Episode 440 || August Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in August. As always, we’re offering a Reading Recap Bundle, which features Annie’s three favorite books she read this past month. You automatically get 10% off your books when you order your Reading Recap Bundle here!
You can get the books mentioned in this episode on our website (type “Episode 440” into the search bar to easily find the books mentioned in this episode):
Annie's August Reading Recap Bundle - $66.00
We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard
No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Wedding People by Alison Espach (releases May 2024, not yet available for preorder)
Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel
The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
For more information on One Book Thomas County, please visit their website here. In September, The Bookshelf is partnering with the Thomas County Library to re-launch our area One Book program. For 10 years, the Thomas County Library has hosted South Georgia’s first (and only!) One Book program, where our entire community reads the same book together and celebrates that book with a variety of literary events.
This year, we’re reading You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy, and our celebration of Murphy’s book will culminate in a visit from the author at the Thomas County Board of Education auditorium on Thursday, September 28 at 7 p.m. Tickets are just $10 and can be found in-store at The Bookshelf or online at www.onebookthomascounty.org.
You have plenty of time to get tickets and to read You’re Not Listening along with us! Grab your copy at The Bookshelf here, the library, or read along with us from far away by snagging a copy at your own local indie.
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 You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. 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...Ashley Ferrell, Cammy Tidwell, Chanta Combs, Chantalle C, 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]
“No, Phoebe will never be a mother. Phoebe will never know what it’s like to create life inside of her. But there are other ways to create. Other ways to love. Other reasons to live.”
- Alison Espach, The Wedding People
[as music fades out]
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 August. Next month is a big one for The Bookshelf, and for Thomasville. In September, we’re helping the Thomas County Library re-launch our area One Book program. For 10 years, the Thomas County Library has hosted South Georgia’s first (and only!) One Book program, where our entire community reads the same book together and celebrates that book with a variety of literary events. This year, we’re reading You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy, and our celebration of Murphy’s book will culminate in a visit from the author at the Thomas County BOE auditorium on Thursday, September 28. Tickets are just $10 and can be found in-store at The Bookshelf or online at www.onebookthomascounty.org.You have plenty of time to get tickets and to read You’re Not Listening along with us! Grab your copy at The Bookshelf, the library, or read along with us from far away by snagging a copy at your own local indie. Visit onebookthomascounty.org for more details about this year’s event; we hope to see you there!
Annie Jones [00:02:08] Okay. August is notoriously my least favorite month, but it hasn't been so bad. I mean, it's been miserably hot. It's been miserably hot here in Thomasville. Though, I think that has been the case for a lot of us across the country- my friends in Texas, my friends in Missouri. I have seen lots of excessive temperatures. And so I know I'm not the only one who has been frustrated by the heat. I really do believe that heat affects our way of life. It has been miserably hot here, but I got to go to the Mississippi Book Festival with Jordan. That was really fun and kind of an unexpected adventure. We celebrated a family wedding. We also spent a lot of time at home and tried to not have as many evening plans and that was super helpful. So all in all, not the month I dreaded, which I'm very grateful for. And I read some really good books this month too. So I started the month with the book you've already heard me talk a lot about, which is Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. You can hear me and Hunter discuss that Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection in episode 437. But my Pulitzer winners that I read with Hunter just continue to be some of my favorite reading experiences. I think that's partly because I enjoy a buddy read. I enjoy, especially buddy reading with Hunter, and I think I'm just a Pulitzer girl. And I don't like how that sounds, but I really do think of the book awards.
[00:03:46] I like a National Book Award winner, but there is something about a Pulitzer. And revisiting or really reading those for the first time with Hunter for the podcast have just been some really memorable reading experiences. I think about reading The Road last fall or Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and now Interpreter of Maladies kind of joins those. And I really, really loved my reading experience of that book. I love short stories, which I hesitated almost saying that just now because I thought, is that really true? But I think it is true. I love well-written short stories and I find them to be a comfort when my attention span feels a little bit all over the place. And in August, it was. I mean, yes, we tried to create more margin, but our families have a lot going on. We have a lot going on. We did a little redo at the store this month. And so, my brain felt on overload and short stories-- especially when I'm reading something as daunting as Bleak House, I think short stories have been a nice reward. So, interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri was my first reading experience of the month, and I both read that and listened to it. The audiobook is good, but I think I preferred my physical reading experience for that particular title.
[00:05:15] After that, I immediately wanted to read something not required. So a lot of my job obviously is reading and I had read Interpreter of Maladies. I really did love it, but also it was required reading. I immediately followed that up with Bleak House, which I still have not finished. We're working on it. We're conquering it slowly but surely. I wanted to read something that wasn't required. So I went to my stack of books and there were a few really good ones, some that are already out. And then I decided to grab the upcoming very, very not yet released book, The Wedding People by Alison Espach. You might recognize her name from Notes on a Sudden Disappearance, which I think three of us on staff at The Bookshelf read and loved. Me, Erin and Esme we all read that book and really loved it. So this is her new book called The Wedding People. It is not out until May of 2024. I know how much you all hate that. I know how much that bothers you. And it bothers me too because I really loved this book and now I have to wait a really long time to hand sell it. We're going to see if Erin can put this up for preorder on the website. But I read this book so early that last time we checked, it did not have an ISBN yet. I read this one really early. An editor sent this to me because she knew I had liked Notes on a Sudden Disappearance. So thank you, Caroline [inaudible] for sending this to me.
[00:06:56] And I believe maybe a blurb of mine might appear on the ARC cover. Who's to say? I really don't know. But I read it and it cured everything that ailed me. I'll tell you what I really think this book did, is it filled the Barbie shaped hole in my heart. So Barbie was basically my entire July personality- the Barbie movie by Greta Gerwig. And then August came and I thought, well, I've already seen Barbie three times. I don't know that I can keep seeing Barbie as my weekly therapy. So instead, I read The Wedding People. And the premise of the wedding people-- and I want to be sensitive here because it does deal with suicide and suicide attempts. But Phoebe is the main character. We meet Phoebe right off the bat, dressed to the nines, walking up to this bougie Newport, Rhode Island Hotel. So the setting is perfection. And she arrives at the hotel truly only with the clothes on her back. She doesn't have a bag. She doesn't have anything with her. She is checking into this hotel and she realizes her room is the only room in this hotel not booked out by a member of a wedding party. So they're having a big wedding at this hotel. And she is the only person at this hotel not affiliated with the wedding. And Phoebe is there to kill herself. Phoebe has just been through a really difficult divorce. She suffered from multiple miscarriages or just infertility. She has not been able to have children. The quote at the top of the episode was taken from this book. And so Phoebe is really just ready to be done.
[00:08:48] She's done with life, and she thought she would take her leave of this world by going to the most beautiful place she could imagine. She'd never seen the ocean before, and she thought she'd order from room service and then be done. And all of that sounds so dark. And I know that it sounds dark, but I cannot stress to you enough how hopeful and light filled this book is, because what happens next is the bride walks in, marches in, waltzes in to Phoebe's hotel room, demanding to know kind of why she's here. She's the only person not affiliated with this woman's wedding. She is prepared to have the perfect wedding, and she's worried Phoebe is going to ruin it. And they develop this really bizarre, unlikely, almost unbelievable friendship, except for some reason you can totally see this happening. I could picture this whole thing. I could picture this beautiful cliffside hotel. I could picture Phoebe ready to end her life out of desperation and exhaustion. I could picture this bride determined to not let anything ruin her big day. And she is coming to her big day with her own griefs and burdens. And the cast of characters, the cast of wedding people that Phoebe meets are just so funny and quirky. We're going to talk about another book in a second by Amy Poeppel, but this book really does remind me a little bit of Amy Poeppel. There is a lot of depth in this book. It also reminds me of a lot of those kind of fish out of water stories that we've been into for a long time.
[00:10:32] I think about maybe kind of Where'd You Go Bernadette or Eleanor Oliphant is really the one that kind of came to mind. But just with these really endearing protagonists who find themselves in these abnormal situations. But the reason it reminded me of the Barbie movie and the reason I felt like it was the perfect chaser for that movie is because really Phoebe is trying to figure out why she should live. And the book isn't in your face with that question, and it isn't in your face with the answers to that question. But you see Phoebe throughout the whole book, move from this place of desperation and fatigue and a lack of self-worth into a place where she becomes more confident, more alive, more willing to look for reasons to be alive. And in that way, it really does remind me of Barbie, because my favorite scenes in the Barbie movie were between Barbie and Rhea Perlman or Barbie on the bus bench, Barbie grappling with what it means to be human. And I think in this book, Phoebe is realizing what it means to be human. I marked so many passages in this book. I immediately passed it along to Esme because I knew she wanted to read it, and she would probably love it as well. She's not done with it, but I asked her what she thought and she just said, "Oh, I'm in love with it."
[00:12:06] Here's the thing. I know that the initial premise maybe sounds kind of dark, but Alison's handling of that is so thoughtful. Tender is a word I would use. Graceful, generous and not at all gratuitous. She really is treating Phoebe with such care. I really believe this, from page one, you'll be hooked on this story. And if you're not hooked from page one, then this book is probably not for you. To me, just the opening scene where you're trying to figure out why Phoebe is here. It's no spoilers. I believe it's going to be on the back of the book. I don't know. My copy did not have a back. But Phoebe just arrives at this hotel and you're a little bit like, why is she here? And when we kind of move Phoebe to the side, the descriptions of these wedding people is so on point. I mean, you know exactly who these people are. Even if you've never been to a super bougie wedding, which I have not really been to very many bougie weddings, but I could immediately identify and picture all of these people. I just think you will love this book. I sure did. And I am so sorry that it does not come out until May of 2024. I read this very far in advance. I promise I will do my best to remind you about its publication upon its actual publication. If it's available for preorder, it'll be on the website. If you can't find it, it's because there is no ISBN. But when it becomes available, Erin and I will try to let you all know because I really want you to read this book. I think it'll be such a treat next summer. I'm sorry you have to wait that long, but I really think it's worth the wait. So that's The Wedding People by Alison Espach. I'm so sorry I'm not 100 percent sure how to pronounce her name.
[00:13:54] Okay. Then I went back to more required reading. Not only do I run a bookstore, but like so many of you, I'm in a book club. And in August, for some reason, I decided to volunteer to host. I'm just kidding. I know why I chose to volunteer to host. I thought, well, August is busy for a lot of other people, but it's actually slower for me. So I narrowed it down. In our book club, we picked three books that then everybody votes on, and I tried to pick campus adjacent novels and we wound up voting on Small Admissions. This was the debut novel by Amy Poeppel and was the only work by Amy Poeppel that I had not read. Now, that being said, I did read this book and think to myself, wait, have I read this? But I don't think I had. I know that I had read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, which is one of my favorites. And then I read a couple of years ago Tiny Imperfections, which was a book written by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans. Both of those books, especially Tiny Imperfections, deal with private school admissions. And Small Admissions is all about a woman named Kate Pearson who goes to work at a private school in New York City as an admissions worker. And I was thrilled that my book club voted for this book because I like Amy Poeppel, but had never read her debut. And that felt weird that I had not read that. And also, I don't know why I hadn't read it because I love books set on campuses, obviously, but I also really like books about admissions.
[00:15:32] I actually like anything about admissions. There was a movie several years ago with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. It's not even a great movie, but I love it, about admissions to private schools. Maybe even to colleges, but I think it was private schools. Anyway, I read this book and immediately had a career crisis where I just thought, I love The Bookshelf, but I think maybe I'm doing the wrong thing. Maybe I should have been an admissions counselor. I feel like I would have been really good at that. Anyway, so here is what you need to know about Small Admissions that I did not know, which is I started by listening to this book. I downloaded the audiobook from Libro.fm. The narrator was great, but this book has so many characters. And I think it reminds me most of Amy Poeppel's most recent book called The Sweet Spot, which I loved, but it took me a few chapters to get into because there were so many characters. And now I'm realizing that this might be a thing that Amy does. But I had only read Limelight, Musical Chairs, which primarily deals with a family, and then Sweet Spot. Small Admissions, I think is most like the Sweet Spot. There are so many characters in this book, and I was getting confused with the audiobook, so I wound up having to put it down. I bought a copy of the book and I'm so glad I did. So you may not be like me. One of my book club members and friends was listening to the audiobook and she thought it was fine, but also was a little confused. So the narration is good, but just go into it knowing there are a lot of characters you're dealing with.
[00:17:06] The book opens with Kate and her sister Angela. Angela is extremely type A, Kate is extremely not. They are the daughters of two very quirky college professors, very kind of stereotypical college professors, and their parents have decided to go on sabbatical. They're selling their childhood home. And Kate and Angela are now kind of left to their own devices. Although, we're a little eyerolly (sic) about that as readers because these are two grown adult women. Okay. The book flashes forward. Now I'm trying to remember. I think she had just graduated from college. She had not yet moved on to her master's program. And she is in crisis. She's broken up with her boyfriend. She thought she was moving to Paris to be with him. Instead, she finds herself back in New York City and she spends a lot of time eating snacks on her couch in the dark. And her sister, Angela, is very controlling and also in her own way very caring, and believes Kate needs to pick herself up by her bootstraps and pick herself up and get better. So she encourages Kate to apply for this job as an admissions counselor at a private school. Kate completely bombs the interview. Truly, it's one of the worst interviews I can possibly imagine. And there were moments at the first part of this book where all of these characters annoyed me, including Kate, who really you want to be rooting for. But much like The Sweet Spot, all of these characters I found super annoying initially. And it's a credit to Amy Poeppel that by the end of the book you love everyone and you miss everyone when the story is over.
[00:18:48] Anyway, Kate bombs the interview. It reminds me of one of the reasons that I struggle-- I only watch New Girl when I'm really desperate because I hate Jessica Day's character so much. And there's this scene that I think encapsulates why I struggle with Jessica Day as a character. And it's where she's at a job interview and she's just so unprofessional and she is very much an adult person by this point. And I am so annoyed with her. And so I was equally annoyed with Kate for bombing this interview, but she ends up getting the job. And she winds up being quite good at the job. And one of the fun parts of Small Admissions and part of the reason I think the physical book might be the way to go on this one, is because you get to see a bunch of different characters, including Kate, Angela, Kate's two best friends. Some of the people Kate works with are very memorable to me- grouchy character named Maureen. And you also see all of the people who Kate interviews through the admissions process, including the parents and the children. You see their thank you notes. You see their acceptance letters or their rejection letters. You see some of their emails back and forth. So this book has some epistolary elements. And I'm not saying that those get lost in the audiobook translation, but for me they were easier to read in the physical format. This book is laugh-out-loud funny. It literally made me laugh out loud. It's also a good book for a reading slump.
[00:20:24] I had just come off that five star read in The Wedding People, and sometimes a five star read is hard for me to follow. Hard to follow up a five star read. Small Admissions, I felt like was the perfect solution. My book club unanimously enjoyed it, and it had a lot to discuss. It was light and fun, but also had a lot to discuss about private schools, about admissions processes, the toll that takes on children and on parents expectations, growing up and figuring out who you are. Because much of this book is about Kate figuring out who she is and why she is the way that she is, why Angela is the way that she is, and a lot about adult friendship because Kate's two best friends are equally interesting characters, Vicki and Chloe. We spend a lot of time with them. I found them to be interesting again, sometimes annoying, but really interesting and I think fully fleshed out characters. So this was a really fun book. I think it would be great for this time of year. I wish I'd read it in time for my book flight for a Book Flights episode, because I think this would be great for back to school and I think you'll fly through it. So that was Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel. And now I've read all of the books she's written and I love being a completionist. So that felt fun and exciting.
[00:21:40] Okay. I did a couple of audiobooks despite the previous couple of books not really selling me on their audiobook adaptations. Jordan and I did get in the car a lot in August, and we listened to The Only One Left that's by Riley Sager. It's narrated by Christine Lakin and Dawn Harvey. Excellent audiobook. I loved the audiobook version. So I love Riley Sager. I fell in love with his book The Final Girls, and I really have read almost everything he's written. I missed last year's book and now I need to give myself a little bit of space because I've heard people talk about it at the register so much that I think I would be able to predict what happens. And so I'm trying to give myself some space from it. But that book was pretty divisive and so people talked a lot about it in The Bookshelf and at the register. So I skipped to his new book. Jordan and I listened to Riley Sager's Survive the Night a couple of years ago, a couple summers ago. And so it almost feels like a tradition where I was reading Riley Sager's books as they released, not as advance reader copies, just in real time during the summer. So I associate right Riley Sager with summer. And then in this back half of his catalog, Jordan and I have taken to listening to them together. So I don't know what we'll do next summer, but this was a fun one to listen to on a road trip. The audiobook narration was fantastic.
[00:23:04] This is about a young woman who goes to work at a crumbling mansion on the coast of Maine. She's a nurse caregiver and she arrives after her own-- I keep using the word crisis to describe all of these characters. I guess I like reading books about characters in crisis. But she has just had an issue with her work and she's kind of coming off of that. And her boss at the agency sends her to be the caregiver for a woman who was accused of killing her entire family at this mansion back many, many years ago. The book is set in the eighties, I believe. So this woman arrives at the mansion to become this caregiver for this woman who was accused but never convicted of killing her family. And once she arrives there, this becomes an arduous and terrifying task because she feels like she's sharing a room. She's caring for a murderer. And this woman cannot speak. This woman communicates with like hand motions and things like that. I don't really want to say too much else, except Jordan was quick to point out that the house definitely plays a role. The House is a very memorable character. Like so many kind of gothic books that many of us love, I think about Rebecca, I think about The Haunting of Hill House, things like that. So Riley Sager's books always in my mind, deal with something that we're already very familiar with.
[00:24:45] So we're already familiar with the trope of the crumbling mansion along the coast. And we're also vaguely familiar with women who are accused of these awful things. And maybe they're innocent, maybe they're not. We can't be sure. And so the book kind of deals with all of that. There are so many-- I'm smiling as I'm saying this. There are so many twists and turns. It was very fun to listen to this with Jordan. We were both gasping at various points, looking at each other at various points, seeing if each other understood what was happening at various points. So just a really fun reading experience. When we were done listening, I asked Jordan what he would give it in terms of stars and we both agreed-- and I know you think this is going to sound silly, but Jordan and I do agree on a lot of things. So he said 3.5. I said 3.75. When he found out I gave three quarter stars, he agreed. He agreed that we were both right with 3.75 stars. So I really liked this one, liked the reading experience of it, felt like there were a lot of twists and turns. If you were looking for a Labor Day weekend book, I think this would be really fun. It is The Only One Left by Riley Sager. And we both agreed we liked it more-- for the record, we liked it more than Survive the Night. So for what that's worth.
[00:26:05] Okay, then we really took a hard right turn. We did something completely different. We listened to Poverty by America. This is by Matthew Desmond. He previously wrote the book Evicted, which I had not read, but Jordan had. I believe he listened to Evicted. I will probably be listening to Evicted at some point. Poverty by America has been on the New York Times bestseller list for months, probably since its release. And so I'd been curious about it. And when I saw it on Libro.fm, I thought, well, this could be an interesting audio book. And I do like listening to nonfiction in audiobook format. This one was narrated by Dion Graham. He's an actor. I had to look him up because I definitely felt like his voice was super recognizable, so he was familiar to me. Look, this book... How do I describe this book? This book is all about poverty in America. I like the title because in Matthew Desmond's view, poverty is something we could eradicate here in America. He believes poverty benefits many of us. It reminds me of a sermon I heard, I think, earlier this summer at our church. But a line of it that stuck with me, our priest said, "If you are comfortable, chances are that comfort is caused by someone else's discomfort." And I hate that. And it also is probably true. And so that is really what this book is about, is the poverty crisis in America.
[00:27:43] But is it a crisis when there are things we could be doing about it? And what should we be doing about it? And he talks a lot about becoming poverty abolitionists and trying to eradicate poverty and what that would look like on an individual level, which I appreciated. I do like a book that kind of gives me or suggests to me practical steps and also policy changes. We were were probably three quarters of the way through, and Jordan was like, "I wonder when Matthew Desmond will run for office," because so much of the book was definitely about American politics and policy changes America could make or should make. I don't know if Matthew Desmond will run for office, but I could see why Jordan said that. Because it feels like the first two thirds of the book are about poverty itself and talking about the crisis. You can tell that Matthew Desmond's expertise is in housing. He talks a lot about affordable housing, which makes sense because of his previous work, his previous research. So he talks a lot about the various things that lead Americans to poverty. He talks about the welfare system. He talks about affordable housing. And then the back third of the book really, I think, deals with potential policy changes and individual changes we could make. I found this book very depressing. I won't deny. I paused it at a couple points on our road trip because I had to-- first of all, when you're listening to an audiobook on a road trip like that, there's a tendency to binge it more or less because you're just listening to it hours and hours of time.
[00:29:23] We were driving to Mississippi. The Mississippi drive is 7 hours. And so the audiobook of Poverty by America, I think is like four and a half hours. And the good news is that's about all you can take, truly. But the bad news is, if I were physically reading Poverty by America, I'd be underlining, I'd be marking, I'd be processing a little bit more slowly, I think. And instead listening to this book, even though the audiobook narration is really well done, felt like getting hit in the face with a fire hydrant. I just felt inundated. And by the end I was shivering and upset because I didn't know what to do. The back third helped with that some. So if I were reading this again, I believe I would read the physical book so that I could process it, take my time with it. On the other hand, if I'd been reading the physical book format, I'm worried I would have put it down and not picked it back up again because it was so haunting and depressing. And I'd like to be clear. I think there are times for us to read depressing books. I think there are times for us to read books that are really going to make us think and really convict us. I was definitely convicted by this book and I have a lot to think about and I have a lot to try to rectify in my own life. This is not something I think about very often. I mean, I hope I think about it some when I encounter people in my daily life.
[00:30:48] But as Jordan and I discussed, (and this is the great part about listening to audiobooks with your significant other in the car) we discussed this one a lot and we decided poverty is just not a very exciting thing to talk about, right? I think Jordan and I are both drawn to issues of criminal justice because of Jordan's work as a lawyer, because of my former work for the Florida Bar, because of my discovery of the Innocence Project. Not that I discovered the Innocence Project, but I had an encounter with the Innocence Project when I was in my mid-twenties. And so, I think those are of particular interest to us. And poverty, as Jordan said, it's just been around since the beginning of time. And so it feels like, well, I don't want to talk about that. That's unsolvable. And I think what Matthew Desmond does really well is discuss it in the American context, where it probably is solvable. I think Matthew Desmond would say it is solvable, which almost is a gut punch because if it is solvable, why haven't we solved it? And that's what he's talking about. So I've talked about it enough. You know what it's about. But this is a book I'll be thinking about for a really long time. And I'd like to think it's convicted me enough where I'll take some action in my daily life. So that's poverty by America, by Matthew Desmond.
[00:32:12] All right. Then I made it to the Mississippi Book Festival. And let me tell you all, I had the most wonderful time. I'd only been to a book festival as a bookseller. I'd never been to a book festival as a reader. And so it was just so much fun. I will have nothing but fond memories of the Mississippi Book Festival, spending time with our dear friends, meeting Ellen, who I did the podcast with a few weeks ago, meeting Emily, who had Ellen on the podcast. It was just delightful, just so much fun to be with my friends in Mississippi and to see how much work-- as someone who has worked at a festival before, the Word of South festival, which we are affiliated with at The Bookshelf. It's a two day festival. It's a lot of work. A lot of logistics. I've been on that side of it. So I know now as a reader, when I attend another event, I know how much work went into it. I can guess because we've been on the other side. So just so many incredible authors. But my favorite panel at that festival was one called Marriage Memoir and Misadventure. It was moderated by Beth Ann Finley, who was fabulous. I loved her book, Heating and Cooling. I got the chance to tell her I loved her book Heating and Cooling, and she was a great moderator. And I'm here to tell you, not all moderators are created equal. I think it is a real gift to be able to moderate a panel conversation. And she did a fabulous job. So she moderated the conversation. It was Hannah Pittard, Harrison Scott Key, Helen Ellis and Maggie Smith. Okay. Talk about a stacked panel.
[00:33:44] It was Jordan's favorite panel. It was his favorite thing he attended. It was my favorite thing I attended. I'd already read Helen Ellis's and Harrison's Scott Key books, but I had not read Hannah Pittard's book We Are Too Many. And then Maggie Smith's book, which so many of you have told me to read (don't worry, I'm reading it right now) You Can Make This Place Beautiful. So at the festival, I bought Hannah Pittard's and Maggie Smith's book. And the first one I picked up was We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard. I need you to know that sometimes I'm a little bit of a dunce, and I was like, "I don't think I've read anything by Hannah Pittard before." Yes, I have. Years ago, I read a wonderful little book. And I say a little book because I recall it being thin. I read a wonderful book (I think it was in my first year of bookselling) called Reunion. Well, that was Hannah's book and it was fiction. And it was lovely. Set, I believe, in Atlanta upon the death of a patriarch. Right up my alley. I did not at all put that together until I was in the middle of reading We Are Too Many, and Hannah references some of her other books in this book, and I thought, that sounds familiar. Now, I've read a lot of books about patriarchs and reunions, but very few set in the South. And so, anyway, I had read that book. I had loved it. And so what a delight to put a face with a name. Hannah was a fantastic panelist, by the way, which is part of the reason I picked up her book We Are Too Many, which is a great title.
[00:35:13] We Are Too Many is a memoir of sorts, where Hannah investigates the dissolution of her marriage because her husband had an affair with her best friend. And Gabrielle, a podcast listener and Bookstagrammer, had DM'd me and said, "Oh, by the way, Hannah Pittard's ex-husband has written a novel coming out in the spring. And it also looks like it is his take on the dissolution of the marriage." So that will be very interesting. But, man, I really loved this book. Now, this book was absolutely gut wrenching to me. It's divided into three parts and the first is like all of the various conversations that perhaps led up to Hannah's divorce, but also let her know-- for example, I believe the book opens with a conversation that she had with one of her dear friends who basically told her, hey, you should start asking me questions. Which, oh, my gosh, if a friend of mine did that to me, I would be like, nope, just tell me what it is. But I can see why the friend did that. You don't want to be the person who tells your friend her husband is having an affair.
[00:36:28] Anyway, the first third of the book is about various conversations that Hannah had. The second is an imagined conversation that Hannah would like to have had or wishes she had had with her now ex-husband. And then the third is Hannah herself speaking. And so when she was on the panel, she talked about how she started with more voices until she finally distilled down to her voice, which I thought was so interesting. The book is fantastic. It's it felt original. You just fly through it because so much of it is these kind of conversations. It is gut wrenching. It's heartbreaking to me to read a book about a dissolution of a marriage, even if the marriage should have ended. It's still like a gut punch to read about it. So. I thought it was beautiful. Deeply personal. Very well written. I like how Hannah Pittard writes a lot. This is We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard.
[00:37:23] Okay, then I read The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. Y'all, this book is so good. I'm struggling to know because I love Fates and Furies-- Hunter and I feel similarly about Fates of Furies, although I think Fates and Furies is Hunter's favorite Lauren Groff book. Mine until this one was Matrix. I adored Matrix. Thanks to podcast listener Kristen, I have the American version and the UK version, which I don't have any UK versions. This is the only UK version I have. So I love Matrix for obvious reasons. It's about a medieval nun. What more do you want? So I didn't know what to expect about The Vaster Wilds. I didn't know if I would enjoy it as much and now I'm torn. I don't know if my favorite is The Vaster Wild's or Matrix. Here is what I cannot believe about Lauren Groff. I cannot believe how much she makes me care about subject matter I would have thought I cared nothing for. Like, I cannot believe. Obviously, I'm drawn to books about religious figures. Loving a book about a nun makes a lot of sense for me. But reading a book about a medieval nun, that always sounded to me like my friend and former colleague Lucy-- that felt like a Lucy book. And until I read it, I would have thought, oh, this probably isn't for me. And then I read it and it was very, very, very much for me.
[00:38:46] So The Vaster Wilds is about a young woman in the 1600s outside the Jamestown settlement where she has escaped during I think it was just called the starving time. And she has escaped in hopes of finding food and leaving her past behind her. I really thought, am I going to be interested in this? I mean, the 1600s much like the medieval period, I'm just not sure. I'm just not sure it's for me. I like a survival story. I had heard her reference Robinson Crusoe. Also, I had flashbacks to myself as a child. And like so many probably other elder Millennials listening to this podcast, I really got into the Dear America books. And really loved history I think because of Dear America, because of the American Girl Dolls. And, man, if you say the word Croatoan to me, I am going to stop what I'm doing and that's all we're going to talk about for the rest of the day. Is what happened outside of Roanoke. I have been to Roanoke. I've been to Roanoke because of Croatoan. Jordan and I have talked about this. It's almost like a-- what is the biblical word? It's almost like a shibboleth. Like if you could say Croatoan to somebody and they know what you're talking about, then you know you're going to be friends. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please go Google it. But I did think to myself, wait a minute, maybe this book is for me because I was obsessed with Croatoan.
[00:40:13] Anyway, if you too are obsessed with Croatoan, then I think you will enjoy The Vaster Wilds. Hunter and I texted about it after I finished it because I just finished it and wanted to play the Billie Eilish song from the Barbie movie over and over again so I could get all my tears out. But Hunter texted what I thought was a perfect summation, which is this is a book without a plot and yet you are deeply invested. So if you're like my friend Juliana who needs plot driven lit, I get it. I still think even Julianna might potentially like this book. I'm not saying she would. I don't really know for sure. But if you are a plot driven reader, I would at least give this one a try. Because the way Lauren Groff makes you care-- and things definitely happen. I mean, it's a survivalist story. So things happen in the wilderness to this young woman, but at the same time, it's like Castaway was a success because of Tom Hanks, you know what I'm saying? This book is a success because of the main character that Lauren Groff has created. Nothing really happens in Castaway. Nothing really happens in The Vaster Wilds only a lot happens because she's surviving in the wilderness in the 1600s.
[00:41:27] This is a beautiful book weirdly about faith. It's a lot about the power of nature, the beauty of nature, the beauty of our world, and what we were as humans created for. And so, again, lots of B Barbie crossover. This book releases on September 12th. Preorder it. It's got a beautiful cover. Preorder it because it's just wonderful. If you love Lauren Groff, you will not be disappointed by this book. And if you are not a Lauren Groff fan, I might give it a go. I think I'd give it a try if I were you because all of her books are so different. I do not know how she does it. It's honestly infuriating. Her books deal with similar themes, but each story is so different from the other. And I just can't believe they're out of the brain of one person. It's bonkers to me. Okay, so that is The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. Releases on September 12th.
[00:42:24] Last but not least, the last audio book that Jordan and I finished was No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister. We finished this one on a drive to a family wedding, started it on the way back from Mississippi, because I had heard Erica Bauermeister at the Mississippi Book Festival. She was on the book club panel alongside Annabelle Monaghan. She was such a great panelist Erica was. And so I had loved House Lessons. If you've listened to the podcast for a period of time or if you've been in The Bookshelf, you know how much I love her nonfiction book House Lessons. But I'd never read any of her fiction. And I really, for whatever reason, didn't intend to. I kind of thought maybe No Two Persons would be a book Suzy would like. I do think it would be a book Suzy would like. But I did have a couple of listeners, including maybe Deja [sp]. Deja, if you're listening-- I think Deja messaged me about this book and, oh, man, it's so good. The premise is that no two persons ever reads the same book. And so what Erica Bauermeister has created is a book, and then it was an audiobook, narrated by like 10 different people forecast where each chapter is devoted to a different person in the life of one book.
[00:43:34] So we start, of course, with the writer. Then we at one point get the agent who discovers this book. Then we get the perspective of a couple of different readers who have read the book an audiobook. Narrator. I'm sitting here with a smile on my face. Such a tremendous tribute to the book. If you cry every time you watch 2019 Little Women when Joe watches her book be put together, I think you will like this book. Jordan loved the audio book. We loved the forecast. I didn't know if Jordan would like this one, but he really did. We were very invested and Jordan actually was even better than I was, I think, because he's an auditory learner. But he was better at putting together how some of these characters were connected because some of them are connected. And Erika Bauermeister had said that in the panel conversation, she had said some of it they're quietly connected and then some of it they're more connected than others. But the characters do come together. And Jordan was really good at piecing that together, which was very fun to witness. So we really loved this book. That's all I really want to tell you about it, but I really like for you to read it. It was a fantastic audiobook. I think it'd be equally fun to read the physical copy. That is No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister. Just a joy of a book that I will be telling my mom about. I think she would love it.
[00:44:56] So those are the books I read and listened to in August. As usual, with our Reading Recap episodes, we are offering a Reading Recap bundle for this month. Our August Reading Recap bundle is $66 and it includes We Are to many, that's the Hannah Pittard memoir, No Two Persons by Erica Baumeister, and Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel. You can find more details and the August bundle online through the link in our shownotes or go to Bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number, that's 440, in the search bar.
This week I'm reading You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith.
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:
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.
Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle Carl, Kate O'Connell, Kristin May, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stacy Laue, Chanta Combs, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, Laurie Johnson, Susan Hulings
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