Episode 444 || September Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in September. You’ll get 10% off your books when you order your September Reading Recap bundle! Each month, we offer a Reading Recap bundle, which features Annie’s three favorite books she read that month. Get your bundle here!
You can get the books mentioned in this episode on our website (type “Episode 444” into the search bar to easily find the books mentioned in this episode):
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
You, Again by Kate Goldbeck
My Husband by Maud Ventura
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy
Annie's September Reading Recap Bundle - $59
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
You, Again by Kate Goldbeck
You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy
For more information on One Book Thomas County, please visit their website here. Get your $10 ticket to the interactive talk with author Kate Murphy here. The talk, featuring our very own Annie B. Jones, will take place at the Thomas County Board of Education Auditorium on Thursday, September 28 at 7 p.m.
You don’t have to read Kate’s book, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, before the talk to gain deep insight and practical tools for listening that you can use in your community leadership, work, and relationships. Annie and other community leaders will discuss the power of listening with Kate, and you'll have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss. Get your tickets here.
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 Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways by Brittany Means.
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:
Annie Jones: [squeaky porch swing] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. [music plays out]
“For my family, the grief was ever-present and all-encompassing, whereas for everyone else, it was a choice. A choice to reach out, to comment, to think about it or not, to feel bad for a minute before turning to the silly, the trite and trivial. I wanted that.” - Angie Kim, Happiness Falls
[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 September. This month has been a busy one for The Bookshelf, and for Thomasville. In September, we’ve been 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’ve been reading You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy, and our celebration of Murphy’s book culminates in a visit from the author TONIGHT, September 28, at the Thomas County BOE auditorium. Tickets are just $10 and can still be be found in-store at The Bookshelf or online at www.onebookthomascounty.org.
Annie Jones [00:01:51] If you're listening to this before 7 p.m., it's not too late. Visit onebookthomascounty.org for more details about this year's event. I would love to see you there! I feel like once again, I do need to address that I am coming off of a cold and I don't know if I sound congested to you, the listener, but I do sound congested to my own potentially even clogged up ears. I am feeling better, but the episodes that we have recorded over the last two weeks, I feel like I sound a little different. Maybe I don't. And if I don't, great. You can just ignore that I said that. But I do feel like my voice sounds a little deeper, and so I wanted to get that out of the way so that you know your mind wasn't playing tricks on you. I'm here to recap the books that I read in September. September was a weird reading month for me. I look at my lists and I'm really pleased with it. I'm really happy with the books that I read. It definitely felt in some spots a little bit like homework. People often ask that, if reading books ever feels like homework because of bookselling or because of podcasting. And most often the answer is no. I still really love reading and I read what I like to read, but every so often because of Shelf Subscriptions or because of Literary Lunches or because of Conquer A Classic, reading can feel a little bit like homework. And that's okay. I like homework. And so a lot of this month the reading felt necessary as I was trying to find books that I wanted to feature for our Fall Literary Luncheon as I was reading for Shelf Subscriptions and things like that.
[00:03:22] So this month I didn't have a lot of surprise books that just kind of took me by surprise or were books that I read kind of serendipitously. Instead, these were books that I read very intentionally, very purposefully in preparation for some of these store events. So you'll hear me talk about that. Before I get started, I did want to say that over the last couple of weeks, we have had the most wonderful visitors inside the Bookshelf. This isn't your typical call to action, but over really the last few years, we've seen an uptick in podcast listeners coming to see the Bookshelf in person, and it's been so joyful, especially post-pandemic, to get to see some of the people whose names we recognize from orders or from Patreon and to get to meet you all in person. So that has been happening with some regularity over the last couple of years, and I think I speak for the entire staff when I say how fun that is for all of us. But over the past couple of weeks, I just have to say we've had visitors from really far off places. So I was sick a week and a half, two weeks ago, and so I was not able to meet this listener in person. But we had a visitor named Carrie Lee [sp]. And Carrie Lee was visiting us from, I believe, Winnipeg, Manitoba. When I told Jordan Jones that somebody came to the Bookshelf to celebrate their birthday from Manitoba, he said-- we've both been to Canada, we've been to Prince Edward Island, but he's been to other parts of Canada. But he looked at me and he said, "Manitoba is like the slap out of Canada," which I just need you guys to know there's a Slapout Alabama. I'm not sure if you were aware of that. We were at a school with somebody from Slapout, and so I always got a kick out of that name Slapout Alabama. And Jordan said Manitoba is like really far.
[00:05:11] And so it was just so wonderful. I was not able to meet Carrie, but our staff met her. I think she tagged us. She and maybe her family tagged us in some posts on Instagram, but we couldn't believe, I could not believe. Manitoba. And it was thrilling to tell it to Jordan, who doesn't react to a lot of stuff. He's very calm. And for him to react in such a way, he was truly blown away. And then this week I happened to be downstairs in the store kind of working on some stuff, and a customer walked in and I greeted them and they kind of looked at me and I thought, oh, did I say something wrong? Maybe they don't want my help or whatever. And instead she was a podcast listener. Her name's Phillipa [sp] and she was there with her partner or husband, Jamie. And as I began to listen to them-- I was trying to my mind my own business, do my own thing in the store. I never want to put customers on the spot. But I heard their British accents. And so I asked them, I said, "Do you mind me asking where you all are visiting from?" And she said, oh-- I'm not going to do a British accent. I think I can do a pretty decent one, but only in the privacy of my own home. But she said, "Oh, actually we're from London, where I listen to your podcast from my houseboat." And I thought, am I going to cry in the middle of the Bookshelf? I just cannot get over really anybody visiting the Bookshelf because of the podcast or because of social media. It never ceases to astound. And that is really true. It never ceases to amaze me.
[00:06:48] But to have these two women both celebrating their birthdays within a week's time from Canada and from England, I just can't believe this podcast has that much reach. I just can't believe it has that much reach. And then also that it's done what I really deep down wanted it to do, which is it's brought people to our independent bookstore. So if you are a long distance-- I mean, that's really long distance. Even if you're semi long distance like Atlanta, I just want you to know I'm grateful for every single one of you who take the time to plan a trip, to make a visit, even if you're a Tallahassee customer or somebody that we consider our local. Anybody that comes into the store and makes that effort, it's just so kind. And so, anyway, thanks to Phillipa and Carrie for making my month. September has been a weird one, and it was a joy to welcome such long distance customers into our store. Okay. The first book I finished in September was Happiness Falls. This is by Angie Kim. Her first book was Miracle Creek, which I read, I believe, right when it came out. It was one of those books that we didn't get advance copies for. And although sometimes that's a bummer to me to not be able to read in advance because then I can't pick it for Shelf Subscriptions or whatever. It really can also be fun to read alongside the rest of the world. And Miracle Creek was one of those books that I read alongside everybody else. I may have even heard it mentioned in a podcast or on social media. And I picked it up and I really loved it. Devoured it. Couldn't tell you much about it all these years later, except to say I remember being intrigued with how Angie Kim played with science and played with real life scenarios. And that is the through line to her next book, her new book, Happiness Falls.
[00:08:41] Happiness Falls is a book I was always going to read based solely on the premise, which is that one day a man and his son go out for a walk and the son arrives home hours later kind of covered in scratches, dirty, blood under his fingernails without his dad. And Eugene, the young man who went hiking or walking with his dad, has Angelman syndrome and he is non-speaking. And so he can't tell his family what happened to their father. And that's the premise. That's how the book opens. It's this kind of inciting incident. The book is narrated by Mia. She's Eugene's sister. This family has three siblings, twins, and then younger Eugene. And Mia and her twin are home from college during the pandemic. So this is definitely set during the pandemic. And you can see the pandemic has consequences in this novel. It plays a small role. The timing of this book is important. However, I don't know that I would entirely classify it as a pandemic book. So if you're a reader who is reluctant to read books set during 2020, I get it. I don't know that this one fully qualifies. It definitely addresses the pandemic. It mentions mask wearing in a couple of situations, but it did not read to me entirely like a pandemic book. Instead, it just read to me like a family drama bordering on a suspense novel set during 2020. So do with that what you will. But Mia narrates the whole book and she is a fantastic, really precocious, interesting, thoughtful, scientific narrator.
[00:10:29] And much like Angie Kim played around with and clearly was interested in some scientific elements in Miracle Creek, she clearly has an interest in Angelman Syndrome in Happiness Falls. And clearly the research that she did about Angelman Syndrome plays a huge role in this book. And I thought it was so well researched without being exhausting to the reader. Instead, I was really interested. And there's a fantastic author's note at the end of the book that kind of talks about how Angie Kim became interested in this subject and what led her to create these characters. But I really loved that element, and I felt like I could see like Miracle Creek begat Happiness Falls. You can even hear it in the-- I'm thinking I'm just now realizing the titles of the book. Anyway, I think she's really playing with language and playing with science, and I really love that. The book reminds me a lot of maybe, yes, some elements of like Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. I think I referenced Liane Moriarty a lot when I talk about these family dramas or dysfunctional family stories that kind of border on suspense thriller. And I think that's what Happiness Falls is. The opening scenes felt very intense and very suspense novel-esque. But as the book progresses, there's still suspense element. You, the reader, want to know what happened to this dad. What happened to him? Where is he? And that mystery plays throughout the book. But as the book progresses, you also get to know Mia as family and how they've been handling quarantine together and what their relationships look like and how their relationships play into her father's disappearance.
[00:12:20] And so the book certainly maintains that mystery element and you want to know what happens. To some extent it's a bit of a whodunit, but it also is very much a family story about this family and these characters and who they are and how who they are has made an impact on their father's story, if that makes sense. And then all kind of behind the scenes, you've got this character of Eugene with Angelman syndrome and Angie Kim really diving into the details in that. I really liked this book a lot. I think it's a page turner without being entirely bingeable. And I mean that with praise. I love a book that I can read in one sitting. You know that if you've listened to the podcast for a long time. I love a short book, I think there's even one on this list that we're going to talk about. But I also like a book that I have to kind of think about, and this book is bingeable in the sense that you want to know what happens. You want to know how to solve that mystery. But it's also just really well-written and interesting and scientific. Mia, she's our narrator, and she is really interested in data and research. And the book is full of footnotes, not in an irritating way. It's how Mia thinks. And you can read the footnotes or not. I'm a footnote reader. And so I thought that was a really fun element. So I enjoyed this one, and I also enjoyed taking my time with this one. I think it would make a great book club book. So that is Happiness Falls by Angie Kim and it is already out. It's on shelves now.
[00:13:58] Next, I picked up Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward. I love Jesmyn Ward. When I think about the great modern American novelists, like the great living American novelists, I think of Lauren Groff and I think of Jesmyn Ward. I have loved everything Jesmyn Ward has ever written despite it all being slightly outside my typical genre. Because if Angie Kim plays was science, Jesmyn Ward plays and dabbles in a little bit of magical realism. She's dealing with myths. And I don't know another word for it other than magic realism, the spiritual realm. It plays a role in her different books. I first encountered Jesmyn Ward with her, I believe, debut novel Salvage the Bones. I love talking about this book because I stumbled upon it at Sundog books. It was on one of their staff shelves. Jordan had taken me on a-- I thought this was so fun. I forget what birthday this was. I think it was my 30th. For my 30th birthday Jordan gave me-- he literally cut out and drew them. He gave me bookstore bucks. And then we did like a little road trip in and around Destin. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Destin, I think, and then we kind of drove up the coast and visited Sundog Books, which is one of my favorite bookstores and The Hidden Lantern. Anyway, so we hit a couple of bookstores and I got to spend bookstore bucks wherever we went. And Salvage the Bones was one of those, I believe. I hope I'm getting that timing right. I've been to Sundog Books a bunch. Nevertheless, that's where I got that book. And I love knowing that it was an indie bookseller who sold me on Jesmyn Ward.
[00:15:42] Then years later, she wrote Sing Unburied Sing, and now she has written Let Us Descend. I started this book earlier this summer, I want to say back in July-- maybe August, more accurately. And I really liked it from the first page. I was hooked from the first page. I was hooked with the language. The writing was beautiful, but I knew I wanted to focus. And August was not a month where my focus was really there, so I read probably 20 pages and I kept it. I knew this wasn't going anywhere. It doesn't release until later. It releases on October 24th. And so I put it on the back burner. And then as I was prepping for the Fall Literary Lunch, I got it back out and just devoured it. The main character of Let Us Descend is Annis. Annis is a young, enslaved woman living in the Carolinas, and she's living there with her mother. And she and her mother have this beautiful relationship. And then her mother is taken away, we assume sold, but we're not sure. I think our assumption is she's sold, but also perhaps she has died. And Annis is overwhelmed by grief. And because she is overwhelmed by grief, she is visited by a spirit who Annis is trying to constantly determine as she interacts with various spirits, which spirits are worth listening to, which spirits will guide her and help her, and which are meant to cause her harm. So that's that magical realism element I'm kind of talking about. Ordinarily, it's not that that's a no go for me. I'm not never going to read a book that has magical realism, but sometimes it's a hurdle I feel like I have to jump through or jump over.
[00:17:36] I'm not a huge magical realism fan, but in Jesmyn Ward novels, she's done this a little bit over the course of these books. I've always found her use of them completely-- they make complete sense to me. I was going to say completely sensical. They make total sense to me. And that is the case in this book as well. So when I say magical realism, that's what I'm talking about. But if you, like me, are not always in a hurry to read magical realism, don't let that description deter you from Let Us Descend. So Annis has these encounters with these spirits and she is trying to really decide if she is going to overcome her grief. In the meantime, she also is sold. And she thus begins the journey from the Carolinas to a sugarcane plantation in Louisiana. We also get to witness Annis and several other enslaved peoples on the slave selling block in New Orleans. Make no mistake, this is a brutal story, a story about enslavement. It's a journeyman story as she goes from the Carolinas to Louisiana. In fact, the book gets its title from Dante's Inferno. And there are lots of references to Dante's Inferno sprinkled throughout the book. And really Annis is on this journey, and I really appreciated the tie in to Dante as she kind of makes the journey from the Carolinas to Louisiana.
[00:19:21] Jesmyn Ward has also done some interviews. I was able to listen to one a few months ago in preparation for the book, and she lost her partner in 2020. And she was obviously living her own story of grief and overwhelm and suffocating with grief. And that is partly where this story comes from. And you can really feel that on the page. Annis's grief is really something you can feel. And I don't know, this is going to be in my top 10 of the year. I was surprised it was not on the long list for the National Book Award. Maybe they felt like Jesmyn Ward had been recognized enough. But I really loved this one. And I think I've really loved all of her books. I do think Let Us Descend is accessible. So if you've never read her, it'd be a fine place to start. It'd be a good place to start. But if you have read her and loved her, this is equally as beautifully written. It's an equally beautiful story. I found it deeply personal and gorgeously written. I just loved it. That's Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, for sure five star book for me. Then I did pick up-- and I will say, I think this book was my most fun surprise of the month. I picked up You Again. This is the romantic comedy by Kate Goldbeck. The cover you've probably seen it on Bookstagram. If you haven't, it is very clearly an homage to a Harry Met Sally, to that scene where Harry and Sally (Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal) are standing in Central Park, surrounded by leaves, dressed in fall garb, and that is what the cover of You Again very much looks like. Only two modern characters. There's a great plaid peacoat that plays a role throughout the book.
[00:21:16] But, anyway, the cover is what struck me and the very obvious winks towards When Harry Met Sally. The book itself, I think, is essentially When Harry Met Sally fanfiction. As someone who's been reading some fan fiction over the last couple months, this felt-- and I mean this with the highest praise. This felt like When Harry Met Sally fanfiction. Like, Kate Goldbeck might have asked herself, "What if When Harry Met Sally was modern? Like, what if it was written for the modern era? What if it was written for Gen-z or for millennials? And that is what this felt like. Ari and Josh are our main characters. They are entirely their own people. I suppose you could say that Josh is Sally's equivalent, and Ari is Harry's. But I very much just found them to be their own people. So as much as this book clearly pays tribute to Nora Ephron and When Harry Met Sally, I thought Ari and Josh were entirely their own characters. I was charmed by them immediately. They are complicated people, just like Harry and Sally were. They're complicated people with their own neuroses. But I just fell in love with the book pretty instantly because, much like the movie, the book opens with a few different chapters that are relatively short, but they take place in the past and we get to watch Josh and Ari at their first meeting as they clearly despise one another and then move into most of the book, which is set in the present day.
[00:22:49] And it's a wonderful book about New York. If you like, New York books. This is very much a tribute to Nora. It's a tribute to Harry Met Sally. It's a tribute to New York. New York in the fall and winter. There's a great scene set in the Strand. When I say this is modern, I mean a few things by that. So if you're not familiar, let me stop gushing about it and let me just tell you. If you're not familiar, Ari and Josh meet. They don't really like each other, but they have one thing in common, which is that they are both in love with the same woman and that they're both sleeping with the same woman. And so that is how Josh and Ari meet. And the book is definitely sexy. How do I want to word this? When people ask me if something is steamy or open door, there's definitely an open door scene in this book. But it's not just that. It's just the book is really modern. There's a lot of sexual innuendo. Okay. The best example I can give is the iconic scene in When Harry Met Sally, where they're standing in the bookstore. And somebody is looking at you for personal growth. Okay, that scene essentially takes place in a sex toy store in You Again. I think that encapsulates the tonality of You Again and the innuendo that you're going to find there. So it's not just like that there's this one open door scene. The entire book is really sexy and crass. Okay. That's what one reviewer said. Crass was the word. I don't generally like crass. And I think the sweetness of Ari and Josh and their story overwhelms the crass. But I understand where that reviewer is coming from, because a lot of it is very-- gosh, I'm just struggling with the language. But a lot of it is very sexually explicit without sex scenes. Is that what we want to say? I'm not sure. Read You Again.
[00:24:51] I was charmed by it. Four star book for me. And it's a keeper. Meaning I'm keeping this book on my shelves because I fully intend to reread it next fall. It was the perfect autumnal book for me. If ten Blind Dates is my Christmas comfort book, it wouldn't shock me if You Again became my fall comfort book. Because I love the characters and it's important to note the side characters in the book are really fun too, because that's important. Because When Harry Met Sally has some of the best side characters of all time. And I think Ari and Josh and their friends and family are really fun. There's also a great foodie element. Josh is a chef and his dad owns a Jewish diner. So there's some really great food writing in this too, which I love this time of year. So just thoroughly enjoyed this one. And most of the reviews I've seen have been raves. So if you are hesitant, I think you should give this one a shot. I bet you will fall in love with these people like I did. So that Is You Again by Kate Goldbeck. I just had a great time. If you could see me now, I have a big 'ol smile on my face because it just made me smile.
[00:25:55] Okay, then speaking of books that do find you serendipitously, so You Again was kind of my fun surprise for the month. I next stumbled upon a book called My Husband. This is by Maud Ventura. I was working on picking books for our Reader Retreaters. That's one of my favorite things that I do as part of retreat, is I individually pick books for all of the retreaters. And it is so fun. I have a spreadsheet with all of their tastes and I shop the store for them. And while I was shopping the store, I stumbled upon books that I forgot I had ordered, or that maybe Esme or Olivia ordered. And anyway, it's always kind of fun because I get to shop our shelves. And I found this then little book called My Husband. It is a translated novel from the French, and it's narrated by this woman who is completely obsessed with her husband. The way she words it is she knows that over time most couples become comfortable with one another, and most relationships ease into comfortability. And she insists hers has not because she is just completely obsessed and infatuated with her husband. The whole book is this woman completely obsessed with her husband. The book is set over seven days. I was just intrigued by the premise. And I told staffers-- I was talking to them about this yesterday. I said, "If this was an American novel, she would have killed her husband." Which honestly was what I kept waiting for. And I don't want to spoil it for you, but I just am here to tell you this isn't a thriller. It's just an interesting book where this woman spends seven days completely obsessed and obsessing over her husband.
[00:27:45] She's a fascinating character where she assigns colors to days of the week and she wears different clothes to attract her husband's attention. And she read certain books so that he'll pay attention to her. And she's just completely obsessed with him. And because the book is so thin, I was willing to see where it took me. And where it took me was a surprising place. But this is not a thriller. That's all I'll say. This is not a thriller. As Caroline on staff so succinctly put it, this is Gone Girl where nothing happens. And that's the best way I can describe it. It's just this odd little novel about an absolutely-- I think I will use this term in the way it was intended. Like a crazed woman who is desperate for her husband's love. And throughout the book, you get the sense that her husband does love her, but perhaps not in the way she loves him because she associates love with infatuation. It's like something she never grew out of. And you're left asking a lot of questions about how we define love, what passion looks like in relationships, how much passion is too much passion? The book is also relatively open door. It's very beautifully written kind of literary book, and so it feels more sensual than sexual, if that makes sense. But it is pretty sexually explicit. It takes place over seven days and I'm trying not to spoil it for you, but she does have affairs. And I was shocked because I thought, well, wait a minute, you're obsessed with your husband.
[00:29:24] But she has affairs to make her husband jealous. So she spirals so deeply throughout the book and it really is Gone Girl-esque. It's it's Amy Dunne-esque. I should get Hunter to read it. It's Amy Dunne-esque only no murder. Nothing happens. It's just a weird, interesting little book. I'm glad I read it. I'm not sure star rating-wise what I would-- I'm not sure. I haven't thought that through. But interesting, bizarre book. Not entirely sure who I could hand sell it to. So I'm telling you guys about it, and you can do with it what you will. It is called My Husband by Maud Ventura, translated from the French, just completely different from anything I was expecting. But I was intrigued by the premise, and it was short enough where I was willing to take the risk. Meanwhile, while I was reading a couple of those books, I was listening to Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang. Pam Zhang wrote, How Much of These Hills is Gold, which released back in 2020. That was her debut. It was really well reviewed and we sold quite a few copies. It was during the pandemic. And so I, for whatever reason, did not read that book. I remember distinctly its cover. It was a gorgeous cover. And this is her sophomore novel, Land of Milk and Honey. I picked it up because of the premise. So the premise is like this post-apocalyptic post-climate crisis book where a chef is recruited to come join the ranks and come be the chef at this really high end bougie restaurant in what I assume are the Italian Alps or near the Italian Alps somewhere in Italy.
[00:31:11] But it's post climate crisis, so there are really no restaurants like this anywhere else in the world. And food has become this bland, pretty bleak, utilitarian landscape. And I was just intrigued by that premise for a couple of reasons. So, first of all, I don't always like climate crisis books. They can feel a little too close to home. They can be a little too intense. But I do love authors who play with the post-apocalyptic novel. So Emily St John Mandel is the obvious one, she's who comes to mind. And what I kept thinking is maybe this book would be like Station 11. So Station 11 is is to art as Land of Milk and Honey is to food. So when the world ends or after the world as we know it ends, what survives? Emily St John Mandel says art. I think that's what she's articulating in Station 11. I think what C Pam Zhang is articulating is, is it food? I think that's the question she's asking. Will food survive? What is food for? Is it for nourishment? Is it for health? Is it for pleasure? So that is I think the thesis of Land of Milk and Honey. I listen to this one. The audiobook is narrated really fantastically by Eunice Wong. I would compare her to Julia Whalen in the sense that she's a really great narrator. She incorporates a lot of voices and a lot of dramatic effect. And for the most part, I really loved that. By the middle of the book, I was a little bogged down, and I can't tell if that was the narration or if I would have been equally bogged down by the physical copy. So I've read some reviews. It got starred reviews in Kirkus in Publishers Weekly. I would agree with with those reviews. I really liked this book, but I did get a little lost in the middle, and that could entirely be me and how I am with audiobooks. Like, I have to really be careful which ones I listen to just because I am not an auditory learner. And so I really need the physical copy sometimes.
[00:33:31] So, anyway, I'm just putting that out there that I don't know if my loss in the middle was due to the narration or due to my own reading. But I did really like the audiobook. I think it would be a good one to download from Libro.fm. The other reason I picked this up, aside from the premise and Emily St John Mandel, I picked this one up because earlier this year Jordan and I watched the movie The Menu with Anya Taylor-Joy. I think we rented it on HBO or something like that. Anyway, I watched it first alone. I'm pretty sure Jordan had COVID actually, and so I watched it alone. And then Jordan after he'd been done quarantining, we watched it together because I thought it was so weird and I could not get it out of my head. If you're familiar with that movie at all, it very much sounded like the premise of Land of Milk and Honey, maybe just with the added climate crisis thrown in. But anyway, so we've got this unnamed chef. She moves from America. She's kind of lost. She's not allowed back in America. She's was an immigrant. Her mother died in California. She was working as a chef, I believe, in London. And she's been locked out of the country for lack of a better term. And so she applies and gets this job. She kind of lives on her resumé. She's not quite the chef she sells herself to be, but she becomes this chef at this bougie high end restaurant. And what you, the reader, can't figure out is how does this restaurant exist? Like, it is it ethical? How are they growing food in a world where most people can't grow food? How are they breeding animals in order to have meat? Because most of the world is starving or just eating for survival. There's no pleasure element in the food people are eating.
[00:35:15] And so there's questions of ethics, of capitalistic enterprise. You get the sense that the sponsor of this restaurant, the person who has brought her here, you get the sense he's kind of this Elon Musk type character, this maybe tech guy or this guy who has all of these funds, all of this money but what has he chosen to do with it. Anyway, so there's lots of questions of ethics, of capitalism, of what causes a climate crisis anyway, and then how do you recover from it? And is a bougie restaurant in the middle of Italy the way to do it? How do the Italians feel about it? So there's all kinds of things Pam Zhang is saying, I think, with this book and some of it lands better than others. What I will tell you is this book is beautifully written. The food writing in this book-- I was listening to it and so I think you can especially sometimes tell because you're listening to it, and it's so poetic. I know I use this word with the previous book, I think, but sensuous is the word I kept coming back to because there are some sex scenes in this book. Our unnamed narrator has this friendship turned romance is it toxic relationship with her boss's daughter? And there are sex scenes. Somebody described them to me as explicit. I don't know. I think in literary fiction I don't always find sex scenes explicit because they're more poetic in nature and they're more part of the background of the book, if that makes sense. Whereas, something like Fourth Wing, I was like, whoa! So I think it just depends on how you are accustomed to reading about sex in books. I did not find this to be explicit, but I did find it to be really sensual. So all about the senses.
[00:37:11] So all of the food writing is really descriptive. I was listening in my car and my mouth was watering, like I could taste what was happening. And I'll say the same about the romantic and more sexual scenes, is they're very descriptive and sensual. And so that's the word I keep coming back to because I think it is the word the best encapsulates, honestly, the whole book. This is a weird one, but I like a weird book. I'm still kind of thinking through star ratings, but I think this will be 3.5, 3.75. Unlike some other reviews I read, I think she sticks the landing. I really liked how the book ended. I might be alone in that, but it was just the middle that I got a little bogged down by. I really liked how the book started and ended. I think the premise is unique. If you like weird books, I think you should try this one. Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang. And then last but not least, I read You're Not Listening. This is by Kate Murphy. You've been hearing me talk about this one on the podcast because of our town's One Book Celebration. This is an event that our local library puts on and the Bookshelf partners with them and works the event. Tonight, when you listen to this, as you listen to this, I will be preparing to interview Kate Murphy at our author event. So typically we have the author of our One Book Selection come to Thomasville and they'll do a presentation. But Kate Murphy is a little bit different because her book is about listening. She really did not want to do just a straight author talk. She wanted to be in conversation. And so I will be interviewing her. I'm not at all nervous, not at all sweaty, just getting very nervous, very sweaty. But I'm also really excited because I really did like this book.
[00:38:57] So if you're not familiar or if maybe you don't know what it is about, you can probably tell by the title, but it is nonfiction about the art of listening and really the lost art of listening, I think Kate Murphy would argue. I read somewhere that You're Not Listening is to listening as Quiet by Susan Cane was to introversion. I would mostly agree with that. I think Quiet is just one of my life changing books I think. I don't want to be dramatic about it, but as an introvert, before we were really obsessed I think with personalities-- and maybe we've always been obsessed with personalities, but it feels like the introvert-extrovert dynamic is something we talk about now all the time. And I think Quiet came out really before that. I felt very seen and understood by Susan Cain. You're not listening is just exceedingly practical. So Kate Murphy is a journalist and writer. She had conducted who knows how many interviews in her work as a journalist for The New York Times, but I think also for many other entities. And in her course of interviewing, I think she discovered what good listening looks like and then she looked around and noticed it was becoming lost and maybe even lost science. And so You're Not Listening is really each chapter is about a different element of listening and how to better listen and then what good listening can look like and how it can better our relationships. I don't think it offers a solution to the current climate where we're each entrenched in our tribes. But I do think she sees that entrenchment as a problem and she seeks to address it through better listening.
[00:40:47] And as an employer, as a boss, I also thought the book was really practical and helpful. Of course, I think everybody likes to think of themselves as a good listener. I'm not an exception to that, but as I was reading the book, I thought, wow, there are really some bad habits that I have picked up, maybe even from recording this podcast where I'm talking all by myself all the time. And also as an introvert, I'm in my head a lot, and so am I really listening or am I constantly thinking about what I'm going to say next? And so, anyway, Kate Murphy really has written a really great book for leaders. If you are a leader in your church or religious organization or a community program or a business, if you're a leader at work, I think this could be a really valuable book for you. I'm not drawn to a lot of business books. This is the kind of business book I would read. I just felt like, oh yeah, this is really practical. I took a lot of notes. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in or if you liked Quiet by Susan Cain, I do think that's a decent comp. When we pick a One Book Selection, we've picked all kinds of things, fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction feels relatively unusual in recent memory. And so I know nonfiction can be a hard sell for some, but I really thought this one was accessible and pretty interesting. I mean, it lagged maybe in a couple of parts. I hesitate to say that because maybe that's my own listening problem. I did read the physical copy of this one, but yeah, might be worth giving it a shot, especially if you lead people or if you just want to be a better listener or a better conversationalist, or if you find yourself blowing up when somebody disagrees with you. I do think that is happening a lot. Again, me included. If you find yourself getting really tense when somebody says something that you disagree with., if you seek to have a posture of curiosity, I think You're Not Listening would be a great book for you.
[00:42:46] So those are the books I read in September. As usual, with all of our Reading Recap episodes, we are offering a Reading Recap bundle for this month. Our September Reading Recap bundle is $59 and it includes Happiness Falls by Angie Kim, You Again, that's the romcom that's kind of like When Harry Met Sally, and You're Not Listening. You can find more details and the September book bundle online through the link in our shownotes. Or just go to Bookshelfthomasville.com and type in today's episode number 444 in the search bar.
[00:43:22] This week I'm reading, Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways by Brittany Means.
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:
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Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle Carl, Kate O'Connell, Kristin May, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stacy Laue, Chanta Combs, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell
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