Episode 379 || June Reading Recap
It’s the end of the month, which means it’s time for a reading recap! In this episode of From the Front Porch, Annie is talking about all the books she read in June. As we’ve done the past few months, we’re offering a Reading Recap bundle, which is $73 and includes Annie’s three favorite titles of the month.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our new website:
Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley
It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han
On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Flying Solo by Linda Holmes
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays
The Midcoast by Adam White
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 Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson.
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Transcript:
Annie Jones [00:00:01] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South.
[00:00:24] "I know there's a lot of information out there and it seems like it's mostly junk, like a bunch of old newspapers stacked in the garage. But I ask you to see it the way I see it. See it as cave drawings. See it as dinosaur footprints hardened into rock. See the miraculous evidence that you were here." Carter Bays, The Mutual Friend.
[00:00:51] I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, I'm recapping the books I read in June. If you've ever wondered what life is like in-store at the Bookshelf, follow us on Instagram. We're busy sharing new release recaps, staff favorite books, and glimpses into life in our small southern town. You can find us at Bookshelftville on Instagram and at Bookshelf Thomasville on Facebook. We would love to connect with you there. Now, the books I read in June-- I read a lot of books in June, and it was a really good reading month for me. I read a few ARCs, I read books via audiobook. I discovered some books serendipitously instead of in advanced planning, which always is just a sign that my reading life is doing really well. And that's really nice because because I feel like it's been hit or miss over the last month, even as I've been reading good books, it just has felt like my reading life has not always been finding a consistent rhythm. But I feel really happy with the books I read this month, and it feels like I read a wide range of lit, mostly fiction, but I think a nice mix.
[00:02:06] So the first book I finished in June was Cult Classic. This is a book by Sloane Crosley. I love Sloane Crosley and I have read her essay collections and her fiction. So a couple of her essay collections, they got great titles. Look Alive Out There is one. And I Was Told There'd be Cake is another one. She also wrote a fiction book called The Class, which was this kind of literary suspense almost, maybe not suspense, maybe a literary mystery, but I thought was really clever and well done. It just feels like everything I read by her is smart. Do you know what I mean? Like, everything I read by her, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, whatever the genre, it just feels like she's really thought about it and it's really smart without being over my head. And Cult Classic is no different. So I had this ARC and instead wound up listening to part of this in audiobook format and then I also read it. I will tell you that I preferred the physical copy and that's not the case with all the books I read this month. But in this case I did prefer the physical copy. Now Sloane Crosley does narrate the audiobook edition. And so if you enjoy hearing works read by their authors, you might enjoy that. But I prefer the physical book. But I did both and I really enjoyed this book. It has been such a struggle to figure out how quite to describe this book, which is also true of the class, which is why I'm like, this is just who she is as a writer.
[00:03:38] Cult Classic is about a young woman named Lola. Lola is a young woman living in New York City. She goes to a bar one night, and as she's leaving, she runs into an ex, which is not that unusual despite New York's size. My understanding is that is not unusual. And it did not feel unusual to Lola. But the next night she runs into another ex and another ex. And as she's kind of pondering these coincidences and feeling like they are not really coincidences, she comes across this dilapidated old synagogue and one of her friends takes her in and basically informs her, actually, you're right, these are not coincidences. You are a test case that this organization we are running is hosting. And we are trying to figure out if we can run this organization almost like a tech company. It's like a-- I don't know, almost like a WeWork situation where it starts out as one thing and it evolves into another. But it's this tech company that is trying to decide is there a way to help people receive closure by orchestrating meetings with their exes? And will this help people ultimately find love? So like a dating app meets a tech company, meets in Lola's opinion, a cult. And I'll leave it up to you, the reader, to decide if it is, in fact, a cult or not. But that is where the book title gets its name.
[00:05:07] So Lola has to decide if she's going to continue on as a test case and kind of help this organization with questionable practices and questionable ethics. And is she going to do that so that she can ultimately find love? She's engaged. She thinks she's in love, but she's not quite sure. It's not really what she pictured. It's not what she thought. And so she's wondering, is there something better out there? Which I think is a common problem when we feel like we have infinite possibilities. And so I really liked all of the different things that Sloane Crosley is playing with here. The reason I have hesitated as a bookseller to describe this is because it just feels like an amalgamation of a lot of different things. To some extent, there's a romantic element where Lola is in love and she's trying to navigate her own love life. So in that way, it reads like romance or romance fiction. It's also, to me, a little sci-fi. Remember, The Circle by Dave Eggers? I feel like there are similarities very much with that. And then it's also kind of a mystery and figuring out why this is happening to Lola and what's going on behind the scenes. So it's suspenseful. So it's suspense meets sci-fi meets romance, women's fiction. And I really liked it. It all worked.
[00:06:24] Like, I finished this book and thought that was so clever. That was literally my thought as I kind of closed the last page. It was so clever and interesting and I've not read anything like it. Yes, there are similarities to some women's fiction, like even Emily Giffin or something. Yes, there's some similarities to The Circle. Yes, there's similarities to even Blake Crouch kind of. Sort of. But this is entirely its own thing. And I think that's what Sloane Crosley continues to do. It's kind of write her own fiction that is really unlike anything else. I was really impressed by it. I liked it, thoroughly enjoyed it. Think it'd be a great summer book. Also weirdly felt like it could move into fall if you're a seasonal reader. So it is Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley. The audiobook is good, but I preferred the physical copy for what it's worth. Then I read It's Not Summer Without You. This is the second book in Jenny Han's The Summer I Turned Pretty Trilogy. We are reading this at the bookshelf in our Young Adult Book Club for the summer. We are just about to wrap that up. We are finishing the last book in the trilogy. Look, I like the second book, actually, a lot more than the first. The first certainly set the tone and I liked certain things about it, but I struggled with Belly.
[00:07:35] Belly is the main character. I struggled with her a little bit and did not find her to be a super compelling protagonist. I'm also wondering if that is because I am old. Like, I don't want to blame Belly for that. It may just be that Belly feels very young to me. However, book two-- and Lucy, who's reading along with me and Olivia, Lucy agreed. Lucy felt like book two really made things a little bit more interesting, gave us more compelling narrators and characters, gave us more insight into some characters we already liked. The Unsung Hero. And interestingly, I think Vanity Fair just did a story about this because The Summer I Turned Pretty has just been turned into an Amazon Prime television series. And I have started the show and I really like it, although it again feels young to me. But I'm enjoying it. And I love the house. I love the summer vibes. But this Vanity Fair article talked about how Laurel, the mom of Belly, really functions as the hero of the show. And I would argue she's actually given quite a bit to do in the show. In the books, I find her to be the hero of the books as well, and all of us kind of reading in our book club. And maybe that's because we're all women of a certain age.
[00:08:47] But we all really love Laurel and think she is the most compelling character in The Summer I Turned Pretty, which is funny because it's a young adult trilogy, but I really think Laurel is painted with such a nuanced brush, and I really like her. And I found that to be true in the TV show, and we're given a lot more of Laurel in book two. So if you are reading along with the Young Adult Book Club, I think most of us agreed book two was more compelling than book one. If you are not reading these books, I do think they're very fun for summer. Read them now because I don't think they'll have the same magic in the fall. But they are very fun and I think it's been very fun to read them in a group and to read them and now watch the TV show. I'm very glad I read the books first, although I think certainly the show perhaps could stand on its own. But I really have enjoyed the experience of reading these in a group and then now watching the television adaptation. I'm intrigued with Jenny Hun's career and the decisions that she's making. And I like this trilogy, and I'm anxious to finish it. Lucy even said after she read book two that she immediately wanted to read book three, and I think she did. I'm trying to wait so that I can discuss it properly in a group setting.
[00:10:03] But book two definitely lent itself to finishing the trilogy and really trying to figure out this love triangle between Bailey, Jeremiah and Conrad. Jeremiah and Conrad are brothers. It feels very Dawson's Creek. If you're an elder millennial or early Gen X, very Dawson's Creek. I'm convinced that Jenny Han must have been a Dawson's Creek fan because this book screams Dawson's Creek in all the right way. So that is It's Not Summer Without You book two in the Summer I Turned Pretty Trilogy by Jenny Han. Then I read On the Rooftop. This is one of the ARC I read this month. So this book does not release until September 6th, but it is On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. You know her from, I believe, the Revisionists. She's written a couple of really popular, really good literary fiction books that I have not read. And I am so sorry to say that because I love this book. So now I'm going to have to go back and revisit her other works. So On the Rooftop is about a family of black women in 1950s San Francisco. Ruth, Esther and Chloe are sisters and then their mom is Vivian. All of these women kind of narrate the book in alternating chapters. And it really worked for me. This narration worked for me. I liked hearing from each of the sisters. I liked hearing their perspectives. And interestingly enough, I liked all of them.
[00:11:25] So sometimes when a book is told in these alternating voices, there's one or two voices that I find the most interesting. But in this case, I loved all the sisters and the mom and thought all of their voices were really necessary to get to fully understand what was happening in the story. So Ruth, Esther and Chloe sing and they are in a women's singing group called, I believe, the Salvation I want to say. I'm thinking something like The Temptations. It's these three women and they sing beautifully. And their mom really has orchestrated their career. And you can tell that the mom perhaps married very young and maybe doesn't think that's the route her daughters should take and sees talent in them that she wants to bring to the surface. And so she has kind of orchestrated their careers. By the time the book opens, these women have been singing together for a long time. They are in their early twenties, with the exception, I think, of Chloe, who's the youngest sister, and she's older teens. So they sing in their neighborhood in San Francisco. The setting of this book is very vivid. You very much feel like you are in San Francisco. You're in this neighborhood where there are these thriving small businesses owned by black men and women.
[00:12:35] You've got these really great music clubs and jazz clubs and also a really lovely bookstore, all owned by black people living in community together. And then throughout the book, you get the sense that the neighborhood is changing and gentrification is on its way and what that's going to do to the landscape of this neighborhood. But the book is really about Ruth, Esther and Chloe and their deep desires to perhaps exist differently than their mother wants them to. And they all are ambitious and interesting in their own ways. But they have been led down this musical path that now not all of them want to take. And so how can they each become their own women without sacrificing their sister relationships and without sacrificing their relationship with their mom, who really has just done so much for them and wants them to move in this direction and not all of them do. I thought this book was so good. It is quiet. This isn't a hugely plot driven novel. This is mostly about the women at the heart of the book and the decisions that they make and who they're trying to become. And it's also about a neighborhood. So if you're like me and you love books with a deep sense of place and you like really character driven literary fiction that is not boring. I think sometimes people think character driven means boring. That's not what it means at all. This book is not slow moving. It's just quiet. It's just about normal, average people trying to solve average everyday problems of ambition and motherhood and love.
[00:14:19] I really, really, like this book. If you like Brit Bennett, I think this will especially appeal to you. This definitely scratch that itch for me and I am very excited to hand sell this one in September. So that it's called On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. It's out on September 6th. Obviously, I will try to remind you closer to time, because I know that this is far in advance, although September will be here, guys, before you know it. Then I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. If you listen to From the Front Porch, you already know how I feel about this book. But if you are one of our listeners who only listens to these recap episodes, I read this as part of our Backlist Book Club series. So Hunter McLendon and I-- you know him as Shelf by Shelf. He and I are reading together this season or this year backlist titles that are Pulitzer winners. So earlier we read Beloved by Toni Morrison. That episode was back in February, and then episode 377, we covered Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I had never read this before and neither had Hunter. I thought for sure he had read it. I had read excerpts of this book in college and in high school, and it was such a surprise and a joy to read this really dense work of memoir and of nonfiction and of nature writing. And I absolutely loved it. I have not been able to stop thinking about it. I walked around my house hugging this book. I posted about it on Instagram.
[00:15:49] When I finish a book like this, I just don't want it to leave me. And so I literally walked around my house kind of clutching this book to my breast. I love these words so very much. And so if you're like me and you had not read Annie Dillard before, I would encourage you to pick this one up. Even if the first 50 or 60 or so pages are difficult, I would encourage you to press on. I do believe it is worth it and you're just in for a really wonderful treat. If you are so inclined, you can also go back and listen to Episode 377, where Hunter and I waxed philosophical about Annie Dillard and about her beautiful prose. So that is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, featured on Episode 377 of From the Front Porch. Next up, I read This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. This is a book I was so looking forward to. I did not receive an ARC and so I got to read this one alongside everybody else, which is always kind of fun. I even preordered this one from another bookstore. I preordered this from Books Are Magic because I wanted to support Emma Straub and her work. So, look, I love Emma Straub. You probably know her from Modern Lovers or the Vacationers. I didn't realize this until just now, but I'm literally looking at my copy of The Vacationers. It's currently serving as a decorative item in my living room because of the beautiful color and the summery vibes that the cover gives.
[00:17:12] So I love Emma Straub. She's an auto buy for me. She's an auto read. And This Time Tomorrow I did not know too much about, except I knew it certainly felt personal. I follow Emma Straub on Instagram and so I know a little bit about her own relationship with her dad, and I knew this was a father-daughter story. So the book centers on Alice. Alice is approaching her 40th birthday and on the night of her 40th birthday, she winds up accidentally going back in time to her 16th birthday. And she gets to see not only herself as a teenager, which I think is what we assume maybe the book is going to be about. But the book is, in my opinion, more about her rediscovering her father. In the present day, as Alice is turning 40, her dad is in the hospital and kind of on the brink of death, and Alice is coming to terms with that. Her dad was a single dad and raised her and she is trying to navigate caring for him and caring for herself. And so when she goes back in time, she really sees her dad in new eyes and sees this young version of her dad with new eyes. There's a lot of time travel in this book, so this book is heavy on the time travel. It reminds me a lot of the movie that I love About Time. So that movie is great. By the way, if you've never seen it, About Time is one of me and Jordan's favorite movies that is a father-son story.
[00:18:39] This is a father-daughter story, but very, very, similar in terms of the type of time travel that they're doing. As time travel is being explained to her, I felt like, oh yes, this is how it works in About Time, or this is how it works in The Time Traveler's Wife or whatever. And so if you have read other time travel books, that trope will be familiar to you. The rules will be familiar to you. In the book, Leonard is a fiction writer of some sci-fi books, time travel books, and I thought that was a really lovely touch and very funny. Look, this is different. To me, it is not quite like The Vacationers or Modern Lovers. Those books are about a large, kind of dysfunctional, funny families. This is about two people. This is about a father and a daughter. There is a best friend who also plays a pretty important role, and I do love that character a lot. But this is really about Alice and Leonard. It's also about New York City. So I recommended this to Ashley on a previous episode of the podcast, and she was a little hesitant, I think, because of the time travel bits and it is a little slow to start. I don't know if every reader felt that way, but it was the case for me where it felt like, oh yeah, I like this. And then by the end I was crying. So I started off thinking, sure, this is good. And then by the end I was very invested and very emotionally compelled.
[00:20:01] And so I think if you can just press through the first few chapters and even if you are not a huge time travel fan. Like, I'm not particularly a science fiction reader in any way. But I really did wind up loving this book. I love the relationship Alice has with her dad. There are some elements that are reminiscent of, I think, the Taylor Jenkins Reid book, Maybe in Another Life, where Alice is trying to figure out what kind of life she wants. That part of the book was good, but it was not as good in my mind as the father-daughter story and as the clear love that Emma Straub has for New York. And if you are planning a trip to New York City, I highly recommend picking this one up. I love reading books about where I'm going or where I've been. We'll get to some other titles in a second. But this book, I just immediately felt transported back to New York, the Upper West Side, Brooklyn. So many of the landmarks because of my recent visits felt very vivid to me. I really loved this book. It's out now. I think Emma Straub just announced the movie rights were purchased. So I think we'll be seeing more of this title. I really liked it. I think it's worth your time This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub.
[00:21:20] Then I read Flying Solo. This is by Linda Holmes. I was able this month to read a lot of books by familiar voices, which is really fun books that I had been looking forward to. I had been looking forward to This Time Tomorrow. I was very much looking forward to Flying Solo. Linda Holmes is the co-host, one of the hosts of Pop Culture Happy Hour, the NPR podcast about pop culture. I have not listen to that podcast in a long time, but I love that podcast. I think I've just dropped off the wagon during pandemic times and probably need to hop back on because I really loved that crew and their voices. And Linda Holmes also wrote a book a few years ago that I really liked called Every Drink Starts Over. I believe that came out in 2019. That book is, in my opinion, traditional romantic comedy. It features a baseball player, a la Sam Malone. I really like that book. It's set in Maine, this great Maine setting that I know Linda Holmes really takes personally. Like, I think she grew up in part in Maine, and you can certainly see her love for that state in her books. So Flying Solo takes place in the same world. There's even a brief little blink [Inaudible] reference to Evvie Drake. And I thought that was really fun and charming and felt like, oh, yeah, I'm back in this world.
[00:22:32] But what I do want readers to know is that Flying Solo is not, in my opinion, a romantic comedy. Now, there are romantic elements. There is a romance. But again that is not, for me, the heart of this book. The main character in Flying Solo is Laurie. She's a single woman and has just a-- what is the right word that I'm looking for. She just has a ton of brothers, like a parcel of brothers. And she grew up frequently retreating to her great aunt's house because that was where the quiet was, and she could kind of be her own person. And it wasn't loud and disruptive because just a house full of loud brothers, she just often needed to escape. So she and her aunts developed this really lovely relationship and the aunt has died. She was in her nineties. She's lived this great full life that Laurie really admires. And now Laurie has taken it upon herself to go through the house to kind of clean everything up, to donate things. It's kind of her task because her aunt was single and does not have kids to do this for her. And so Laurie decides to fill that role. And I loved this so much because I also have an aunt who is single and has been single her whole life, and she means a great deal to me and a great deal to my family. And so that part of the story felt very familiar just to have this aunt who has this really vibrant, interesting life, who has wonderful stories to share and who has always been firmly her own person. I just love that very much, and I don't see it all the time in literature. So I commend Linda Holmes for giving us that character and for giving us this relationship.
[00:24:17] The book then even becomes a sort of mystery, which I loved. Like, I don't know that everyone will. And that's why I want to tell you as a reader, if you are thinking, yay, Evvie Drake starts over part two. To me, this isn't that. It's not a romcom in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, it's this lovely love story between Laurie and her aunt. And then it is also about Laurie's discovery of this wooden duck that she just has to know the history of this wooden duck. There's like a kind of cryptic message revolving around the duck. And so Laurie once again takes this mission, takes it upon herself to figure out where the duck came from, what it means, what kind of mystery is involved here? I love the part of the book Laurie has her high school boyfriend who's now a small town librarian who kind of helps her. And so that is where the romance comes into play. I thought this book was so fun, filled with a lot of interesting characters. If Emma Straub book is about two people, I think flying solo, ironically, despite the title, is really about a group of people who flock together and who come together to solve this mystery and to figure out the role they're going to play in each other's lives. And I love that kind of book.
[00:25:34] So I really liked this, despite it not being maybe the romantic comedy I was expecting. And I really think other readers will like this one too, as long as they go into it with the right expectations. I think this is good for fans of Rebecca Serle. I read another book this month, also set in Maine, and I just want to move to Maine. So I don't think that's a possibility, but I think I'd really fit there. I think my personality would really do well in Maine. And because of our trip last summer, I think I'm finding a bit of nostalgia even in some of these Maine-set books. So anyway, great setting for fans of Rebecca Serle. I listen to this one on audiobook. It is narrated by Julia Whalen, who I really like, who a lot of you really like. And so if you were on the fence, I certainly think you could read the physical copy of this, but I loved my audiobook experience. I really loved reading this. It was to the point where Jordan was overhearing it. He was like, "Hey, it's that lady again." Like, I feel like Julia Whalen has been in our house a lot over the last couple of months. So Flying Solo by Linda Holmes. Narrated in audiobook format by Julia Whalen. Then I moved on to another audiobook. This is my secret for finishing my book club books. So my book club meets every month. The book we selected for the month of June was Mary Jane. This is not a backlist title necessarily, but it's now out in paperback. I think it released last year by Jessica Anya Blau and I have discovered that if my book club is reading a book I have not already read, I find it very difficult to read because I'm often reading for work and I'm reading other things.
[00:27:07] And so for the last several months-- I think the last three months, the moment our book club was announced, I downloaded the audiobook. And I thought, at the very least, I will be able to listen to this book, even if I can't finish it. But I finished it. I finished my book club books this year because of audiobooks. So thank you audiobooks for helping us out. So this audiobook was narrated by Caitlin Kinnunen. And I will be very honest with you, I was like, "Uh-oh! This is not a Julia Wahlen situation." And I was very unsure until I realized that this book is narrated by 14- year-old Mary Jane. And so Caitlin Kinnunen has a very youthful sounding voice, and the narration actually wound up being pretty perfect. I think at first I was just very stuck on the fact that this sounded like a kid. No offense to Caitlin Kinnunen, and I don't know how old she is, but she sounded like a teenager. And then I realized, oh, wait, no, this book is narrated by a teenager. So Mary Jane is 14 years old. She lives a very sheltered life with her mother and father in Baltimore, Maryland. And she gets a summer gig as a nanny for the Cohn family. And it's Dr. and Mrs. Cohn. He's a psychologist, and his wife is beautiful and kind of hippie. This book is set in the seventies, I think late sixties, early seventies, and they just live this life that looks nothing like Mary Jane's life.
[00:28:34] And so she's immediately enamored by this couple and then their very loud, spunky, daughter, Izzy. Izzy was very interesting to hear narrated. And so I think listening to this one played a big role in how I enjoyed this book. But 14 year old Mary Jane goes, she becomes the nanny to Izzy. She essentially becomes a grown up, an adult figure in this book because of her own rather strict upbringing. She's very smart. She's very capable. She loves to clean, organize and cook, and no one in the Cohn household loves to do those things. And so Mary Jane really does become an adult type figure. And then, lo and behold, Dr. Cohn allows a patient of his to come stay in his home. And the patient is a rock star named Jimmy and his beautiful movie star girlfriend, wife Sheba. And so I had a friend who pictured this is like Sonny and Cher. My friend, Courtney, pictured them as Sonny and Cher. I almost pictured the woman who played I Dream of Jeannie as Sheba. Like, it's just these characters are so vivid. And I've got to tell you, if you read Daisy Jones and the Six and you were like, I wish I could read another book like that, I think this one comes kind of close. It's Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones and the Six. Mary Jane is just this sheltered young woman trying to figure out who she is. And now she's staying in the same house or she's in the same vicinity as this rock star and this movie star. And she doesn't quite know what to do with herself. She is completely in love and in awe of the free wheeling nature of these people.
[00:30:19] I went back and forth. I felt like Mary Jane's parents were so strict and really kind of villainous in a way that I was just frustrated by. And yet I do think it's probably true to a certain kind of person. I kept wanting more nuance and then I thought, well, no, maybe this is just who some people are. And then I also was torn because as much as I loved Mary Jane figuring out who she is and kind of coming of age alongside these really free spirited people, I also felt sorry for Mary Jane because I felt like she had to fill this grown up void. But, nevertheless, I thought this was a great book, really fun to read alongside a book club. I think it would make a great book club discussion. It certainly did for us. Again, it's out in paperback now. It came out in hardback. The paperback is laughably different looking than the hardback. We discuss that in Book Club a bit and what publishers must have been thinking. The hardcover definitely looks like a fall book to me with a record player on the front, and then the paperback screams Beach Read with this kind of blond woman on the cover. I think this book is very summer to me. I liked the audiobook narration. I felt like it was true to the book. I think you could equally just put this one in your beach bag and read the physical paperback. I really like this book. I think it would be great for book clubs. Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau. Perfect for fans of Daisy Jones and the Six.
[00:31:44] Then I picked up-- and I had hesitated to pick this one up, I'll be honest, because it's so thick. It's about 500 pages. I picked up the Mutual Friend. This is by Carter Bly. He is the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother. And How I Met Your Mother ended in such a way that I just don't care. I just thought the end of the show did not do it for me. And as a result, I feel like I have no desire to go back and rewatch How I Met Your Mother. But I don't want to take that all out on Carter Bly. So I picked this one up despite the 500 page length and despite the How I Met Your Mother of it all, because I was just curious what this could be about. And there were parts of How I Met Your Mother that I really did love. Any ensemble comedy I'm kind of interested in. And so this book is a little bit like Cult Classic. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but I'd like you to trust me because it's really good. It's like sneaky good. It's an ensemble cast a a little bit like How I Met Your Mother might be considered, right? So it's an ensemble cast. It feels a little bit like the main character is Alice, just because that's who we are introduced to first. Alice Quick. She's a young woman whose mother has died and that's not a spoiler. I don't think. I think you kind of immediately know that something has happened in Alice's past and she's a little bit wayward, a little bit unsure of herself. But she's really starting to be the age where that's no longer adorable, you know what I mean? And so she's trying to decide if she's going to finally take the leap and go to med school or if she's going to continue being a nanny. She's just trying to figure her life out.
[00:33:20] Her brother is this tech guy, tech bro who made millions of dollars by inventing an app. And he's married to this Southern woman whose name is, I believe, Marianne. But throughout the novel, she's just known by her nickname Pitter Pat, which is the most Southern thing I can think of, just where this grown adult woman goes by the name Pitter Pat. And Alice finds a roommate. The roommate plays a role. Like, just this great ensemble cast where all the characters are really interesting and funny and almost caricature, but they're painted with enough tenderness that they're all really interesting. If you were to be like, "Annie, what's this book about?" I would be at a loss for words. It's about these people. That what I know. It's about these people who are figuring out how to live their lives alongside technology. You might be in your car or in your home thinking, Annie, that sounds awful. That sounds so boring. We are already trying to do that in our normal, everyday lives. Why do we have to read about it? I don't know, but I think you do. I love this book. I have a big smile on my face talking about it. I really like this book, but I don't know how to describe it. I'm at a real loss here because it's about Alice. It's about Pitter Pat. It's about Alice's roommate. It's about Alice's brother who goes off to become a monk. It's about Alice's boyfriends plural.
[00:35:07] And it's a lot about technology and just the role that cell phones and apps and dating sites, the role that all of these things kind of play in our lives and kind of how distracted we are. I don't know why it works, but it really does. And about halfway through the book-- I think this is really important for you to know. It's 500 pages long. I never lost interest. A lot happens. There is a lot of plot here. The plot is not the main point. Definitely stuff happens and is interesting, but that's not the point of the book. The point of the book is who these people become over the course of-- I think it takes place over the course of a few months, all while Alice is practicing for the MCAT and it also spans years. It kind of goes back and forth in time. The chapters are a little bit longer than I typically like, and yet I never was bogged down. It felt surprisingly easy to read, despite the fact that I am struggling to tell you what it's about. I don't know how best to sell this, and that's why I'm here on this podcast telling you to take a chance on the Mutual Friend. It's got a star review in Kirkus, if that's important to you. It's certainly while not always important to me, it does help me know sometimes the direction a book is going. I really like this book. If you follow me on Instagram, as of this recording, I have not heard of my review, but I think it's going to be a four and a half star book for me. I'll see where it sits at the end of the year to see if it's one that I still really remember and look back on with fondness.
[00:36:53] But I really liked it and I'm glad I read it. I'm really glad I read it. It was kind of sitting on my ARC stack and I don't know what compelled me to pick it up. It's so thick that I really had no desire, and then I picked it up by the pool one day and was hooked immediately. And that is what I will say. If you're wandering through your local bookstore or through your library and you pick this one up and you read a few pages, if you are not hooked, you're not going to be. That's the tip I will give. If you're not hooked immediately, you won't be. I think the readers who this book is for will immediately be hooked. I was immediately hooked and could not put it down. Really was invested in all of these characters and what they were doing. Very satisfying ending. Very moving ending. I was curious where this book was going. I'd almost compare it a little bit. And I think this book is better. I think Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a better book but it is comparable. Just the themes The Mutual Friend is dealing with about technology and friendship and relationships. It's dealing with the same things. That's the comp title I'll give, which you probably haven't read yet because it's not out yet. But Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a good title comp for The Mutual Friend. So The Mutual Friend by Carter Bly. It is out now. I highly recommend.
[00:38:13] Last, I read another kind of serendipitous book, so I picked up The MidCoast. This is by Adam White. I literally was browsing my own store's shelves, I think I was reshelving books, and this one was face out and I thought, what is this? It has a very striking cover. It's got this beautiful blue sky and this pop of red barn. And I thought, why haven't I seen this? But sometimes that's how I walk through the store. Oh, wait a minute. Because I feel pretty familiar. I mean, I do a lot of the adult book buying, especially the seasonal book buying. And so when I see a book I don't remember, I'm a little stunned. And so I picked this one up, read the back cover and thought, darn, taking it home with me today. And I did. I think maybe the next day is when I took it home. But this is by Adam White. It's a debut novel set in Maine. So this was the book I was referencing when I was talking about Flying Solo set in Maine in a really memorable way. Like, if you are traveling to Maine this year and you need a book, pick this one. I really think you would get a good sense of the state by reading this book. So I picked this one up because of the description. So the main character is Andrew he grew up in this small town in Maine. I'm not going to attempt the name for you because I would butcher it, but a very typical New England City name. And he grew up in this town, the kind of upper middle class, maybe middle class, and went away to boarding school and college. He thought he would never be back. But now he's back. He coaches lacrosse and is an English teacher and a writer.
[00:39:51] And the book opens at this kind of lobster bake party that this former acquaintance of Andrew's is hosting. So Ed Thatch also grew up in Maine, but a little bit perhaps more lower middle class, grew up as a lobsterman. I almost pictured PC kind of sort of from Dawson's Creek. This is my second Dawson's Creek reference. It's fine. Just kind of this working class guy. And now years later, he is one of the wealthiest-- if not the wealthiest, man in town. He owns a lot of property. He's got this beautiful waterfront home. And that's where this lobster bake is taking place. Andrew is there with his family and just this really lovely setting. And the book opens with this party. And while Andrew is kind of chatting with Ed and maybe even doing some snooping, as I think writers are prone to do, all of a sudden, blue and red lights flashing lights come up upon the house and you realize this book is going to take a turn. It's not just going to be lobster bakes. And so Andrew has done some digging and he finds a manila folder in the home of Ed in Ed's office. And the manila folder has a crispy burnt car, clearly with two bodies in the front seat. And it's just a photo of this burnt out shell of a car and these two dead bodies inside. And from that point forward, Andrew tries to figure out and it kind of goes back and forth in time trying to figure out how Ed became who he became and what happened.
[00:41:36] I definitely thought this was going to be a suspense thriller. And it definitely has suspense elements. I would not say thriller. It is suspenseful, almost like-- I think the best comp title I can come up with is Long Bright River. It reminds me a little bit of Long Bright River, in that it's dealing with to some extent the opioid crisis and the drug epidemic and the toll it takes on small towns and the people that live in these small towns. I loved this book. I finished it and was kind of depressed I'd finish it so quickly because I just really liked spending time in this world, despite the world being a little dark and sinister in parts. I just thought the characters were interesting. I think I read the Kirkus review and the Kirkus reviewer felt like the characters weren't quite deep enough. And I get that. This to me is a nice balance of plot driven and character driven. I think my friend Julianna would like it. I think Olivia would like it, but I also really liked it. And it's quiet, but a lot happens. Like, enough happens to keep you going, which is why it kind of reminds me of Long Bright River. It's like an atmospheric crime novel. Yeah, that's it. I landed on it. Atmospheric crime novel. It took me a minute, but I got there. I really liked this book a lot. It's out now. I am so glad I stumbled upon it. I don't know why it missed me. Obviously, I bought it. Like, at some point I picked it for the bookshelf. At some point I read about it in a catalog, but I really liked this one. It's The MidCoast by Adam White. Really great summer reading, especially if you're headed to Maine or if you just want to feel like you're headed to Maine.
[00:43:17] So those are the books I read in June. I thought that was fun. I thought it was a fun grouping of literature. I kind of can't wait to see what the rest of the summer holds for me. As we have done this year, we are offering a reading recap bundle for the month of June. This month's bundle is a little bit more expensive because it's three hardback books. So I didn't know. I thought Mary Jane was a book that you could read on audiobook format if you wanted to. So instead, I'm featuring three hardback books that I really love, The MidCoast, that's the crime novel by Adam White. The Mutual Friend, that's the book I can't quite describe, but I promise it's worth it by Carter Bly. And then Cult Classics, Sloane Crosley, which I think will appeal to a wide range of readers as well. So the MidCoast, The Mutual Friend and Cult Classic all good summer books, but I think not your stereotypical summer beach reads. So not Book Lovers by Emily Henry, not the Vacationers by Emma Straub, but just really good, compelling lit that I think is still worth your beach bag, even though there's not a beach on the front. Does that make sense?
[00:44:22] So the MidCoast, the Mutual Friend and Cult Classic, you can buy all three of them in a bundle for $73. That bundle is at a discounted price. If you buy the bundle, you get the discount. So $73, you can find the June bundle online through the link in our show notes or just go to Bookshelfthomas.com, Click or tap Podcast and Shop From the Front Porch. I hope your summer reading has been going as well as mine has.
[00:44:46] This week I'm reading Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson.
[00:44:54] 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 at Bookshelftville, and all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website. Bookshelfthomasville.com.
[00:45:10] A full transcript of today's episode can be found at Fromthefrontporchpodcast.com.
[00:45:15] 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.
[00:45:24] Our executive producers of today's episode are Donna Hetchler. Angie Erickson. Cammy Tidwell. Chantalle. C.
Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:45:31] Nicole Marsee. Wendy Jenkins. Laurie Johnson. Kate Johnston Tucker.
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