Episode 370 || April Reading Recap
In this episode of From the Front Porch, Annie is recapping all of the books she read in April. Shorter versions of these reviews can be found on Annie’s personal Instagram page.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our new website:
These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Birds of California by Katie Cotugno
But You Did Not Come Back by Judith Perrignon and Marceline Loridan-Ivens (not available through our distributor, but you can get it from Libro.fm or your local library)
Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe
Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky
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 Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
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, Angie Erickson, Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle C, Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, Laurie johnson and Kate Johnston Tucker.
Libro.FM:
Libro.fm lets you purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite local bookstore (Like The Bookshelf). You can pick from more than 215,000 audiobooks, and you'll get the same audiobooks at the same price as the largest audiobook company out there (you know the name). But you’ll be part of a different story -- one that supports community. All you need is a smart phone and the free Libro.fm app.
Right now, if you sign up for a new membership, you will get 2 audiobooks for the price of one. All you have to do is enter FRONTPORCH at checkout or follow this link:
Flodesk:
Do you receive a weekly or monthly newsletter from one of your favorite brands? Like maybe From the Front Porch (Or The Bookshelf)... Did you ever wonder, ‘how do they make such gorgeous emails?’
Flodesk is an email marketing service provider that's built for creators, by creators, and it’s easy to use. We’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and I personally love it. And right now you can get 50% off your Flodesk subscription by going to:
Transcript:
Annie [00:00:01] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South.
[00:00:24] Always remember, mein Sadie, life is very long unless it is not. Sadie knew this to be a tautology, but it also happened to be true.
[00:00:36] Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
[00:00:43] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. This week, I'm recapping the books I read in April. You'll notice that a few of the books I'm reviewing today are being released later this summer. And, yes, that's because I read advanced reader copies and have to read in advance. But that's also because this month I started doing a lot of prep work for our summer literary lunch. If you've never joined us for a literary lunch, these are the Bookshelf's quarterly virtual events designed to work around your literal or metaphorical lunch breaks. I discuss my favorite books of the upcoming season, and I do so with readers decision fatigue in mind. Tickets are on sale now for our summer conversation. You can find them online at www.bookshelfthomasvillle.com. Just click 'Events' or you can tap the link in our show notes and it'll take you straight to the ticket page. Again, that's our summer literary lunch being held in May.
[00:01:41] Now, the books I read in April, I read a lot of books, and I think that's partly because I listen to some audiobooks this month. Months when I'm able to listen to audiobooks, which not every month, but when I am able to get more reading done just by nature of I'm spending a lot of my time reading. Not just my sitting down time, but by my walking around cleaning the house or my driving in a car time. So several good audiobooks this month or a few good audiobooks. And yeah, a lot of really great reads and I think pretty wide range of genres, actually when it's all said and done. So, the first book that I finished in April was, These Silent Woods. This is by Kimi Cunningham Grant. I'm so proud to be able to say this. I read this for my book club. I have had a really hard time reading my book club's books since the pandemic, and my book club has kind of gone back and forth. We did virtual during the pandemic, now we're back in person.
[00:02:39] But I've just had a hard time getting back into the rhythm of reading for Book Club, which sounds so silly because I read for a lot of other things. It should be easy to just kind of slip right back into the habit of reading for Book Club, but I've had a hard time. So when I found out this was our book club selection and I knew it wasn't a book I'd read already, so I couldn't just like skate on by with previous reading experience. I immediately downloaded the audiobook, and I'm so glad that I did, because the audiobook narrator of this particular book was fabulous. His name is Bronson Pinchot. I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. But Bronson Pinchot is a fabulous audiobook narrator, and I wound up really liking this book, in part because I listened to it and had such a great listening experience. So this is, I'm going to say, a thriller survival story.
[00:03:33] It's a father daughter novel about Cooper and Finch. Cooper is the dad figure, and he and his daughter, Finch, live in the Appalachian region of the country. Mountains kind of sort of. Anyway, so they live kind of out in the middle of nothing. The book opens, and you know they're surviving out there on their own, but you're not quite sure why. You're not quite sure the circumstances that have led them to live this really remote lifestyle. And the book kind of unfolds from there. There are some twists and turns. In fact, so this year in our book club, we chose different themes for each month. So for example, in March, I picked a sports themed book. In April, it had to be a book with a twist. And so this book has a lot, I think, of different twists and turns. I certainly expected the book to go one direction, and it really went in another. And I mean that with high praise because I really wound up liking this book. I think again, my reading was certainly enhanced by the audiobook experience, but I suspect that I would have liked this one in print as well.
[00:04:39] It felt certainly reminiscent of some other books I've enjoyed, like Room by Emma Donoghue and maybe even slight elements of Bewilderment by Richard Powers, just because of the parent child dynamic. But it's a survival story. It's a thriller, it's a suspense novel, and I really, really, liked it and thought it was pretty original, all things considered. So I highly recommend this one. I am not 100 percent sure. I'm trying to remember if this is a new release or not, because I literally saw it in my book club app. And then I went straight to Libro fm and downloaded the audiobooks. I didn't really do a ton of research going in, and I'm kind of glad I didn't. So maybe you should do the same and just kind of dive in without too much information other than what I've given you today. But I really like this one. It is called These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant narrated by Bronson Pinchot.
[00:05:31] Next, I read Portrait of a Thief. This is by Grace D. Li. You've probably heard me mention this one on a couple of previous podcast episodes. I think maybe our new release episode I mentioned this book. This is a debut novel written by a med student. Whenever I hear about authors who are pulling double duty like, you know, they're a parent and they're also a writer or they're in school and they're also a writer, I always feel just a little bit lazy. Like, maybe I could be doing more. But this book is really a fantastic debut. So it's a heist story at its core. It's about a group of five Chinese-American friends, and they all kind of joined together under these kind of mysterious circumstances to steal back Chinese art from museums around the globe, museums that maybe acquired this art through plundering or through less than ethical circumstances. And so to some extent, it's a Robin Hood story.
[00:06:35] It's these five Chinese-American students who kind of take it upon themselves to return art to its rightful home. So that's kind of the premise. One student is the head of this group, and he is approached by an arm of the Chinese government to organize a team and to organize heists, I believe it's four or five different museums around the world. And our main character is Will. And he's an art history major. And then he forms his team. And it very much is reminiscent of Ocean's Eleven. Like, he tries to find each of his friends who are gifted in a certain area. One of his friends is a computer programmer, so she kind of plays the role of hacker. One of his friends -- his sister actually is really good at kind of being manipulative, and she's kind of the point person. She's kind of almost as a decoy in the circumstances because she's incredibly charming. One of his friends is the son of an FBI agent who investigates crimes. And then my favorite character is the character of Lily Wu. She is an engineering major, but she is also a drag racer on the weekends, and so she functions as the team's getaway driver.
[00:07:52] So it's got a lot of elements of these movies that I really like, like Ocean's Eleven, the Fast and Furious movies, even Baby Driver came to mind. But at the core, the book is also about the Chinese-American immigrant experience, and it's about these five kids. They're all college students or right out of college, and they're trying to figure out who they are and to whom their identity belongs. Like, to which country do they feel an allegiance toward? And what does it mean to be Chinese-American? Or what does it mean to be Second-generation American? And so I really thought Grace D. Li not only captured a pretty compelling heist story, but also a story with some depth. Certainly, the heists are happening, and those were my favorite parts of the story. But underneath those heists, there's a tension and also a reason for them committing these crimes. Interestingly, right after I finish this book, or maybe around the same time I came across an article in The Washington Post about the concept of blood art. This is something I had never heard of or thought about or researched. So I think we'll put a link in the show notes to The Washington Post article.
[00:09:06] But certainly, Portrait of a Thief caused me to think a lot as somebody who visits museums a lot, who loves museums, it caused me to think about where this art work comes from and to whom art really belongs. And I just fell in love with the characters at the heart of the book. The book is told in kind of alternating voices from each of the different perspectives. I definitely had a favorite character. I definitely had a favorite voice. But you do love the collective whole, and the history component was my favorite. But I also really appreciated that this book was about more than just a few heists. And so I highly recommend this one. It's a great debut. I think it's really well written. It is called Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li. Then I read Beloved by Toni Morrison. I'm not going to go into too much detail about Beloved, except to say that we did a Backlist Book Club episode all about this book in episode 368 of From the Front Porch. Hunter and I did a deep dive into Toni Morrison and into this work.
[00:10:05] If you're not familiar, Backlist Book Club is a series that we started several years ago. It feels like for From the Front Porch and we're bringing it back this year. We're reading Pulitzer winners, and Beloved was a great first one to choose because I'm also on my own kind of doing this Toni Morrison reading project. And other than Recitatif, I had not read any Toni Morrison. And so to kind of hunker down with Beloved and take notes and to think through it so that I could have a really good conversation with Hunter, I felt like I had to be really engaged with the work. And I'm so glad because it's really a masterpiece in American Lit. And I'm sorry I hadn't read it before now. So if you want to hear more about Beloved and about our opinions about it and whether or not it's a ghost story, what Toni Morrison does with trauma, I would encourage you to listen to episode 368. And if you have not read Toni Morrison, if you're like me and somehow those books missed you in school or you just haven't read her yet, I do think Beloved is a pretty accessible place to start.
[00:11:09] I reviewed Recitatif, her short story, a few months ago. I want to say I feel like I read that in January or February, and I really liked it. And I do think it is very accessible because it's a short story and it's a great audiobook. But if you're looking for a place to start, I do think Beloved is a fine place to start. And then you can kind of read along with us and go back and listen to the episodes. So that is Beloved by Toni Morrison. Jordan and I took a lot of road trips in April. We went back and forth to Birmingham a couple of times, and so audiobooks and podcast episodes are kind of our way to travel together. We like to listen and then kind of have conversations based upon what we're listening to. So some of those audiobooks we haven't finished, I'm sure I'll have updates for you in May, but one of the books we did start and did finish was Under the Banner of Heaven. This is by Jon Krakauer. This is a backlist title. I picked it because of the upcoming TV show, because it looked like something Jordan and I might really like. The TV show stars, I believe, Andrew Garfield.
[00:12:10] And I have read Jon Krakauer before, but this is just one I had not read, and so I downloaded the audio,ook from Libro fm started listening to it. I will be very honest. I was not as much of a fan of this narrator as I was other narrators I listened to this month. And Jordan and I and I'm sure audiobook listeners will agree, an audiobook narrator makes or breaks a book, like, it completely alters your reading experience, which is a fascinating conversation to have. And I would think if you're an author, it would be crucial, like, part of your contract to have an excellent audiobook narrator because, again, it can kind of completely change a reader's opinion of your work. So I will say this, I think Under the Banner of Heaven is a really well-written work of nonfiction. I would not personally recommend the audiobook. Now, Jordan and I listen to it. We listen to the whole thing on our drive back and forth from Birmingham. But, for me, I probably would have preferred the written experience of this particular book. If you're not familiar, this is a backlist title kind of about the history of the Mormon faith.
[00:13:19] In fact, I feel like the book is build almost like a true crime story about a murder that took place in Utah in the 80s. And, yes, it is a true crime book, but I would argue it actually is more about the history of the Mormon religion and the pieces of this true crime story are kind of woven throughout. And so I would like to temper your expectations if you, like me, appreciate well done true crime. This is well done true crime. I think Jon Krakauer does a really good job of honoring the lives of the victims, which I don't know that some true crime writers always do. And so I think this is a really great work of true crime. But it is more a book about the Mormon faith and the history of Utah and the American West, which I was not 100 percent familiar with, although Jordan and I did go through a pretty lengthy phase of watching a lot of PBS documentaries. And one of them was about Mormonism. And so we were fairly familiar with Joseph Smith and some of the origins of the Mormon religion.
[00:14:28] But Jon Krakauer really goes deep into that and offers a critique of religion as a whole, not just Mormonism, but other aspects of American Christianity and other faiths in general. He kind of is looking at extreme beliefs and what those extreme beliefs can cause people to do, which I did think was interesting. So Jordan and I liked this book. We both agreed it was a well-written work of nonfiction. We also agreed it could have been a smidge shorter, but I truly think that's because of the audio book narration. So if you've read this, I would love to know your thoughts. Like I said, it's a backlist title. It's been out for a long time. I'm glad we read it because I will be interested to see the television adaptation and kind of how they're going to deal with that. But it is under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Next, I picked up Birds of California. This is by Katie Cotugno. Now this is a paperback original out right now. And I think it just released this week actually upon release of this episode.
[00:15:25] So this is a romcom kind of. You know, there's an argument to be had around the definition of a romantic comedy. Mary Katherine and I kind of dug into this a few episodes ago, and this week, when I'm recording this, The Ringer website is doing a really interesting look at romantic comedy comedies in the definition of the genre. And so I read this book and I liked it, but I truly don't know if I would classify it as a romantic comedy or not. I think I would. But this is a romantic comedy with a lot of other things going on, particularly about and around the MeToo movement. I picked this one up because I've been reading a lot of books or trying to read a lot of books set in California. Jordan and I are headed there. We're headed to Los Angeles in May and I'm so excited. And so I kind of wanted to read books that would kind of get me in the mood for what I hope is going to be a perfect weather week. I hope it's just going to be beautiful and a blue sky and the Pacific coast. Like, I just hope it's ideal. And so I'm reading some books kind of set in California.
[00:16:27] This book is set in California. It features the characters of Fiona and Sam. They are television actors and and actresses. And they were on a hit show. I'm picturing like a growing pains type family ensemble sitcom or something like that. Maybe a parenthood situation. They play siblings. And when the book opens, were introduced to Fiona, and she's no longer an actor and you can tell something has happened in her career to have kind of forced her out of the industry. Maybe there was a mental break of some kind. Maybe there was an addiction of some kind. You're not quite sure, but you know she's working at a coffee shop that belongs to her parents, her dad. And so she's kind of down on her luck, but still very much a fully formed, interesting character. I really liked the character of Fiona. We're also introduced to Sam, who is a kind of playboy character, and he is still acting. And sooner or later, we discover that these actors are being asked to come back to do like a reunion show for this show that they are no longer on. They have been canceled a few seasons ago.
[00:17:37] So I like all of that. Like, I love reading about Hollywood. I love TV. And so all of that kind of felt fun. And it did feel fun to read after the movie was filmed at The Bookshelf because I felt like, oh, I kind of can picture what it might be like to be on a film set or whatever. And so I did really like that. The book is just dealing with pretty intense issues of sexual assault, and so that's why I'm like, it's a rom com, but it's not always funny. Which romcoms don't always have to be super light and funny. They can deal with other deeper things. But this is really, I think even it's being billed as a MeToo movement novel, and I found those parts of the book, by the way, to be extremely realistic, but they're just deeply troubling. And so Sam basically takes it upon himself to try to convince Fiona to come back to acting, to come out of retirement and to come back on the show. To do this reunion show, it'll liven up his career. He thinks it'll bring her career back. And so when he comes to kind of convince her that she needs to come back, sparks fly between them, and you can tell they probably have a romantic history.
[00:18:45] And so they are a fun couple to follow. They are funny together, but there is this underlying element of trauma almost and survival of assault and sexual harassment. And so that's just kind of underlying the whole love story. I really did love Fiona, and there's a cast of side characters who I really like. She's got a really fun sister neighbor. And then Fiona, despite no longer acting on the screen in her retirement and in her recovery, she has joined like a local theater troupe, and I loved that part of the book as well. So I really liked this book a lot. It's just hard to categorize. That's the only thing. Like, when I think about who am I going to sell this to? I'm trying to think, okay, I can sell it to a romantic comedy fan, but it can't be somebody who's a super sensitive reader. Although the book is, you know, not explicit by any means, but it's dealing with heavier issues. And so I just want to be upfront about that. That being said, I really did like this one. I love the California setting. I really loved Fiona, our main character. I could easily see this becoming a TV show of its own. So that is Birds of California by Katie Cotugno. And that is out right now. It just released this week.
[00:19:59] In a little bit of a departure for me, I picked up a book called But You Did Not Come Back. This is by a French author, so pardon my pronunciation. But her name is Marceline Lauridan-Ivens. This was an international bestseller, but this is a fun story. This book was mailed to me by a customer and podcast listener in the UK, which I honestly started to tear up when I opened the package. Because you just never know, right? You just never know who's listening, and you never know. I mean, I record these things at home, and so it can be hard to pretend that a bunch of people are actually listening to the world to the words that I say for better or worse. But beyond that, you just never know. I don't know. You never know what kind of impact you're making. And so Sigran -- I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce your name either. I'm so sorry. I sound like a very dumb American. But Sigran mailed me this book, and I'm so grateful to know that we have some listeners in the UK. That's just really gratifying. And she made me this book. And, look, it is not often that I receive a book as a gift.
[00:21:02] First of all, because as a bookseller and a bookstore owner, very rarely do people buy me books anymore. And so that was delightful that somebody mailed me a book and mailed me a book I'd never heard of, like I had never heard of this book. I really love that I have the UK edition of this book very fun. It's a tiny little thing, which is part of the reason I was able to pick it up so quickly. She mailed it to me, and I immediately picked it up on a Monday afternoon because I thought, well, I can read this and truly, I read it. I don't know in 30 minutes or an hour. It did not take me long. Now it is a short book, but it is a very powerful book and it is an intense book. So this was a bestseller in France. It is a nonfiction book written by a Holocaust survivor, and it reads as a letter to her father, who died in the Holocaust at one of the camps. And so they were assigned to camps next to one another, and she was able to interact with her father kind of miraculously on a couple of occasions, brief occasions once through a written note from her dad. And then once in an in-person interaction.
[00:22:16] But beyond that, they did not see each other and they did not see each other again once the war ended. And so the book is extremely poignant and powerful, and it's been a long time since I read a first person historical account. Honestly, I don't know. I was trying to think, maybe gosh, I don't know. Maybe since school, I'm not 100 percent sure. And so this felt like a return to reading something for school. We're going to read it and then you're going to talk about it with somebody. But I couldn't talk about it to anybody, except you guys. So, anyway, the book is really poignant. A letter to her dad. I am reading obviously the English translation, and it is also really a book about anti-Semitism. So I did some research after I finished the book, and Marceline died a couple of years ago. She was in her 90s. This book was published when she was in her 80s or 90s. She's writing it as an old woman. And I also really loved that perspective that this was not a book written while she was in a concentration camp.
[00:23:20] This was a book written after the fact, and so I know I referenced in Birds of California kind of the after effects of trauma and then Beloved for sure. This book is more of that. Like, this book is about what it's like to be a survivor and. It's how do I say this, it's not as great as you'd think. She writes really openly and honestly about the struggle of what came next. So you survived this horrific, traumatic, heartbreaking, gut wrenching thing that completely tears your family apart. Took her dad from their family. He does not survive. She's grateful to have survived, but she also is writing really openly about what that survival looked like. And it wasn't always like, I think the quaint picture we have in our heads of what it means to survive something, whether it's war or war crimes or a natural disaster or something like that. Like, I think sometimes the news story coverage stops the moment that we know survival is imminent and then we don't really know, well, what happens?
[00:24:34] What are these people supposed to do? How are they supposed to go back to their "normal lives?" And these are questions I think we're asking ourselves as we watch a war happen in Ukraine. And I think we're watching, what comes next in terms of pandemic life. And so anyway, I found all of it to be really timely and sad and also powerful and hopeful, which is it's weird that it's all of those things in, I don't know, 100 pages, but it is, so I really liked this book. I highly recommend it. I had never heard of it, and I'm so grateful to have read it now. Again, it's an international bestseller and poignant is the best word I could use. Like if I had to distill it down to one word, that's the word I would use. It is called, But You Did Not Come Back by Marceline Loridian-Evans in a very much a departure from that work I next picked up. Funny, you should ask. This is by Elissa Sussman, and I listen to this partly in audiobook format and partly in print. So I did both here.
[00:25:36] I think sometimes people ask me that. So this one, I listened to part of the time and I read it part of the time. I honestly did that because I liked this book so much and I did not want to stop reading it. But I had to go to work, so I downloaded the audiobook so that I could listen to it while I worked. And then when I left work that day, I came home and finished it in print format. So I literally read this book in the period of a day because I just had such a blast with it. You heard me mention it on the kids table episode that I did with Ashley. So if you're like this sounds familiar, that's because it is. That's because I just talked about it in last week's episode, but I just want to talk about it some more. So first of all, in the show notes, there is a link to this Chris Evans cover story from GQ magazine. Truly, I think 10 or 11 years ago, and in this story written by Edith Zimmerman, she kind of talks about interviewing Chris Evans, and then she winds up like embarking on escapades with Chris Evans.
[00:26:38] It's a really fascinating work of celebrity profiling like if you are as obsessed or interested in celebrity profiles as I am and kind of the format those typically take, where they sit down at a restaurant and you hear all about their piercing blue eyes and like what restaurant, what food they eat, etc. like, I just feel like I could sit in a graduate level course about celebrity profiles and be so happy. But anyway, it's a fascinating look at the celebrity profile, so I linked that in the show notes it's the one about Chris Evans written by Edith Zimmerman, and that is what this book is based on. So this book by Elissa Sussman is essentially a fan fiction about that Chris Evans profile. And so the whole time I'm reading the book, I am, for better or worse, picturing Chris Evans in my head. If you care to know I did cast. There are a couple of options here, but for the main character of Chani I cast, it's either going to be Anne Hathaway or Jenny Slate.
[00:27:38] Those are kind of your two options, and I do kind of like that Chris Evans and Jenny Slate dated once, and so I feel like she'd be really fun in the role. So that's why I was picturing the whole time I was reading/listening to this book. It's just a good time. It is steamy. I should get that out of the way right now, and something I learned about myself is I can read and skim some steamy scenes in lit. I cannot do that on audiobook format like you should have seen me be like, whoa, like, I'm sure my whole face changed. And fast forward at 30 seconds or whatever. So this is steamy, but sometimes people ask me, like, what makes a book steamy or not or what makes it closed door or open door? This one certainly has a couple of open door scenes, but I think the reason that I love this book so much is that's not what the book is about. Like, certainly, this book is leading up to some steamy moments, but it's really about Chani and Gabe and their meet cute and their love story. And it is a fascinating, again, just a fascinating look at celebrity.
[00:28:39] Sprinkled throughout the book are different, like snippets of articles that Chani has written movie reviews. All of these are fictional but fictional movie reviews about the movies Gabe has been in. There is a really interesting kind of underlying subplot about a remake that is being shot of the Philadelphia Story. As a lover of the Philadelphia Story, I am so amazed with how many references I've seen to the Philadelphia Story in the last few books I've read, The Crane Wife comes to mind. There's an entire essay on it in that book. And then in this book, it really does play a pretty important role, I think, in the themes of Chani and Gabe's love story. So you've got kind of sprinkled throughout Chan's telling. You also have some of her articles, movie reviews, etc. So that kind of is really a fun element as well. I should also mention that the audiobook narrator is fabulous. So this book is narrated by Kristen Sieh.
[00:29:33] I'm so sorry about the pronunciation of that last name, but it's S-I-E-H and I loved her. I immediately like, clicked in Libra FM. I'm sure in other apps too, you can search by audiobook narrator. And I immediately thought, like, what else has she narrated? Because she was so fun to listen to and really added to my reading experience, it goes back to audiobooks and their narrators making or breaking them. But I thought this audiobook was fabulous because the narrator is so great. I had a blast with it. I had so much fun with this that I finished it. So as I said, I finished this in a day. Just thought it was so fun. I finished it, watched the Philadelphia Story and then because I had been listening to the book and then picked up the physical book, I went back and listened to the rest of the end, like for a second time, essentially like a second reading, which again, I just don't do.
[00:30:26] Like, I do not reread books very often. But I just loved these characters so much, and I loved their love story. The only criticism I might have is that it felt like it ended a little too quickly for me, like kind of wrapped up in a bow. And I really, I don't know. I really felt like, wow, that was sudden. There was a lot of buildup and there was a lot of back and forth between Chani and her writing of this original article 10 years ago. And then she and Gabe trying to recreate the article 10 years later, which is just a fun concept. The whole thing was a blast. I really did like this one. I keep saying a blast, but it was it was so fun. So this is called Funny You Should Ask. I listen to it part in audiobook, and then I read the physical book format. This is by Elissa Sussman. Next, I picked up Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. This is by Gabrielle Zevin. It is not out until July 5th, so this is a book I read well in advance.
[00:31:20] This book comes out in July, but you should preorder it. You should preorder it because much like lessons in chemistry. I loved this book and I put off reading it. So I am a big Gabrielle Zelvin fan. So if you are a backlist reader and you frequently wish I would read more backlist titles or you check out books from your local library and you need them to be backlist. Two back list recommendations by Gabrielle Zevin that I have for you, Young Jane Young and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. I think Young Jane Young was actually one of my very first shelf subscription selections and Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is one of the first books I read as a bookseller, so both of those books kind of have a special place in my heart because of what I was doing when I was reading them. But I really like both of those. And so when a new Gabrielle Zevin book kind of crossed my desk, I was super intrigued.
[00:32:12] But then I saw that it was about video games and I was like, I just don't know if a few years playing Mario on an original Nintendo is enough videogame experience to help me appreciate this book. I was wrong. You do not need to appreciate or understand. I'll put it this way you do not need to understand video games to love this book. Certainly, I was familiar with a couple of the references just because of my age. There were, in fact, references to Mario and Duck Hunt. And so that helped. But that's not what this book is about. So when I think about selling this book to someone, I think I'm going to sell it to fans of Station Eleven. And maybe you're like, wait, what? Because Station Eleven is so good and so beloved that maybe this feels a little bit like sacrilege to say.
[00:33:04] But much like Station Eleven is not about a comic book, but kind of it is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is not about video games, although kind of it is. They just are dealing with art and the impact of art. That's what these books are dealing with. So the book features Sadie and Sam. And then another character, one of my favorite characters in recent memory Marx, a character named Marx. So Sadie and Sam meet as children, and they, I don't want to spoil too many things, but basically they meet as children and then they become in their adulthood, video game designers and producers and creators. And this story unfolds across decades, first of all. And you get to watch Sadie and Sam as children, as college students and as adults. I loved that. I've read a few reviews of this book, and it does look like it's going to be a book that most people just really, really love.
[00:34:04] I think one critique I saw was that like, it went on too long and I would respectfully disagree somehow. I literally kept putting it down and going, how is she doing this? Because the way she is able to tell this story and have this through line of storytelling throughout these different decades, time periods, time frames, different characters at the heart of each story. I thought, I really wish I could see her notes to know how she was able to do this. I did not think the book was too long. I felt like the story was pretty perfectly told if I'm being honest. Anyway, the book is about Sadie and Sam, but it's about more than that. It's about video games, but it's not. It's about more than that. I'm sure the like Ready Player One fans will love this. And you can tell that Gabrielle Zevin is a gamer or is somebody who appreciates games. I I feel like I sound like a fraud, just saying the word gamer, I just can't stress enough. I know next to nothing about video games, and this book will be in my top 10 of the year. So I think that's all I can say. I think that's all I can say is that this book is so good. It's so good that I just am getting tongue tied about it. Tomorrow, andTtomorrow, and Tomorrow is a Shakespeare reference.
[00:35:19] So again, it's not just about video games, it's about creation, it's about creation and storytelling and art and the power of art. I love this book so much Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. This is out on July 5th. It's fabulous. Next, I read Last Summer on State Street. This is by Toya Wolfe out on June 14th. I read this book and immediately thought, like, I kind of I can even feel my shoulders letting down now. It's for Brit Bennett fans. I mean, Brit Bennett does a pretty good job of putting books out fairly regularly. Like, I didn't think anything was coming after The Mother's for a long time. And then we had The Vanishing Half, which was wonderful. So if you like me are constantly waiting for the next Brit Bennett story, this should scratch that itch. So this is set during one summer in Chicago in 1999. The main character in the narrator is Felicia Afifi, but she has friends. She's about 11 years old and she is dear friends with Precious, Stacia and Tanya.
[00:36:17] And so these girls are being raised in some buildings owned by the Chicago Housing Authority. And they have watched over the last couple years as different buildings have been torn down by the CHA and their building is next. So the book is a tribute to the building and to these housing units in Chicago, but it's also about girlhood and girl friendship and particularly Black Girl friendship. But I think there's enough here that feels really familiar. If you were once an 11 year old girl jumping rope in the summer, I think a lot of this will feel very familiar, even if the setting does not feel familiar to you. Look, you've heard me say before that if I'm reading a book about summer, I want it to feel like summer. Like, I don't really want to read a book about somebody bundled up in a coat when I am sweating my way through August. And so I'm very pleased to say that because this book is set in the summer in Chicago.
[00:37:14] I just felt I felt immediately nestled inside the story, and Fifi, who acts as kind of our she's the narrator, but she kind of also acts as our moral compass and she's like on the verge of having to deal with some really grown up things. And she's being rushed towards some grownup things because of where she lives, and yet she loves where she lives. And so there's some really great tension about the homes we love and the homes we create and what happens when we need to leave them, or what happens when we're forced to leave them. And it's about friendship. And because the adult Fifi is narrating, I think that's also really fun because you get the perspective of the adult Felicia looking back on her childhood and trying to make sense of her friendships and why she lost some of her friendships.
[00:38:10] There were parts of the book that I think under another author's care could have felt a little disjointed, but instead it felt like an adult person. Thinking back to their 11 year old self, like any time where I was like, that felt a little out of nowhere. It then felt brilliant to me because I was like, I think it is out of nowhere because she's remembering in pieces parts. There's a really lovely brother sister element. I really liked this book a great deal. I really did. And it's pretty thin. You'll finish it pretty quickly. But the story that Toya is able to tell feels beyond the page count. If that makes sense, like it's pretty impressive how she's able to to do it in such a short number of pages. So this is Last Summer on State Street, out on June 14th. Great for fans of Brit Bennett. I think the publisher says that, but I would also just like to second it.
[00:39:04] I feel like sometimes a publisher comp like comparison title I don't always agree with, but that one, I do. So I second it. And then lastly, I read the book Hurricane Girl. This is by Marcy Dermansky. You might recognize her from the book Very Nice, which came out, I think, during the pandemic. I definitely recognize the cover of this book, but I did not read it. So Hurricane Girl came across my desk and I put it in like my giant TBR stack and I love when this happens. This happened with Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, too, by the way. That one was in my giant TBR stack, and then I saw Tyler Goodson post about it. And he and I tend to have a pretty wide overlap in terms of taste. So I immediately picked it up. And then Hurricane Girl was in this giant stack, and then I saw the author, Claire Gibson, talk about it. And I thought, wait, now I'm intrigued. So I moved it to the top of my stack and I finished it in August.
[00:40:00] It comes out on June 14th, just like The Last Summer on State Street. This is one of the weirdest books I hesitate to say that I've ever read because I feel like I need to make a list. Wouldn't that be fun? A fun list. Weirdest books I've ever read. That would be a fun podcast episode. Anyway, this is one of the weirdest books I've ever read, but I need to talk about it with like everyone. So I made Jordan listen to the full rundown synopsis of this book. Then I made Olivia listen to the full rundown synopsis of this book, and now I'm going to give you pieces parts. I'm going to tell you some of it, too. So the book's main character, protagonist is Allison. Allison is a young woman. We're going to say late 20s. Early 30s is kind of the vibe I was getting.
[00:40:42] She's from Los Angeles or she lives in Los Angeles, but she's moving. And the book immediately opens with her moving to the coast of North Carolina, where she has bought a foreclosed beach house and she, like, bought it out of foreclosure to fix it up. And as Claire Gibson teased, You think this book might be then a book about a hot summer DYI'ng this house and like rebuilding this house. But and this is not an exaggeration. By page six, the house has been demolished in a hurricane. This is no spoilers. It literally happens on page six. And just what unfolds is one of the most bonkers stories I've read, because at every point you think it's going to go one direction and then it doesn't go that direction at all.
[00:41:32] So I hesitate to even say anymore. But basically, Alison's home is destroyed, and so she's got to figure out what to do next. She bought this house with, like all of her money. She moved. She left her home in Los Angeles. She has family in New Jersey. She kind of has to figure out what to do next. And it almost reads like a choose your own adventure. Only Alison is making choices that you, the reader, would absolutely 100 percent never make. And somehow I finish this book and I thought, what did I just read and why? Like, why did I read it? This would be a great book club book, by the way, just because you're going to want to talk about this with somebody. But why did I read this? Like, what was the point of all these twists and turns, all these decisions? What was the point? And I think it's been a couple of days and I've kind of been percolating on it for a minute. I think this is a book about abuse, survival, trauma, revenge and feminism. I think that's what it's about. It's like if I had to boil it down, I think that's what it's about.
[00:42:43] Interestingly, I'm realizing I read a lot of books about trauma in April. I don't know what that's about, but yeah I'm looking back at these titles and there's a lot of trauma. Like almost every book, almost every book, These Silent Words is about post-traumatic stress disorder. For sure. Beloved is about traumas and ghosts. My gosh. Yeah. Every book I read this month. Great. Great. Well, Hurricane Girl is a lot about trauma and abuse and revenge, and it's about the lengths a woman will go to be polite. That's a little bit what it feels like to. And yet, as the blurb on the back says, it's also somehow about turkey sandwiches. And as somebody who loves turkey sandwiches, I don't know. But Jordan asked me, he said, what? He politely listened to me talk about this thing. And then he said, what are you going to read it? And I thought, now John C. Green is right. This is why star ratings don't work, because I don't know what I'm going to rate this book. It's going to be on my brain for a long time.
[00:43:47] It's very well-written, undeniably well-written. If you're wondering commercial or literary, this is definitely literary fiction, but very accessible page turning, I sat down in my little gray chair, and two hours later, I was done with this book. So it's very fast paced. You want to know what happens. The chapters are really short Olivia and I talk all the time about short chapters being conducive to speed reading or to fast reading. Yeah, I don't know what else to say about this other than it's one of the weirdest books I've ever read, but I really liked it. So this is Hurricane Girl by Mercy Dermanski out on June 14th, and those are the books that I read in April.
[00:44:29] As we've done the last few months, we are offering a reading recap bundle for the month of April. This month's bundle is $64 and includes These Silent Woods. Funny You Should Ask and Portrait of a Thief. This gets you a debut novel, a survival story and a rom com. So a pretty great way to kind of round out your late spring early summer reading. You can find the April bundle online through the link in our show notes or go to bookshelfthomasville.com, then click or tap podcast and shop From the Front Porch. Again. Three books the bundle is $64. It's two hardbacks, and a paperback should be a fun way to jumpstart your late spring early summer reading.
[00:45:11] This week, I'm reading Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan.
[00:45:18] From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast, production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow the bookshelves 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.
[00:45:39] 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.
[00:45:48] Our executive producers of today's episode are Donna Hechler, Angie Erickson, Cami Tidwell, Chantal Karls.
Executive Producers(Read their own names) [00:45:55] Nicole Marcy, Wendy Jenkins, Laurie Johnson, Kate Johnston Tucker.
[00:46:02] Thank you all for your support 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.
[00:46:19] 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 life events, discounts and giveaways. Just go to Patreon/fromthefrontporch. We're so grateful for you and we look forward to meeting back here next week.