Episode 425 || Beach Reach Book Flights
This week on From the Front Porch Annie and Bookshelf floor manager Olivia are discussing beach read book flights: the perfect literary pairings to take to the beach this summer.
To get your beach read book flights, visit our website:
Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter
Love Buzz by Neely Tubati-Alexander
The Layover by Lacie Waldon
The Thrills & Chills Flight, $67
Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian
The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker
Three by D.A. Mishani
The Things to Ponder Flight, $69
The Teachers by Alexandra Robbins
Monsters by Claire Dederer
The Life Council by Laura Tremaine
The Just a Touch of Murder Flight, $56
Murder at Mallowan Hall by Colleen Cambridge
The Maid by Nita Prose
Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen
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 Kala by Colin Walsh. Olivia is reading Lay Your Body Down by Amy Suiter Clarke.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us on Patreon, where you can hear our staff’s weekly New Release Tuesday conversations, read full book reviews in our monthly Shelf Life newsletter and follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Cammy Tidwell, Chanta Combs, Chantalle C, Donna Hetchler, Kate O’Connell, Kristin May, Laurie Johnson, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Stacy Laue, Stephanie Dean, Susan Hulings, and Wendi Jenkins.
Transcript:
[Squeaky porch swing] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. [music plays out]
“My inheritance was the knowledge that love is always in the air, always a possibility, and always worth it.”
- Lynn Painter, Better Than the Movies
[as music fades out]
I’m Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week, Bookshelf floor manager Olivia Schaffer and I are discussing beach read book flights: the perfect literary pairings to take to the beach this summer.
If you’re looking for other titles to add to your TBR list this summer, consider joining us for our seasonal Literary First Look. At noon on May 25, The Bookshelf is hosting a webinar on Zoom, where I’ll reveal my and Bookshelf staffers’ favorite newly released titles for summer.
We’ll cover literary fiction, mysteries, rom-coms, and memoirs, all in service to ensure you’ve got just what you need to make your library hold requests and indie bookstore preorders.
Tickets are $15 and include access to the live event, as well as the recording; a PDF of our favorite titles; and a discount code in case you want purchase your books directly from The Bookshelf.
Go to www.bookshelfthomasville.com or click the link in our show notes to snag a ticket. Now, back to the show.
Annie Jones [00:01:38] Hi, Olivia.
Olivia [00:01:39] Hey.
Annie Jones [00:01:40] It's been a minute since we've done a book flight.
Olivia [00:01:42] It has. It's almost a full year-- no, less than that.
Annie Jones [00:01:48] We did it in fall. I was like, when did we do it?
Olivia [00:01:50] Well, there is the school reads, the campus novels, right?
Annie Jones [00:01:55] Did we do Spooky? Am I making that up?
Olivia [00:01:57] We did spooky, yeah.
Annie Jones [00:01:58] Okay.
Olivia [00:01:58] We did two.
Annie Jones [00:02:00] We're back to talk about book flights and we're talking beach reads, which we tried to get a third seat on the spot on this podcast.
Olivia [00:02:11] It was really hard.
Annie Jones [00:02:12] We did try so hard because we knew that you and I definitely have categories of beach reads, but we were, like, adding a third seat is always fun. But quite frankly, I don't know if people sometimes realize, scheduling a podcast is also about scheduling Bookshelf staffers. It's being respectful of people like Hunter and Ashley who have regular day jobs. And so, sometimes you just have to go with what you know. And what I knew was that Olivia and I can talk about book flights and we can talk about them at the scheduled time.
Olivia [00:02:48] Well, and then you have to remember that this isn't a part of people's regular day job.
Annie Jones [00:02:51] Right.
Olivia [00:02:52] Because in my head, I was like, well, I'm in my day job.
Annie Jones [00:02:57] Yes, but Ashley at Fresh from Florida can't just hop on a podcast about books. Maybe if we were talking about agriculture.
Olivia [00:03:04] Posting about strawberries [inaudible].
Annie Jones [00:03:08] Yeah, maybe then it would be okay. I think that's what Hunter says all the time, that people assume he works at the Bookshelf. That's just their assumption and he has to correct them.
Olivia [00:03:19] That's hilarious.
Annie Jones [00:03:19] Yes. We love Hunter and he is a good friend of the store, but this is not part of his daily tasking. He's just really kind and comes on the podcast.
Olivia [00:03:28] He's just really nice. He also draws portraits of all of our staffers.
Annie Jones [00:03:31] Yeah, he's just incredibly nice.
Olivia [00:03:33] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:03:34] First of all, book flights, if you are not familiar with the concepts, is when we take-- I like three titles. Three to me feels like the perfect book flight. I feel like five is a little bit too many. So, basically, we work and we bring together three or maybe sometimes five books that kind of relate to one another or are in the same genre or the same kind of landscape. This concept is unfamiliar to me, but like you would a flight of alcohol.
Olivia [00:04:09] I've been thinking about that before I came on this. I was like, "Does she know that normally a flight would be like a tasting of alcohol?"
Annie Jones [00:04:19] I do.
Olivia [00:04:21] I mean, surely you do.
Annie Jones [00:04:22] Because of Jordan and the context clues that exist in the world.
Olivia [00:04:29] The power of deduction has led me.
Annie Jones [00:04:31] Yes. As I've been a patron of many a restaurant I've put together that flights are tastings. You know what I wish, though? I wish people would do like ice cream flights, which I bet they do somewhere.
Olivia [00:04:43] I'm sure someone does.
Annie Jones [00:04:44] Yeah. Or French fry flights.
Olivia [00:04:49] Yeah. Like, tater tots flights.
Annie Jones [00:04:51] Mm. I would do that. I'm even thinking because Sweet Grass, one of our local restaurants, does beer flights, but they could do a fry flight with their different dipping sauces.
Olivia [00:05:03] Yeah. What about like something from Sweet Cacao. What are those called? I feel like I would say them wrong.
Annie Jones [00:05:13] Chocolate flights? Truffle flights?
Olivia [00:05:19] No, the macarons.
Annie Jones [00:05:22] Macaron flights.
Olivia [00:05:24] Yeah. There you go. I pronounced it twice and still said it wrong.
Annie Jones [00:05:28] Well, because there's two-- we will digress. There's two kinds of macarons. It's like a thing, right? Like the ones with two O's are the southern thing. The ones with one O are like the French thing. I don't know.
Olivia [00:05:40] Yeah, whatever sweet cacao means, I would do a flight of those.
Annie Jones [00:05:45] Yes, I would too. What we decided is, even though there are two of us, we read diversely, we read eclectically, and so we each came up with two book flights that we think would be perfect for your summer reading. I thought I would kick us off with probably maybe your stereotypical beach read flight, the romcom flight. I didn't just want to do three random romcoms or even three five star romcoms. I wanted to pick romcoms that were built around summer or were built around vacations, something that I thought would be appropriate to take to the beach. So, I want to start with the book that I quoted at the top of the episode. This is called Better Than the Movies. It's by Lynn Painter, and it's a young adult romcom. Which it had been a long time since I had read a YA romcom, and I forget a well done YA romcom is so delightful because for my kind of reader, it's probably going to be closed door and it's just going to be kind of sweet and innocent and funny because they're high schoolers. And this book was really an homage to the nineties romcom movie. A lot of the tropes that our main character kind of plays with has to do with movies that her mom showed her when she was little. And her mom has since passed away, and so her way of kind of honoring her mother is living a life in homage to the romantic comedy. And our main character's name is Liz. Liz lives next door to a guy named Wes. They don't get along. They kind of hate each other. And then a former classmate comes back on the scene and Liz wants to get in his good graces and Wes is going to help her. And, of course, a kind of love triangle resumes or takes place. But you, as the reader, really know that Liz and Wes are the two who are probably meant for each other. There's actually quite a bit of depth to this novel because of the role grief plays in Liz's character. The reason I picked it for a flight for beach reading is because it is set in a school year toward the end of the year. And I like reading books set in the season in which I am living.
[00:08:03] One of the central plot points of the book is prom. And I just feel like May always makes me think of graduation prom, like all those kind of senior year milestones. And this book handles them really well, so well that, in fact, I really am so curious what else Lynn Painter has written. I just loved this book so much. I read it and the whole time my thoughts our customer and friend Kimberly Berg would love this book. It's just so charming and delightful and I think would be a great way to kick off some beach reading. Then I paired that with Love Buzz. This is by Neely Tubati-Alexander. It's a new romcom that came out earlier this year in a paperback original format. The reason I picked this one, because it's another homage to an early 2000 romantic comedy called Serendipity. And it starts at a bachelorette party in New Orleans and then goes to the character's kind of regular normal life in Seattle. There's also a small business element that I think is pretty fun, but the connecting factor between this and Better Than the Movies is that homage to a romantic comedy film. And this one is decidedly more adult. I would say it's PG 13, but certainly is more open door than Better Than the Movies. But I liked it because of just how it's playing with meet cute and with kind of the fate of falling in love. And then I paired that with a book I read and enjoyed on my own vacation a few years ago, The Layover by Lacy Waldon. And I really did kind of read thread this out because I thought, okay, the first two books have to do with the movies. That second book, Love Buzz, deals with some plane travel and going from New Orleans to Seattle. Our main character has a really lovely interaction with an older passenger on that flight. That flight plays a big role in the book. And then obviously The Layover is about flight. It's about two flight attendants who are stuck on a long layover together and really choose to make the best of it. They typically kind of are at each other's throats. So that goes back to the enemies to lovers trope from our first book. I really did think a lot about this.
Olivia [00:10:14] No, they sound very cohesive.
Annie Jones [00:10:18] Yes, I really did think about all the tasting notes that go into making a perfect pairing. And so, anyway, you can start with the young adult novel Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter, move into Love Buzz, which I've talked about before on the podcast by Neely Tubati- Alexander and then end with The Layover maybe hopefully on your own vacation. This is by Lacy Waldon. She's actually got a new book out this summer, but it is set in a small town rural south. And that sounds delightful, but I didn't feel vacation enough to me. So, these three books I thought would pair really well for your beach reading this summer, if you like romantic comedies. That's my first flight.
Olivia [00:10:58] That was a really good flight.
Annie Jones [00:11:00] Thank you so much. I know that you don't like romantic comedies at all.
Olivia [00:11:05] No, I don't.
Annie Jones [00:11:07] But I hope someone out there will find them charming and delightful.
Olivia [00:11:11] It's okay. I feel like in the way that people either love romcoms or hate romcoms, you can buy flight of thrills and chills, people will either love or hate in the same way. You know what I mean?
Annie Jones [00:11:24] Yeah, sure.
Olivia [00:11:25] It's that kind of polarizing thing. Did you go to prom?
Annie Jones [00:11:29] No.
Olivia [00:11:30] Okay. That's what I thought. I thought about that while you were talking about that and I was, like, she just doesn't seem like the type of person who would be interested in going to prom.
Annie Jones [00:11:38] I was not interested in prom.
Olivia [00:11:42] Did that hurt your mother?
Annie Jones [00:11:45] It's not just my mother, my parents are incredibly-- what is the word I'm looking for? Traditional. But I don't mean like conservative traditional. I mean, they just are like don't you want to hit the milestones that every person hits?
Olivia [00:12:02] I think Annie was like, "Absolutely."
Annie Jones [00:12:04] No, thank you. My dad is the person who was very interested in prom, homecoming. So I did not go to prom, partly because my school's prom was sponsored by the parents because my school was a Christian school. And so, they did banquets instead of proms. They didn't want anybody dirty dancing, you know what I mean? And so, I went to my school senior banquet in a polka dot dress and tennis shoes, as is my brand.
Olivia [00:12:37] Nailed to Annie's.
Annie Jones [00:12:39] And my dad and I took a picture in front of our fireplace, which I think is all he really wanted.
Olivia [00:12:44] Yeah, absolutely. Because that's what he was in it for.
Annie Jones [00:12:48] Did you go to prom? Did your school even have a prom?
Olivia [00:12:50] Yeah, I went to prom twice. The first time I was the only one in my friend group without a date, which was super awkward. They put me in the middle of every single photo, which I hated.
Annie Jones [00:13:04] Of course. How fun for you.
Olivia [00:13:04] I can't tell you enough how much I hated that. And then the second time someone found me a date, but it was horrible.
Annie Jones [00:13:09] Yeah, I went with friends.
Olivia [00:13:11] My friends were all about being paired up, though. So, if I didn't have a date this time, it would have been just as bad as the first time.
Annie Jones [00:13:19] You would have been in the middle of all the pictures again.
Olivia [00:13:22] Yeah, and I hate that type of attention.
Annie Jones [00:13:25] What's worse, bad date or no date?
Olivia [00:13:27] Bad date.
Annie Jones [00:13:29] Agreed.
Olivia [00:13:29] Then you're obligated. You know what I mean? There's like an obligation to be around them, be with them, contain whatever is happening. Yeah. No date, you're just kind of like, hey, if I don't want to be here, I can just go sit outside on that balcony and ignore people, which is what I did. It was great. I sat out at a picnic table all by myself.
Annie Jones [00:13:53] So when I said, "Did you go to prom?" The answer is, "I sat at a picnic table. Does that count?"
Olivia [00:14:02] But it was great.
Annie Jones [00:14:03] But that's why I think it's fun to read about those things. There's a very cute new movie on Disney Plus about prom that's very much in service to like the eighties movies that I love, only less problematic. And it was charming and delightful. But I'm glad those years are done for me.
Olivia [00:14:20] Same. Those years were anxiety-filled. Okay, so my flight is thrills and chills. And I kind of paired these books together similarly to how you did. They're all like a domestic type setting, if almost suburbia type setting, but it's like domestic scare meets social behavior study.
Annie Jones [00:14:44] Okay, I'm here for all of these things.
Olivia [00:14:46] Which is really my sweet spot in reading. And then when I tell you and describe these three titles, some of you are going to be like, "Is she okay?" That's all right. I am okay.
Annie Jones [00:14:57] She's totally fine.
Olivia [00:14:59] It's fiction. My first one is Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian, which was one of my shelf subscriptions from a year or two back, I think, at this point. But this is an author who she has a Ph.D. in social psychology, which definitely comes into play in her writing and in this book, which is about this girl, Chloe Sevre, who's a freshman at a college, and she got accepted into this clinical study for psychopaths because she is a psychopath. I think the first line in the book, it's Chloe, it's from her point of view, and she's talking about how she's going to this college specifically so that she can kill this kid. Will Bachman, which we find out later on why she wants to kill him. But she's a part of this clinical study that has seven psychopaths total and none of them ever interact. They don't meet. They just wear these watches that monitor their moods and their movements. But they always with their mentor at different times. None of them crossed paths because they figured maybe that wouldn't be a great thing.
Annie Jones [00:16:10] For safety sake.
Olivia [00:16:12] And then one of the students in that study is murdered and everyone starts to kind of look at Chloe or one of the other psychopaths in there, and all of a sudden you're like rooting for this girl who is still trying to kill this kid, Will Bachmann. You're just like, but it's not Chloe. And then you're like, but she is a psychopath. So you don't know where you lie in this story. Like, are you rooting for Chloe or are you not rooting for Chloe? But it was just so well done. My next book is The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker, which also this author studied psychology at the University of Oxford, which I just found out now while researching this book, not when I was reading it, but it makes a lot of sense because this is about we meet Chrissie when she's eight, and the first line of the book is how Chrissie just killed a boy in her neighborhood.
Annie Jones [00:17:12] I remember this book.
Olivia [00:17:14] Yes. I'll pause for the gaps that are happening and cars driving everywhere.
Annie Jones [00:17:19] They're all all saying to themselves, "Did I just hear her correctly?" You did.
Olivia [00:17:23] Yes. Chrissie is eight and she just killed a boy. But what you start to learn about Chrissie is she lives in an extremely neglectful home. She is just starved for attention at her home in her community because everyone just thinks she's this awful kid, which she is for reasons that she can't control. And then you flash forward 20 years and Chrissie is an adult and Chrissie is a mom of a young child, and she's trying to provide this child with the life that she didn't get. She knows what she did as a child was wrong. She's trying to make amends to all of that through being a great mother to her own daughter. Now, all of a sudden, you're just like, "Okay, Chrissie, I'm here for you." And then she starts to get phone calls that are bringing up her past and the boy that she killed. And she's just trying to work through everything while keeping her child safe, but also addressing that she was maybe a murderer at age eight.
Annie Jones [00:18:26] I feel like I started this one after you talked about it the first time. I would like to read this one because it hooks you from that first chapter. If you can stomach what's happening in the first couple of pages, then I think you'll be hooked from the very beginning.
Olivia [00:18:41] It's so well done because that one out of all three of these really does feel like a social behavior study. It's a thriller in that you want to read because you want to know what's going on with Chrissie and what's going to happen next, if she'll fall back into her ways, how she got out of it. Also, what drives an eight year old to kill a kid? That's nuts. But then it's also this like slow moving look into Chrissie's mindset, which was just so well done. And then my last one is the only one in hardcover, only because I don't think they're ever going to put it in paperback, which is a real shame. And that's Three by D.A Mishani. And this is another one I think I sent this out in 2020.
Annie Jones [00:19:26] I think so too.
Olivia [00:19:27] I think so, as one of my shelf subscriptions with the warning about darkness focus. And I remember I was wary about choosing it and I ran the plot line through several staffers, like play by play by play. What happened? Because this book is a mind warp. It is so well done. I can't go into too many details because it will give away what happens. But it's written in three parts and every part is a different woman. So, the first woman you meet is this lady named Orna, and she is recently divorced and her kid is going through kind of a weird period of his life because his dad's not there anymore and he's a little bit depressed about it. Orna is also in a weird part where she's ready to get back into the dating field and all this stuff. So she meets this guy, Gil, and he's great. And they go on several dates and they even take trips abroad. And she's like, he's perfect, but there's something weird about him and she can't put a pin on it. Everything he says is exactly what she wants him to say, but there's just something about him. And then you learn why. And then you meet the next woman. You think you know where this book is headed, and then you hit the last 20 pages and you're like, "Nope. Did not see that coming at all." It was so well done. And the characters are so realistic. I was cheering for Orna through that whole first part so bad. It was excellent writing.
Annie Jones [00:21:05] I remember you kind of going through that book with staffers because you were trying to decide if it was too dark to be a shelf subscription. But it's one of those things where you know because you want to talk about it so much, that it's the book you should send out a shelf subscription.
Olivia [00:21:21] Yes, exactly.
Annie Jones [00:21:23] That sounds like a delight. Well, is delightful flight what I want to say?
Olivia [00:21:27] No.
Annie Jones [00:21:27] That looks like a thrilling and chilling flight.
Olivia [00:21:29] There you go.
Annie Jones [00:21:32] It really does sound like page turners, which when I am doing beach reading that's what I want. When I go to the beach, like for a week, I really like to do a book a day. I really do.
Olivia [00:21:41] Something that just absorbs you.
Annie Jones [00:21:43] Yeah. So my flight then is a little bit different because I do like to read when I go to the beach. My family has gone to the beach before for a week at a time, and I really do like to read a book a day. But I also like a book that I can talk about with my family. So, when I go to the beach with my extended family, it's literally like a line of beach chairs. And we all probably have a different book across genres. And we all at various points maybe are looking up from our book and talking about what we're reading or what have you. It's one of my favorite memories of beach going with my family. So I thought, yes, you can do a romcom, you can do a thriller. But I think the unsung hero of the beach read is a well-written nonfiction book. And I think the key here is well-written and compelling because there are well-written biographies that are really good and really dense. I don't consider those beach reads. When I am talking about a nonfiction beach read, I mean one that you can sit on the beach and read and not be too bogged down in the minutia. I think about Erik Larson. He's really good for this. One of my favorite beach reads of several years ago was Dead Wake which is his book about the sinking of Lusitania. That doesn't sound like a beach read, but I was just immediately compelled. I remember reading parts aloud to my dad, so I that's what I tried to think of. This book flight is called The Things to Ponder Flight, because I think there is no better place to ponder than by the water. And the first book in this flight is the Teachers. This is by Alexandra Robbins. It is the one I am most interested in, is the only one in this flight that I have not finished reading.
[00:23:22] This is a new book. Just come out. So it is in hardback, which is normally for me a beach read no, no, but I'm making some exceptions today. So The Teachers is journalistic nonfiction. And the journalist Alexandra Robbins has observed three teachers over the course of a year. I believe it's a middle school teacher in the south, an East Coast educator, and then a special education teacher in the either Midwest or West. And she follows them over the course of the year while also conducting other interviews with teachers across the country. I come from a family of educators. I also I also feel like, much like nurses or health care workers in the last few years, teachers are really being expected to perform monumental tasks that you and I really can't even begin to comprehend. And so, I like the idea of reading a book that will put me in a classroom, that will help me to see what teachers are having to endure. I hear these things from my friends. I hear them from my brother. But the fact that a reporter-- I mean, I love journalism, I love really good journalists. And so, somebody who took their time to really get to know these teachers and observe them in their classrooms and to see the battles that they're fighting in and outside the classroom, I'm really curious about. And one of our listeners, Jennifer, I think I saw that she was reading this already. She's an educator and she was loving what she's reading. So, I'm very curious about this book. It is The Teachers by Alexandra Robbins. It's the book that I am going to read next. I just finish Monsters. This is by Claire Dedere and this book, I was so thrilled to see this when it came out. I listened to it, but I actually almost wish I had read it because I kind of wanted to write in it, and that's why I'm including it on this flight.
[00:25:15] But frequently in our line of work and really just as human beings, if you listen to music, read books, consume culture in any way, I think we are constantly grappling with the question, how do we separate art from artists? Is it possible? So Claire Dederer, when she's talking about monsters, what she's talking about is men and occasionally women-- but it is mostly men who perform monstrous behaviors, who are seemingly monsters in our culture, and how do we still consume their art? She starts with the movie the filmmaker Roman Polanski, but she moves into people like Michael Jackson. How do we still listen to his music after we know the things he is alleged to have done? I was so fascinated by this work. It's really a work of literary or cultural criticism, but it's asking these questions. And I feel like I'm asking all the time when I'm stocking books, when I'm picking songs for store playlists. I'm thinking about, oh, no, like, who sang this, who wrote this? How did they behave? And then I'm also asking, "Well, does that mean that we can't consume their work anymore? What if their work is beautiful? What if their work is true even though they are a little bit scummy or a lot scummy?" Anyway, she addresses this so thoughtfully. It feels academic at a couple of points, but mostly it is really-- even though she's a cultural critic, it is mostly the work of someone who consumes a lot of pop culture, asking herself this question and trying to grapple with the answer. I loved it. I think I'll be thinking about it for a really long time. I think it would lead to some really great beachside conversation. If your family is like my family-- I don't expect them to be, but if they are, this could be really interesting.
[00:27:06] And then the last book that I think would be a little bit lighter, so a good way to round out the flight, is the Life Council. This is by Laura Tremaine. Paperback original came out earlier this year, maybe even just last month. And this book is about friendship. And much like her first book, Share Your Stuff I'll Go First. What I think Laura Tremaine does really well is present you, the reader, with questions she wants you to answer and you to journal. So, even if you are reading the book and you're like, "Well, I'm not really like Laura, or I don't know that I have the same things that she's talking about," what she's writing about I think will lead you to do your own investigation into your own life. In the Life Council, she's writing about the 10 friends she says every woman should have. Jordan already saw this one on my nightstand. I've just got about ten pages left. And he told me, he said, I want to talk about it when you're done because I'm curious if men are also supposed to have a life council and are men supposed to have the same 10 friends. Anyway, it's going to lead to a very fun conversation between me and Jordan. It has made me kind of analyze my own friendships and just look at them in different ways. I think adult friendship is one of the best gifts in life, and it's also one of the things you have to work hardest at. So you could start with The Teachers, which I think will be heavy, but also takes the lives of three different teachers. And so, I think it will be pretty easy to get into. Then I think the middle part of the flight will be Monsters, which I think will be the harder book to read. And then the third book will kind of wrap up in this kind of lighter way that allows you to have good conversations about friendships with either your own friends or your family. So The Teachers, Monsters, and The Life Council all part of this Things to ponder Flight. I love this flight.
Olivia [00:28:56] Did you ever at any point feel like 10 friends was a lot of friends?
Annie Jones [00:29:00] Yes. If you think of them as all you're best friends. But her argument is, for example, one I can think of at the top of my head, one of the people she talks about is your business bestie. And what she means is just who in your life understands your professional life? That could be your coworker who's your best friend at work? Your work? I really always hated this phrase, but like your work wife, your work husband, or your mentor at work. And so, like, I would normally not consider that person a friend, but I think she's trying to get you to expand your definition of friend, because I think we are currently in a loneliness epidemic in America. And I think she's trying to get you to realize you might have more friends than you think if you would be willing to expand beyond maybe what we thought of as best friends in our childhoods.
Olivia [00:29:47] I had 10 and I had a little moment, so I was just like, "Do normal people have 10?" Seems like a lot. Double digit friends.
Annie Jones [00:29:56] Like, have you ever seen that diagram about friendships and the concentric circles? And it's like how many people are supposed to be in your biggest outermost circle and then get down to really, maybe your spouse, your partner, whatever. You would find it fascinating. I think it's called the friendship circles, but it's very data-based. You should look into that.
Olivia [00:30:15] I'll look into that. Categorize my friends. They'll love that.
Annie Jones [00:30:21] I think you would love that. I think you would love to do that.
Olivia [00:30:23] I will. And then when I use it against one of them. Well, you're just not that friend.
Annie Jones [00:30:30] You're just my business bestie. So I don't need you to weigh in here.
Olivia [00:30:37] Okay. My next flight is Just a Touch of Murder. I think it's all PG murder mysteries with a very classic feel of murder, if you will. Not that new age murder. I also pair these all together because they all have like very distinct settings. So, it's either like a big house or in one of them it's a big hotel. But they all have very distinct settings in that way. The first one is by author Colleen Cambridge, which I recently talked about in another podcast because she just had the Julia Child murder mystery.
Annie Jones [00:31:20] Oh, yeah. Okay.
Olivia [00:31:21] Yes. This one is the first in a series. It's Murder at Mallowan Hall. And this features Agatha Christie's head of household. Her name is Phyllida Bright and she runs that house. She's very loyal and very protective of Agatha Christie, who Agatha only makes very sparse appearances in this book, which I appreciate. It's the same as like the Julia Child murder mystery. Julia came in to add this little light to the room and then would go away. And Agatha does the same thing, which I think is is really smart to do because I think a lot of people could get hung up on a real character like that. So, Phyllida is at Agatha Christie's mansion of a house. And they're having this weekend party when this visitor arrives late at night on one Saturday evening and no one really knows who he is. So, they're just kind of like, yeah, I guess you can stay here because it's that time period where it's just like, well, either that or you get in your horse and buggy and just take off miles down the road. And so, he stays there. But in the morning, Phyllida is going around like inspecting the rooms and this man is found dead in the library. So it has a very clue type feel to it. Like, who killed the man in the library sort of vibe. But it was just really well done. And she starts kind of going through the guest list and asking people questions. She has a very funny relationship with the head butler as well, because he was kind of like, "I don't know where you get all of this authority from." And Phyllida is very bright (no pun intended). But also my next one is what probably a lot of people have read. I know you read it. The maid by Nita Prose. I go back to this book so many times because I just think this was a delightful mystery.
[00:33:17] Molly Gray is a maid-- not even a head maid. She's just a maid at this hotel, but she's their best maid. She is so dedicated to her job. It's wild. It is like her life. And you start to realize why she is so dedicated to her job and why she puts so much heart into this because something recently in her life just happened. But she struggles with social skills. She's not good at reading people's intentions. She doesn't get sarcasm. I think she rarely gets a joke. She doesn't know how to read people if they're being friendly to her or if they're taking advantage of her. So Molly has this customer, it's the wife of this rich guy, and she's always very cordial and very friendly with her. And she's very nice to Molly. And Molly appreciates that. And then one day when this couple is staying at the hotel, the husband is found murdered in his bed, and all of a sudden the cops are looking at Molly as if she did it cause she was like the last one in the room to clean it and whatnot. I guess she still kept cleaning while he was still in the room, because it's Molly just doing her job. Molly gets framed for murder, but Molly doesn't have the skill set to kind of know that she's being framed and set up and who to trust, who to not trust. And then out of the woodwork comes this group of friends that she didn't know had her back the whole time, which was really lovely. She's also this hopeless romantic of a person.
Annie Jones [00:34:50] She's a great character. You're rooting for her.
Olivia [00:34:53] Yeah, the whole time. And you should be rooting for her, though. It's not like this crazy twist where like Molly is actually an ax murderer. Molly is great.
Annie Jones [00:35:03] Yes.
Olivia [00:35:03] Yeah. If you haven't read that one, it's definitely worth reading. And then my last one, which is still out in hardcover, I was hoping it would come out in paperback in time for this, but it is not. I think it's like September or something. But this is Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen. And this is set in 1952. Again, it's set at a big house mansion type situation where the matriarch of this kind of household, Irene Lamontaine, just recently died. She was found like pushed off a balcony in the house. And everyone just assumes it was an accident, but it's also kind of under suspicious circumstances because Irene owned this huge soap empire. She was famous for making soap and creating the perfect scent of her soap. And so, everyone kind of starts to look at each other in this house. Because the other thing is this household's like all these different people. It's kind of their safe space, not only because they're guarding the soap recipe, but because it's 1952 and everyone who lives in this house is a part of the LGBTQ+ family. They know that if they invite a normal cop to come look into how Irene died, that their secret is up and probably their soap empire will crash and a lot of bad things will happen to them. So in walks Andy. Poor Andy, when you meet him in this book, he becomes your favorite person you've ever met. Andy is an ex-cop, but recently ex-cop because he is gay and he was found at a gay club while the police started raiding it. His coworkers started raiding it, and then he was brutally kicked out of the police station and he didn't know what to do with his life. And then Irene's partner approaches him and is like, "Hey, would you want to come to the Lavender house and figure out what happened to my wife?" And so he does. And it's one of those mysteries where you know it's someone in the room, but you don't want it to be anyone in the room because you like them so much.
Annie Jones [00:37:25] Yeah.
Olivia [00:37:26] It was a great found family meets like clue type murder mystery.
Annie Jones [00:37:32] Yeah, it almost sounds like if T.J. Clune had written a mystery.
Olivia [00:37:36] Yes, that's what it felt like. I hope he writes another one because it was excellent.
Annie Jones [00:37:41] It does sound really good. It sounds like all of those in the flight have really wonderful characters who you really love.
Olivia [00:37:48] Yes. There's a character that you grab on to and you really enjoy.
Annie Jones [00:37:52] So those are our four recommended book flights. All of the books are available, obviously individually on the Bookshelf website. If you want to just purchase a flight, like if you have an upcoming trip that you're taking or a vacation you've got on the calendar and you just want to get one of these flights because you know you're going to read them all at the beach or whatever. We do have the flights listed on the website as well. All of the book flights we've created are available for purchase on the website, as are each individual book. If you're a DIY reader who wants to create their own flight of books, you can do that too. Just go to Bookshelfthomasville.com and type 425 into the search bar.
[00:38:32] This week, I'm reading Kala by Collin Walsh. Olivia, what are you reading?
Olivia [00:38:37] I'm reading Lay Your Body Down by Amy Suiter Clarke.
Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, 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
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