these will not come as a shock at all. I did pair them much like I paired Harper Lee's books Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott. These are not surprises to anyone, but I also know they're not everybody's favorite book. I think Little Women, obviously, is a lot of people's favorites, especially if you're like me and you read it as a child. So I read Little Women when I was eight years old for the first time. And just immediately fell in love with it. And I have reread it multiple times since then, including recently for The Cheer Her on Winter Weekend and Book Club with Melissa Zaldivar and Jamie Ivey. And I stand by my love and appreciation for this book. Readers who come into it as adults, I think will feel quite differently about it. It is, of course, extremely moralistic. Extremely black and white in its sense of morals and duties and responsibilities. And I love it. I love it because I was eight when I read it. And I'm mad that it's not required reading because it's a book about girls. And that was certainly groundbreaking when it was published. I am sorry to say, I think it is still a little bit groundbreaking. And it's a book about people much like Crossing to Safety. It's just a book about a family. Yes, bad things happen. I was going to say spoiler alert, but please, I think you all know Beth dies. It's horrible. It's horrific. Laurie and Joe don't get together. The professor shows up like. But also this is what life in a family looks like. This is what human life looks like. Stuff happens to us, and it's blissfully and awfully brutally normal. And that is what I love about little women.
[00:40:31] I equally love, perhaps love even more, the book An Old Fashioned Girl which I think is less well known, less popular. Probably for good reason. Little Women is in its own way quite profound. An Old-fashioned Girl is simple, and it is literally the country mouse and city mouse story come to life in human form. You have Polly and Fanny. Polly is a naive country mouse and Fanny is a sophisticated city girl. And Polly comes to stay with and visit Fanny's family and of course winds up bringing light, almost a Pollyanna-esque, light and life to the house and to the people who live there. I love this book. I loved it as a kid. I have reread it many times. It is my comfort book. I've probably reread it more than I've reread Little Women because I think An Old-fashioned Girl is actually my favorite and then Little Women not far behind. I think my love for Little Women was truly aided by the 2019 film adaptation by Greta Gerwig. Because I never really loved the nineties version. I liked it, but I didn't love it. But I adore the 2019 film adaptation of Little Women. And I adored Little Women, but I love and in my heart of hearts just appreciate so much An Old-fashioned Girl. And I think it's because Polly is a late bloomer. I was a late bloomer, and I was simple and not sophisticated at all. And I loved seeing that that person could be a hero. I love Jo March. I, in my deepest heart, want to be Jo March. I really do. And in some ways, I think I am Jo March. But Jo March probably has a more adventurous spirit than I do, and I think she's braver than I am. Polly is simple and quiet and content. And I love her because I think she and I have a lot of similarities and I like that there was an entire book written around this quiet character. In some ways she's a Beth type character, but don't worry, she doesn't die. And I think I would just love knowing that those types of characters could be heroines too, you know? And so that is why I love an old fashioned girl. And it's why I could not divide up Little Women and An Old-fashioned Girl because I love them both equally and I wanted them both to have a spot on this list. And the only way I could do it is if I put them both on the same line. So Little Women and An Old-fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott.
[00:43:07] Similarly, I could not split up these two book because they are very different and yet I love them the same. So Brit Bennett, I narrowed down to The Mothers because that is my favorite Brit Bennett novel. Yaa Gyasi, whose book Homegoing came out around the same time as The Mothers wrote a second book recently called Transcendent Kingdom. And I love them both very much, and I wanted them both to have a home here. So Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. I read Homegoing when it very first came out. I read it in Book Club Conversation and it is still my favorite and most memorable Book Club Conversation maybe followed closely by We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. So my Thomasville Book Club read Homegoing. And I remember reading it and I thought this is my favorite type of epic. So frequently when the word epic is used to describe a book or a story, I'm a little reticent. It's a bit of a turn off for me because it makes it sound like this huge tome that I'm never going to be able to get through. Epic brings to mind The Iliad and The Odyssey. Now, Homegoing is an epic book. It crosses, I believe, eight generations. It starts in Ghana with two half sisters. They don't know each other exists. And one of those sisters winds up marrying into, I believe, the British monarchy or British royalty or the upper echelon of British society. And then one sister is kidnaped from her home and sold into slavery. And the book then follows-- it's genius. It's absolutely genius. Just as I'm describing it to you is genius. The book then follows the eight generations of those women and what happens to them, and the impact of generational trauma, the impact of slavery, and the toll it takes on nations and on peoples. And it does it all with gorgeous writing, beautiful storytelling, powerful storytelling and still quiet.
[00:45:22] Which brings me to Transcendent Kingdom. Transcendent Kingdom is very different from Homegoing. I think when Transcendent Kingdom first came out, I thought, oh, okay. Homegoing is like big picture, right? Eight generations of women, eight generations of families going back and forth across continents. Transcendent Kingdom zooms in on the one family, one girl, one young woman, Gifty, who I put right up there with me from Dutch House. I love Gifty. Gifty and her mom and her brother. And there are not many books. There are a few, including, interestingly, the Dutch House. But there are not a ton of books about brother-sister relationships. There's a lot of books about sisters-- Little Women, right? And I think there are a lot of books about brothers or at least about male relationships. I don't think there are lots of books about brother-sister relationships, and I have a brother. And my relationship to my brother is one of the gifts of my life. And so any time I get to read about brother-sister dynamics, I am thrilled. So Transcendent Kingdom is about Gifty and her relationship with her brother, who is this kind of beloved athlete. She adores him. And then he falls into the perils of drug addiction. And Gifty grapples with this kind of evangelical Christian faith her mother has given her. There were immigrants raised in Alabama, so you get kind of this southern setting. And then you also get gifty growing up and becoming a scientist and trying to figure out what happens with the human brain and addiction, and then how does science contradict and or sit alongside faith. What are people of faith supposed to do with science? What are people of science supposed to do with faith? And I loved it. And so Homegoing is this rich tapestry of multiple generations of these women and these families cross continents and then Transcendent Kingdom is this quiet book about a young woman figuring out what role faith is supposed to play in her life, what role she's supposed to inhabit in her family. And I love them both. And I could not pick one. I could not pick one and so I'm including the both. If you've not read them, please read them. I love them for all of the reasons I just named. And I love them both in equal measure. So Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi.
[00:47:57] Next up, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I read this book when I was an intern at Southern Progress. I picked it up I'm pretty sure at a Barnes and Noble. This might have been pre-discovery of independent bookstores in Birmingham. But I picked it up. I remember reading it, I believe, at a Starbucks. I was at some type of fast food restaurant situation, could have been a Chick fil A, could have been a McDonald's. I'm really not sure, but I know I read it at a fast food restaurant and thought, oh, no, I must go to my car. I'm about to weep in the middle of this fast food establishment because The Year of Magical Thinking is this glorious, gut wrenching portrayal of grief. Joan Didion lost her husband when they were in their early [Inaudible]. It was unexpected. I think he might have been older than her, but it was still unexpected. And this book is really her treatise on grief. It reminds me in a lot of ways of a Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, one of my other favorite books of all time. And I remember reading it and thinking, oh, yes, this is what grief feels like. So I'm very fortunate in the grief department. But everybody has experienced the loss of someone they love. And I was 13 when my beloved grandfather died. And we had a really close and special relationship. And I think in a lot of ways, that death changed my life and it changed my childhood. And reading about a woman who loses her partner, her best friend, her confidant, and who has to choose to move forward. But the book gets its title from this magical thinking that she does. This is what she terms magical thinking, where Joan Didion kind of pretends her husband is still alive and she still talks to him and she still communicates with him and she pretends that he is alive. And it's her way of coping. It's her magical thinking. And I loved this book. It is raw. It is personal. It is gorgeously written. I feel like I keep saying beautifully written. I need another adjective, but I adored it. It's a thin little book because, honestly, I think we all know that book is about grief short is better because it weighs heavy. And this book weighs heavy, but it made an impact on me when I read it at 21, 22, and I still think about it often. I recommend it all the time at The Bookshelf if people are going through a hardship, if their grief is unexpected, their losses unexpected. I find Joan Didion to be a wonderful guide and friend to those who are grieving. I think she holds our hands and kind of guides us through. So that's The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.
[00:50:54] And then last but not least, Station Eleven by Emily Saint John Mandel. I could not have predicted that two post-apocalyptic novels would wind up on my favorites list, but Station Eleven became an immediate favorite and in my mind, an immediate classic when it released, I believe, in 2018. I want to say that's when it released. I read it upon its release and finished it on a drive to Jordan's family's lake home. Did not want to get out of the car upon finishing because I was just overwrought with just so many feelings because much like The Road, Station Eleven is not just about a post-apocalyptic world. In my mind and one way in which I think it differ from The Road quite a bit is that Station Eleven is about what remains. And even when the whole world is done and finished and the things that we thought we loved don't exist anymore, what still exists, what survived? And art is one of the answers to that question. Art is what survives. Art is what stands the test of time. And I love that in my mind that unique answer to that question, that was not something I had really contemplated before. Which may sound silly to you, it seems like something that would have come up in a college English class or something. But I loved that answer to that question and I loved that this book dealt in a really imaginative way with a post-apocalyptic world and a traveling Shakespeare troupe and a comic book. Like all these things that sound absolutely nonsensical and like they wouldn't go together at all are really tied so perfectly together in this work. Actually, I think a lot of books on this list should be required reading, but I think Station Eleven should be up there. I just think it talks so much about the themes and the types of people I want to read about. I like books about found family. I like books about families. You know that, you can tell that by this list. But I also love books about profound friendships and people who choose to be families of their own, who kind of have to make amends and make beautiful something that was messy. And I think the people in this book do a good job of doing that. And I love the book. I love the way this book made me feel. I like that it made me thoughtful and it made me nostalgic, but in a healthy way, not in a detrimental way. And it made me ask myself what do I want to last and what do I have that will last? And I think that's a good question to ask ourselves, especially at the start of a new year.
[00:53:42] So those are my top ten-ish books of all time. I think it maybe comes to 12 or 13, but I paired some I paired some that I felt like belong together. So those are my favorite books. And, to me, what I love is a book that is well written, a book that will make me think, a book with memorable characters who will last far beyond the last turn of the page. A book that will stir in me feelings and emotions because I am not often in tune to those parts of myself. And so I love a book that stirs me to feeling. I love a book that deals deeply with faith, doubt, and belief because I deal a lot with those things. And so I like to be seen in some of the literature that I read. I want to know that there are other people like me thinking through these things. I love books that bring depth to things that feel at first glance a little shallow. I like books about families and dysfunctional families and traditions and people who are figuring out who they want to be. That is what I love to read. I think it is reflected in this list, and I think this is a question I'm going to come back to throughout the year as I talk to some of my favorite people. I would love to talk about their favorite books because I think they say a lot about who we are, right? It feels almost like taking off your clothes to tell someone. I don't know why, it feels so much more personal than me telling you my favorite movies. Telling you my favorite books feels just deeply personal because not everybody loves the books on this list. Some of the books may seem silly to you. Maybe you read Little Women as an adult and you thought, oh, my gosh, these moralistic March sisters. But this book means a lot to me. And I think that's why sharing your favorite books can feel a little vulnerable, but I'm glad I did. I hope it gives you a sense of the vibes here on From the Front Porch, the types of books that. I love to read, that I love to discuss, that I love to have conversations about. That's one of the reasons Homegoing is on this list is because the conversations that came out of it were so important and so crucial to my early adulthood and to figuring out the type of person I wanted to be. And so I hope your favorite books make you ask those same questions, feel those same things. And I look forward to discussing more about our favorite books in 2023.
[00:56:09] This week I'm reading Decent People by De'shawn Charles Winslow.
[00:56:15] 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 at @Bookshelftville.com and all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website: Bookshelfthomasville.com.
[00:56:31] A full transcript of today's episode can be found at: Fromthefrontporchpodcast.com.
[00:56:36] 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.
[00:56:45] Our executive producers of today's episode are, Donna Hechler. Angie Erickson. Cammy Tidwell. Kate O'Connell.
Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:56:51] Nicole Marsee. Wendi Jenkins. Laurie Johnson.
[00:56:57] 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.
[00:57:15] Or, if you're so inclined, you can support us over on Patreon, where we have three levels of support. Front Porch Friends, Book Club Companions and Bookshelf Benefactors. Each level has an amazing number of benefits, like bonus content, access to live events, discounts and giveaways. Just go to Patreon.com/Fromthefrontporch.
[00:57:34] We're so grateful. For you and we look forward to meeting back here next week.