Episode 410 || January Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in January. As always, we’re offering a Reading Recap Bundle, which features Annie’s three favorite books she read this past month.
You can get the books mentioned in this episode on our brand-new website:
January Reading Recap Bundle ($74):
Decent People by De’Shawn Charles Winslow
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
Graceland, At Last by Margaret Renkl
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (releases 4-4-23)
Decent People by De’Shawn Charles Winslow
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
Graceland, At Last by Margaret Renkl
Spare by Prince Harry
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny (releases 4-18-23)
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez (releases 3-7-23)
My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin (releases 2-14-23)
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 Rikers by Graham Rayman.
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We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are... Donna Hetchler, Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle C, Kate O’Connell, Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, and Laurie Johnson.
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] "It's okay. I'm not judging. I strongly believe that we all should be able to choose our own ways to be ashamed. Claire Jimenez. What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez.
[00:00:38] I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, I'm recapping the books I read in January.
[00:00:47] Before we get started, a reminder that tonight is our February From the Front Porch Book Club meeting. Floor manager Olivia and bookseller Kaela are leading a Zoom conversation about Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stephenson. Our From the Front Porch Book Club meets on the first Thursday of each month. Those conversations are recorded so you can watch them live or later. And our book club selections come from our Shelf Subscription program. To join our monthly discussions, just join our Patreon at the $20 a month level. You'll receive access to our Zoom book club meetings, plus our monthly Q&A sessions and our bonus Conquer a Classic episodes. Just go to Patreon.com/fromthefrontporch to find out more. We would love for you to join us. Okay. I had a pretty good reading month actually. And statistically, if I look at my StoryGraph results, this makes a lot of sense. January and February are typically good reading months for me. I sometimes wonder if that's because these are months when Jordan is pretty busy with work and with his job and so he's not always home in the evenings, which gives me less TV time and more reading time. I also wonder if it's just the nature of hibernation and of winter that these months are typically pretty good reading months for me. I do not have a ton of maybe five star reads this month, but I liked most, if not all, of what I read and I can't wait to tell you about it.
[00:02:16] So my first book of 2023 was Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, and I had high expectations for this book. I love Curtis Sittenfeld. She is the author of the books Rodham, Eligible, Prep, American Wife. I've read them all. I've loved them all. This one is not my favorite by her. Now, maybe you're like me and now I have just broken your heart because you were really looking forward to this book. And so I would like to say it is an enjoyable book. I think it's fast, I read it very quickly. So Curtis Sittenfeld does a really good job in my mind of taking a subject that you think you are familiar with and then kind of turning it on its head. So Rodham, of course, is the fictional story of Hillary Rodham Clinton if perhaps she had not met and married Bill. Eligible is the modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice. American Wife is a fictionalized version of the Laura Bush story. And so she takes these real life things that we know about or could do research about, and she fictionalizes them and turns them into these really intricate, nuanced, compelling stories. So when I heard that she was writing a romantic comedy, I assumed that it was going to turn the genre upside down, it would elevate the genre or do something really unique with the genre. That is not what is happening here. This is a straight romantic comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld and I don't know why I assumed differently because it's in the title. It's just a romantic comedy. Now, I love romantic comedies. I love well-written romantic comedies. And we live in a time where well-written romantic comedies are a gift. They are also not impossible to find. I can name you two five star reads for me last year that I adored. I can think of Norah Goes Offscript and Funny You Should Ask, which were five star. Really wouldn't change much about romantic comedies that I loved. I love Carrie Winfrey's books. I think she is a fantastic writer of the romantic comedy.
[00:04:31] I wanted Curtis Sittenfeld to be a fantastic writer of the romantic comedy. And I think because we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of romance writers and romcom writers, because I know many people who are better romance readers than I am sometimes listen to this podcast or I know them in real life, they have no problem finding really excellent four and five star romances or romcoms because those authors exist. That work exists. And so I assumed this was going to be like a literary take on that genre. It's not. And as a result, I think it actually isn't as good as some of the other romantic comedies I've read in the last five years. The book is about Sally. She is a female writer for a very much inspired by almost identical to late night shows like Saturday Night Live. It's called The Night Owls. And she experiences some of the chauvinism or misogyny that might exist on a show like that. I really did like that part of the book where it's this really kind of funny behind the scenes look at what a late night show like that might look like, what Saturday Night Live might look like. You can tell that Curtis Sittenfeld has done her research into Saturday Night Live and has now fictionalized it into this book. The book is kind of divided into three parts. The first part deals with Sally and her career with The Night Owls. And then we get some letters in this middle section, and then we get a third part which is kind of a traditional romantic comedy. So while Sally is writing for The Night Owls, one of her fellow writers winds up dating one of the starlets who comes on The Night Owls Saturday Night Live. And Sally writes a script about this phenomena where a beautiful, young starlet winds up dating one of her kind of schlubby writer friends.
[00:06:32] And so she writes a skit about it, and she is commenting on how that really doesn't happen in reverse. None of the female writers she knows are going off with or having affairs with the really handsome heartthrobs who come on The Night Owls. It's something that she believes wouldn't work in reverse or doesn't work in reverse. The universe doesn't work that way. And so, of course, she meets Noah Brewster, who is this super handsome pop star. He comes on The Night Owls and they have this kind of flirtation, and he is clearly put off with her assumption that he might not date her because she is the female equivalent of a schlubby writer. That's the premise. And I think that's why I'm thinking of Nora Goes Off Script or Funny You Should Ask, because we already have these books about female writers who then wind up falling in love with these really hot actors or stars, and they work really well. Those books work really well. This one works a little less well to me, and I think it's because the character of Sally feels not fully drawn and insecure in ways that, sure, we all might be insecure. But despite the fact that this book spans, I think, a decade or so-- maybe even more, this book spans a certain period of time-- we don't really get to see her grow up, and it feels like she is holding the weight of the flaws in this book; whereas, Noah is like this fully formed, clearly goes to therapy adult. And it feels a little bit like, well, wait a minute, why can't Sally go to therapy? Why can't she be well-rounded and fully formed?
[00:08:17] I struggled with this one. I liked it. I think if you are a Curtis Sittenfeld reader, you should still check this one out. I'm not deterring you from reading it. My expectations were high and they were not met. I think you could still read this one and enjoy it. It is not as good, I think, as some other really good romantic comedies. I would sell somebody Nora Goes Off Script before I would sell them Romantic Comedy. I would sell them Eligible, which is Curtis Sittenfeld's other romantic comedy because it is her retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and it is hilarious and fun. If you've not read it, it's a great backlist title. That's what I would put in people's hands. This one is fine. I wanted it to be more. It's fine. I believe I gave it three and a half stars, maybe something like that, because it is well written and I finished it in a day. You'll be compelled to read it. I just wanted more out of Sally. I really wanted more out of Sally. Okay. That was romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. It comes out on April 4th. So you've got some time to think about it and maybe read some other romcoms, maybe read Eligible, see what you think. See if you want to go into this one. The good news is I finished Romantic Comedy and I did finish it quickly and it was enjoyable, just not quite what I wanted.
[00:09:34] But I immediately moved into the book Decent People by De'Shawn Charles Winslow, and I loved it. What a surprise this book was for me. I just didn't know what I was getting into. De'shawn Charles Winslow had a debut novel a couple of years ago called In West Mills, which looked right up my alley, but I did not read it for whatever reason. I can't even remember if I started it for a Literary Lunch and then never close the deal, I'm not quite sure. But I picked up this one and I didn't know, I wasn't sure is this going to be in that same world in that same vein? It is a departure, but it is in the same setting. Okay, so here's what I mean. So In West Mills, as I recall, was really great and got really good reviews. Historical fiction. This is more mystery suspense, almost criminal justice thriller. It's quieter than the descriptor thriller suggests, but it is in the same town as In West Mills. So In West Mills was in West Mills, North Carolina. And decent People is also set in West Mills in 1976. We immediately meet Jo. Jo has moved back home to West Mills from New York where she's been living. She's now, I want to say, in her mid-fifties. She's returning back home to marry her childhood sweetheart Lymp. Lymp is short for Olympus. And she's really looking forward to finally doing this thing. They knew each other as children, they'd fallen in love. She is ready to move back home. She's ready to give up her job in New York and come home to West Mills to settle down. And when she arrives, she discovers that Limp has been accused of killing his three half siblings. Now, he's not really been formally charged, but he is the sheriff's number one suspect and the town all thinks that Limp did it.
[00:11:35] And so what follows is kind of a whodunit where you're trying to figure out did limp really kill his three half siblings who are these really prominent members of this black community of West Mills? They're doctors. They ran a doctor's office and they were much loved or much loathed, depending on who you were in that community. They were complicated people. And Limp notoriously kind of butted heads with them frequently, mostly over domestic kind of-- they were half siblings, and so mostly arguing over money and care and things like that. So that is why Limp is kind of this assumed guilty person. And Jo kind of takes it upon herself to investigate. I thought the book would belong to Jo. I really did. We were introduced to her first. I just assumed we would be following along as Jo kind of did her own investigating. But, instead, you really get different people and different characters in West Mill. The book really belongs to the community of West Mills. It reminds me a little bit of the book All That's Left Unsaid, which came out last fall, where a sibling's brother, a young woman's brother, has been murdered and she kind of takes it upon herself to find her brother's killer. And the community, this Vietnamese-American community, kind of tightens up. They're trying to protect each other and they won't give her the information that she needs. West Mills is kind of this typical small town in the South, kind of gossipy, and they're all trying to figure out who did it. Maybe they know who did it, but they're trying to keep their lips sealed. They're trying not to get in trouble. They just want Limp to kind of take the fall.
[00:13:17] And so you spend the whole book wondering if Limp really did do it or if Jo is on to something. And the chapters, as I recall, are relatively short and they go between different narrators. And so sometimes you get Jo's perspective, sometimes you get another person who may be at the heart of the case but she didn't know it. So you get all these different West Mills voices, and I really loved that. So as much as I liked Jo and I liked her initial narration, it was kind of a pleasant surprise that the book alternated storytellers and they all were really effective. I found all of the storytelling equally interesting and compelling, and the community of West Mills completely compelling in a way that made me really curious what De'shawn Charles Winslow's first book In West Mills was like. I am adding that to my TBR because I liked this book so much. To me, if you are an Annie reader, meaning you enjoy maybe character driven literary fiction and you are an Olivia reader where you love plot driven suspense, I think this marries both of those things really well. It's not maybe the loud, bombastic, fast paced, heart thumping thriller that you might like, but it is kind of this quiet crime drama. And I really, really liked it. I really had no idea what to expect and maybe that's part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. But if you have read In West Mills, I think you could certainly pick this one up and enjoy it. But if you're like me and you didn't and that book kind of slipped by you, I think now's the time to pick up De'shawn Charles Winslow and give him a go because this was fantastic and a really great way to start the reading year. It kind of felt like cozying up with a good mystery. And you really did. All of the people were really interesting and well-drawn. So that is Decent People by De'shawn Charles Winslow, and it is out right now.
[00:15:05] I read so many books at the first part of the year because Jordan had COVID, so I really flew through a few of these. When your spouse is in quarantine, there's really not much you do. And so I next picked up Really Good Actually, by Monica Heisey. Monica Heisey was a writer on Schitt's Creek, and so you can see a lot of that kind of snarky humor in this book. The cover is very striking. It's got like a red haired woman's bun and tears streaming down her face. It's very eye catching. And this is like a coming of age story. Remember when we all really liked Eleanor Oliphant, like those kinds of books? This is kind of like that where you've got this young woman who's I think 29, on the cusp of 30, but she is recently divorced. So she and her boyfriend, significant other, had dated for forever for like a decade. They finally decided to get married. They married and less than eight months later they decided to get divorced. And so she is now out in the world dating again, but also completely distraught over losing this relationship of the last decade. And what does it mean to be divorced before you're 30? Like, many of your friends have not even gotten married yet and you now have been married and are divorced. And what does splitting your assets look like when you're 29? So all of this is happening. Our main character is Maggie, and Maggie reminded me a little bit of the main character in a book that releases, I think, in February, but I read it last year called Mame.
[00:16:37] And in a similar way Maggie is in her late twenties, Mame I think was in her mid to late twenties and they're like figuring out who they are. It's these adults coming of age stories and I like that genre. I really do. I sometimes find the main characters of this genre a little grating, but I love often the supporting characters who surround them, and that is certainly true for Really Good Actually. So Maggie kind of got on my nerves as the novel progressed, but I did feel deeply for her. She is clearly going through something really hard, but she occasionally got on my nerves. And so thank goodness it's like Monica Heisey knew we needed really well-rounded, interesting side characters and support characters to be there for Maggie and to be there for us, the reader, as we kind of guide Maggie through this year of her life. Really Good Actually reminds me a lot of Fleishman Is in Trouble. Only Fleishman is like in his mid-forties-- maybe mid to late forties-- dating for the first time; whereas, Maggie is 29. But the themes of the books feel really similar, especially the first half of Fleischman feels like the first half of Really Good Actually. My favorite relationship in Really Good Actually is this relationship that Maggie has with her boss and the way this older woman kind of becomes a mentor to her and takes her under her wing, shows her the way forward, and shows her what life can look like whether you decide to continue dating and meet someone or whether you decide to stay single. Maggie experiments with a lot of things. I found her to be interesting, occasionally grating, and in the end I felt empathy towards her. I loved her friends. I thought her friends were fantastic and really made the novel a bit more well-rounded. So that is Really Good Actually, by Monica Heisey and it is out now.
[00:18:30] Okay. This is a fun surprise. So I was going through the books in my home because we added a bookshelf in my house and I picked up a book that I realized, oh, no, I never finished this. Like, not officially. And so I officially finished the book Graceland At Last. This is by Margaret Renkl. I started it probably in 2021. It's a hardback edition, so I think I started it when it very first came out and it got rave reviews. And I read, I kid you not, 99% of it. I just had three or four essays or columns left. It is a collection of Margaret Renkl's columns as they appeared in The New York Times, though she's written for some other publications as well and some of that work does appear here. And it's all about life in the South, in the modern South, and the complications of that and the beauty in that. She writes about nature and home and weather and pop culture music. She kind of covers it all. And the book is divided into different sections. I read it straight through, but you could certainly pick out, "Oh, I'm just going to read nature essays or I'm just going to read music essays or political essays." I think there's a whole collection on political essays. I loved it. I loved it because Margaret felt familiar to me. I felt like, oh, we could sit down and talk about all of the things that we experience in the South, that we observe in the South. I especially loved how she wrote about choosing to stay. I think that's a theme I'm picking up on in literature as I choose to continue to live not only in the South, but in a small town in the rural South. I never envisioned this life for myself, and so I think I'm really drawn to authors who write about staying because there are all sorts of really fun books about leaving. And they're really fun books about choosing to indulge your wanderlust and to really have adventures, but there are also good books and good writing out there about choosing to stay. I think Margaret Renkl is one of those people who talks about what it's like to try to leave the South and then you wind up back anyway. And I found it all really thoughtful and interesting. She reminds me a little bit of like a southern Anna Quindlen. If you loved Anna Quindlen's nonfiction essays and columns that she did, I think, for Newsweek. Anyway, I really liked the book. I don't know why I didn't finish back in 2021, but I loved kind of wrapping it up this year and really enjoying it and officially finishing it. So that was Graceland At Last by Margaret Renkl. It's also out now.
[00:21:05] Then I read what everybody else read in January. I'm just kidding, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people. I mean, it's the number one bestselling nonfiction book of all time, and that is Spare by Prince Harry. I listened to this one and read the physical copy. I listened to most of it and then read it when I was ready to be done, because at some point I did think, oh, this is long. And so here's what I will say. I think the audiobook is better. I think the book makes more sense when you're listening to it. His narration is fantastic. Not everyone should be an audiobook narrator, but I actually think Prince Harry did a fabulous job of narrating his story. And so if you're choosing between the two, I would say just listen to it. It's a great audiobook. You can get it on Libro fm, of course, or through your local library. But that's the way, in my opinion, to read this one. Look, what can I say that hasn't been said? Not much. It's all been said by everyone. But what I firmly believe, and you know this if you listen to my podcast episodes with Hunter, or if you know me in real life, I really prefer to give opinions once I've engaged with the material. And so I didn't want to read just the headlines that were surrounding Spare. I really wanted to read it myself and I am glad that I did, and I think it is a really great audiobook and I think the ghostwriting done by J.R. Moehringer-- he wrote the Phil Knight's memoir, he wrote the Andre Agassi memoir. And so he ghost wrote this, and I think he did a phenomenal job. I really do. It is a compelling read.
[00:22:40] And if you grew up like me-- I'm 36 years old, so I'm two years younger than Harry-- I grew up watching Harry and William. My mother loved Princess Diana like so many American women did. And we watched her funeral together. And ever since I have watched royal weddings. I watched Queen Elizabeth's funeral. I am interested in them. I really am. And I'm interested in modern royal life. If you are also interested in royal modern life, I think you've got to read this. There is a lot in here that I just thought we would never have access to. And so for that reason alone, it is pretty historical. If you somehow did not know, the book is divided into three parts. The first is his young royal life, particularly dealing with the loss of his mother. It, to me, is the most compelling. The middle portion of the book-- which feels the longest, I think it might literally be the longest-- is about his time as a soldier which clearly, clearly meant so much to him. And in the back third of the book is about his life with Meghan. And to me, this was the least compelling portion of the book. Not because of Meghan or anything like that, it's just because we've heard it before. If you are a royal watcher, or if you have been paying attention to the news, or if you've watched any of their interviews with Oprah or on their documentary, you've already heard most of this. So I did not find the back third to be new information. Interestingly, that's the portion of the book that I physically read because by the time I finished part two I was ready to wrap it up. So it may also just be that I read that in a different format, but the back third was not as compelling to me. The first part definitely was.
[00:24:23] And then the second part, even though I felt it went a little long, I felt like it could have been edited down, you really could tell how much his time as a soldier meant to him. I would have loved for any of this to have been examined under a bit of a microscope by Harry himself. But it's his story and it's his memoir. And so you're not going to get a ton of nuance about the pains of war. You know what I'm saying? You're not going to get like a philosophical look at the moral conundrum that is war. You're getting his story and his perspective. That's what a memoir is. And so if you are going in looking for a philosophical perspective on warfare, then this isn't it. I feel like I should just prepare you for that. I read this book. I liked this book. It is a four star book for me. I think it is very well-written. I am glad he wrote it. I think there is really interesting stuff about palace life. I think there is interesting stuff about figuring out who you are apart from your sibling, whether you're a heir and a spare or not. I think that's what I found perhaps most interesting about this book was some of what Harry was discussing. I just kind of felt like, yeah, we all have to figure this out. Anybody with a family has to figure some of this out, and then some of it is obviously harder and worse and more sad than anything I've had to deal with. And so the book kind of runs the gamut in that way. But I found it compelling. I enjoyed my reading experience. I think the audiobook reading experience is better. I think you read this and then you go out to dinner with your friends and you talk about it. That's certainly what I did. We literally had our Google Docs out on the table-- these are the friends I have. We literally had our Google Docs ready on our phones to talk about the things that we had noticed, the notes that we had taken. Do I think it is a takedown of the British press? Yes, I definitely do. I also think it's about a family that functions more like a business and the toll that that takes on a person. So when your family functions like a business and you want a family and you've got a business, what kind of pain does that cause? And in that way I find it interesting. So that is Spare by Prince Harry.
[00:26:51] While I was kind of listening to Spare, I was also reading Games and Rituals. This is the new short story collection by Katherine Heiny, and it is so good. Maybe you can hear the giant smile on my face. I love Katherine Heiny. You may recognize her from Standard Deviation, which is a fantastic novel. You may recognize her from Single Carefree and Mellow, which was her first short story collection. Or you may recognize her from Early Morning Riser, which was one of my favorite books that released, it was either 2020 or 2021. Those two years really are one giant year in my brain. So I can't remember when that book came out, but it was one of my favorites when it did. She is just a reliable author to me and I am thrilled to say this book did not disappoint. If you are a short story reader, I do think you should go back and read Single Carefree and Mellow. I recall loving it. This one is equally fantastic. So I loved-- I was about to say every story. One of the stories I had a little bit of an issue or qualms with. Not anything weird, just like I had questions when I was finished. But that's pretty amazing that a collection that contains probably a dozen stories where I loved all of them. Like the last collection I remember really feeling that way about was Tuesdays in Winter by Lilly King. This is funny, funny stuff.
[00:28:20] I think Katherine Heiny is one of my favorite funny writers of the modern era. I don't even quite know who to compare her to, but I find her to be very quick witted, very sharp, keen observations about the world. I really like her. So my favorite stories in this collection were Bridesmaid Revisited about a young woman who decides to wear-- she just looks in her closet and she picks out this kind of hideous bridesmaids dress that she had to wear to a friend's wedding, and she decides to wear it to work. And at first she finds herself to be charming and funny like the main character on New Girl. Like she thinks, oh, look how quirky I'm being. And then by the middle of the day, she feels like she's made a huge mistake and what was she thinking. Through it all, she's flashing back to the wedding and the friendship that she had with that bride and why that friendship fell apart. And the way Katherine Heiny kind of masterfully goes back and forth between this girl clearly having a breakdown throughout her day because she wore a bridesmaid dress to work and thought it was a good idea. And then throughout her day has realized it was a terrible idea and then also is flashing back to being a bridesmaid and what it was like and why that friendship did not last. I thought it was so smart. Oh, I thought it was so smart. And then there's another story called Five Six One, which is about a woman and her husband and they go to help her husband's ex-wife pack up her home and move. Only, of course, the husband and the ex-wife wind up sitting down having lunch together, and they visit and chat while the new wife kind of packs up the house. It is so funny. And then you kind of learn again she kind of does this back and forth thing that I find really brilliant for such a short number of pages with so few words.
[00:30:13] You go back and discover how the two women originally met and one of the women wound up taking the other woman's husband more or less. I'm sure I could phrase that better. But, anyway, just absolutely fantastic. I think one of the things I really like about Katherine Heiny, besides her really laugh out loud funny writing, is she has such-- and I think I've said this before because there aren't a ton of writers like this. I think Elizabeth Strout qualifies, not funny, but she deals with her characters with empathy. And so I think we like to paint people with broad strokes, and we wish people fit into categories of good and evil instead of somewhere in that messy, messy middle. But the reality is that we live in the messy middle. And Katherine Heiny writes about these people who you kind of want to hate them, but then you realize, no, you actually love them. I don't know if I'm wording this correctly, but that is what I love about her writing. Because there are these people that you're like, oh, I feel like I could hate him, but then you read more about him and you're like, no, I think I love him. Or if I don't love him, I at least understand him. Or maybe I feel sorry for him. Or maybe I want him to be better. I just loved these stories. I think she is really good at what she does. I was very impressed by this book. I cannot wait to put it in your hands. Short stories are a hard sell in bookselling, perhaps librarians feel the same way. I just feel like short stories for some reason feel untouchable maybe to some people, but I think they are actually a really great way to liven up your reading life and to try something different. And this would be a great collection to see if you like short stories, because I think this is pretty accessible short storytelling and pretty excellent short storytelling. So Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny out on April 18th. I'm sorry you have to wait so long.
[00:32:11] Next, I read What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez. This book is so good. I'm going to tell you the premise, and then I'm going to tell you why somehow this book is so funny because it doesn't sound like it would be funny. So Ruthy Ramirez went missing at the age of 13. She lived in New York with her family. And she goes missing and they put up posters and they try to find her, but the reality is, and I think we all know this to be true, that when a brown little girl goes missing or young person goes missing, it's treated very differently than when a white child or white young person goes missing. And so the police look for Ruthy, but it's kind of a half hearted search because they assume Ruthy probably ran away. And we don't get a ton about this. We just know as the reader that Ruthy disappeared when she was 13, and now we are meeting the women in her life I think about 20 years later. And we are introduced to Nina, Jessica, and Dolores. Dolores is the mother of Ruthy, Nina and Jessica. Jessica was the oldest daughter. Ruthy was the middle daughter, and Nina is the youngest daughter. So Ruthy went missing 20 years ago. They've never found her. Her disappearance has never been solved. And we meet these women and discover the aftermath of what happens when someone goes missing and never comes home, and when you don't get the answers you're looking for. So Dolores is deeply religious. She is a Puerto Rican immigrant. She's devoted her life to the church and to proving that she's a good parent because she wants to prove that even though Ruthy went missing she was a good mom.
[00:33:58] The father, by the way, died shortly after Ruthy disappeared. And so you can see that his absence also has taken a toll and that Ruthy's disappearance caused so much grief and anguish that it cost the family the life of their father, the life of their patriarch. So the father is dead. Dolores is this deeply religious woman who's trying to prove that she is a good mom even though, of course, it's more complicated than that. Jessica is a young mom. She lives with her high school boyfriend. They have a really lovely relationship. They're trying to raise their little girl and she works as a nurse. Nina has just graduated college and is a little bit adrift. She's decided to return home to take care of Dolores. Jessica basically begs her to or kind of guilt trips her into coming home. And then this is where the book becomes weirdly funny. So the reason I wanted to introduce you to those characters is because they all tell the story. So you get alternating voices; you get Jessica, Dolores, Nina, and occasionally (just every so often) you get Ruthy's voice. And the way that Claire Jimenez decides to occasionally insert Ruthy's voice is really interesting. So we don't get very much of it, but we get occasional chapters by Ruthy herself kind of looking back at when she was 13. So we get Jessica, Nina and Dolores perspective. And the reason this becomes humorous is Jessica and Nina are watching reality TV one night and they stumble across this show called Catfight, which is as terrible and as trashy as it sounds.
[00:35:34] And they start watching Catfight and they realize one of the women on the show looks just like their sister. She has the same hair color. She has the same mannerisms. She's got the beauty mark that their sister had. And they just know it's Ruthy. It's Ruthy. And so they start to figure out and to ask themselves, like, how can we go to the set of this reality show and bring our sister home? And I don't want to give too much away. It's not an incredibly plot driven book, though things really do happen. But I don't want to spoil anything for you. I will just say that chaos ensues the moment that Delores, the mom, realizes Jessica and Nina are planning this. And I think Dolores even stumbles upon an episode of the TV show herself. And it becomes this-- again, I kind of hesitate to say it-- but this rollicking good time. Which is fascinating because the heart of the book is the deep loss this family has experienced and the deep grief they have experienced. And they don't know how to fill this void. And they also are asking really fair questions about why no one kept looking for Ruthy. Like, why did no one keep looking for Ruthy? And why do we treat some people as second class citizens and some people with privilege and dignity. So it's all really well done. I believe this is Clair Jimenez's debut. Fantastic. Out on March 7th. I absolutely loved it. I feel like we get a lot of books kind of like this. Even as I'm describing it, aside from the reality TV show component, it sounds like it could be a book you've read before, but I promise you it's not. It's really not. It's unique and original. I think you'll like it. It's What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez.
[00:37:38] Okay. And then last up this month, I read My Last Innocent Year. This is by Daisy Alpert Florin. This book releases on February 14th. It is a campus novel. It very much feels like a campus novel to me. It is dealing with themes of sexual assault and consent and relationships. And because that was how the book was kind of built, I was not sure this was going to be something I wanted to read right now, but I wound up falling in love with it. I read it in one day. I could not put it down. I didn't know if this book was going to feel like a punch in the face. I didn't know if it was going to feel like, "Oh my gosh, yes, we've talked about this. I know." I didn't know how I was going to feel when I read it because, again, some of these books-- and maybe it's just the longer that I'm a bookseller. Some of these books start to sound the same after a while, but then when you read them you realize how authors are writing about these same themes. This has been the case for generations, right? Where we're all writing about life and beauty and truth and horror and it's just the writer's touch that makes it different. And so I do think Daisy Alpert Florin is doing something unique here, even though the description might sound similar to something you've read before. So our main character is Isabel. She is a young Jewish woman going to school in New England at this prestigious university. You can tell it's supposed to be some kind of elite Ivy League school, and she's in her senior year and her father has like scrimped and saved for her to get to come to the school. Her mother died a couple of years ago, maybe right before she came to college. And her father runs a Jewish-- I was going to say delicatessen, but that is not right at all.
[00:39:35] He runs a Jewish appetizing store. I learned the difference between a Jewish deli and a Jewish appetizing store. Anyway, he runs that in New York. He sent her to the school because this was her dream and or at least a dream that maybe her mother had for her. And she has decided she wants to become a writer. And in the book, almost immediately-- and you're told this, this is no spoilers-- immediately Isabel has a sexual encounter with a friend of hers, a person that she knows that she's connected with at a Shabbat dinner. And they have been friends for years. Like acquaintances kind of talk to each other in the hallways kind of thing. They've always kind of debated and ribbed each other. And she winds up going to his dorm room and they have a sexual encounter that Isabel is very confused by. She had said no, she thought she had made that clear. And so she leaves pretty distraught. So that is one encounter she has. And then, and we know this going in, she also in her senior year has a sexual experience and an affair with a married professor. And so Isabel has these two encounters, experiences that deeply affect not only her last year of college, but her entire life. The narrator is Isabel, years later, kind of looking back on her younger self. And it is complicated or made even more nuanced by the fact that Daisy Alpert Florin has set the book in the nineties when the Bill Clinton scandal with Monica Lewinsky kind of comes to the surface. So culturally that is happening. And so this is pre MeToo. This is a young woman just trying to figure out what do these different experiences mean? And it's made even more complicated. And I think I even talk about this on next week's New Release episode, but it's made even more complicated by which sexual experience Isabel appreciated more and which she enjoyed. And she's confused by these very conflicting feelings she's having. The one night stand that she had with her friend versus this affair that she has with a married professor. And you can tell the adult Isabel is looking back and realizing the complication and the problematic nature of both of those encounters and how they changed the trajectory of her life.
[00:42:01] This book reminded me of a lot of things in a good way. So I immediately felt like, oh, this feels a little bit like Writers and Lovers by Lilly King because Isabel desperately wants to be a writer. There's a lot in the book. The book is not just about sex and sexual encounters. It's not just about consent. It's also about the writerly life, and art, and artistry. Isabel's mother was an artist. Her roommates are really interesting and complicated. And they're all frequently thinking about imagination and creativity and art. And so the moments that Isabel spends in writers workshops and things like that are all really interesting and reminded me a lot of Writers and Lovers. The book also reminds me of a book I read a few years ago that I loved-- but not everybody did but I did-- called Fire Sermon by Jami Quatro. There were parts of this book that felt like reading that all over again. And then the book is complicated because it's about writing and creativity, it's also about consent. And so it reminded me a little bit of Young Jane Young, which is a really great backlist title by Gabrielle Zevin. Yes, she's the author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. And she wrote this book kind of a fictionalized version of the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky scandal, but with a fictional Monica Lewinsky at the heart of the novel and as the main character instead of as this side character. And I thought it was really well done, worthy of a book club kind of thing, really worthy of conversation.
[00:43:29] So My Last Innocent Year feels like Fire Sermon meets Writers and Lovers, meets Young Jane Young. It is complicated, but I feel like Daisy Alpert Floren doesn't shy away from those complications and she doesn't try to answer all of the complications for you, which I really appreciate. She leaves you kind of trying to grapple with things yourself as the reader. And I liked that a lot. I also loved the relationship that Isabel has with her father. It's clearly a tenuous relationship. It is one that has been made difficult, I think, by the loss of her mother. But I love the kind of minor role he played, but I think he played it well. Her professor is --gosh, the names in this book are perfect-- but R.H. Connolly is her professor who she begins to have a fling with. And he is an interesting, complicated character. He made me-- I don't know. I wanted to punch some people. It's fine. I was mad, but I really liked this one. I really did. And I did not think I would. I think I was a little concerned by the blurb. I don't know. I just was like I don't know if I need another book like this because they're heavy. The things that we're dealing with and that they're talking about are heavy. But I liked it, and I think these settings captured the zeitgeist in a really interesting way. I liked it. The book cover is great. It is My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin.
[00:44:52] Those are the books I read in January. As usual, with our Reading Recap episodes, we are offering a reading recap bundle for this month. Our January Reading Recap bundle is $74 and includes Decent People, Really Good Actually, and Graceland At Last. You can find the January bundle online through the link in our show notes. Or go to Bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number 410 in the search bar and all of today's books will come up, as will the bundle. So the bundle includes 10% off. You don't need a code or anything. It's just included in the price of the bundle. It includes Decent People, which is kind of that mystery, quiet suspense that we talked about. Really Good Actually, which is the kind of belated coming of age story. And Graceland at Last, which is the columns and essay collections by Margaret Renkl. Go to Bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number in the search bar.
[00:45:52] This week, I'm listening to Rikers by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau.
[00:46:00] From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf's daily happenings on Instagram @Bookshelftville and all the books from today's episode can be purchased online through our store website:
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