Episode 511 || Annie Recommends: Book Club Selections
This week on From the Front Porch, it’s an episode of Annie Recommends! In this series, Annie curates a stack of books in a certain genre or theme for you – just as if you walked into our brick-and-mortar store, The Bookshelf. Sometimes, you just want a good book list. This month, Annie recommends a short list of her favorite book club selections.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search “Episode 511”) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci
Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Sandwich by Catherine Newman
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, Tiktok, and Facebook, 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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
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...Jennifer Bannerton, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Susan Hulings, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, and Amanda Whigham.
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 whining in public. The story gets lost. All they remember is you’re a whiner.”
- Susan Rieger, Like Mother, Like Mother
[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 recommending some of my favorite recent book club selections as you embark on your own book clubs in 2025. Do you love listening to From the Front Porch every week? We hope so. Spread the word by leaving a review on Apple podcasts. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for From the Front Porch, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think.
Here’s a recent review:
in one word...wholesome. In writing this review I was trying to think of a word that would sum up this podcast and I landed on wholesome. Annie and her family are so down-to-earth and sound like just genuinely beautiful people I'd love to get to know in real life. Our reading interests don't always align, but I can listen to them talk about any book. Their love of reading really comes through and they just want to spread that love and I'm here for every minute of it. Can't wait to visit The Bookshelf in person someday!
[00:01:38] Listen, it's going to bring Susie Butterworth so much joy that the words you used to describe her daughter and our family and this podcast is wholesome. I mean, truly, that's going to make Susie's Day. So, thank you. Thank you so much to all of the reviewers who've left kind words and thoughtful reviews for our show. We're so grateful any time you share From the Front Porch with your friends. Thank you for spreading the word about our podcast and as a result, our brick and mortar bookstore, too. Now back to the show. Okay. We are back because sometimes you just want a good book list. We know this because customers come in store or email Erin all the time asking for recommendations based on a specific genre or criteria. A bookseller’s favorite task, at least in my experience, is to go around the shop and put together a stack of books for a customer who's on the hunt, even if they don't buy every book we pick, the fun is in the discovery.
[00:02:37] So that's what we're trying to mimic on these Annie Recommends episodes are from the front porch. Every so often I'll put together a book stack around a certain theme. This month, in honor of a new year and your potential New Year's resolutions to join or start a book club, I've made a short list of some of my favorite titles to discuss in a group setting. Not all good books make good book club selections. This is the truth. And just like I wouldn't overwhelm customers with a towering stack of titles, I'm not going to overwhelm you either. I want to give you five books I think you'd love, whether you're a longtime book club member or joining or starting one for the very first time. If you like this episode format, you might also want to check out some previous episodes of From the Front Porch. I'm going to name the numbers for you, but they're also linked in the shownotes. Episodes 463, 473, 481, 498 and 504.
[00:03:37] In the past, I've done book stacks for audiobooks, nonfiction, November and romcoms, and then a couple other ones, too. So this month, in order to kick off 2025, I'm doing book club selections. I think a lot of folks this time of year are either picking books for their book club or they are interested maybe in starting a book club. I'll be honest with you, my in-person book club and some of them listen to this podcast. Hi book club! It feels like we're a little bit on our last leg, and so we're constantly trying to figure out new ways to breathe life into our book club. I think it's hard to find time and to make time for book club. And so maybe you feel that way, too. And I just want to let you know that if you feel that way, and I have a lot of friends all over the country and I think post-pandemic it's just hard to, I don't know, to get back together or to find the time. So this isn't a podcast episode about how to start a book club. Though I actually think we've done one of those if you if you dig deep. If I think about it, I'll put a link in the show notes.
[00:04:42] But there are a ton of different ways to host a book club. I've done a Sisterhood of the Traveling Book Club with my long distance friends where one of us starts a book or reads a book, makes notes in it, underlines it, annotates whatever, writes a note with our thoughts, and then we mail it to the next person, and then that person makes her notes and mails it to the next person. And when we're done, the person who started the book got the final book with all the notes. So that was really fun and a kind of a unique format. There's a book club that meets locally where they just meet and talk about what books they've read. I think there's actually a woman named Lauren on Instagram. Lauren loves to. I think she does this in Nashville. But I know locally a book club does that as well. And we and my book club have implemented that a little bit just to try to alleviate some of the pressure of having to read a book every month.
[00:05:34] So we've incorporated that too and so that could be a solution for you- maybe a reading club instead of a book club. But I still love the good old fashioned traditional format of sitting around with a group of people and talking about a book. But, again, not every good book makes a good book club book. And so that's what I am here for today. So what I try to do, I know a lot of book clubs prefer paperbacks, but I'm a bookseller. And so I decided I wanted to look at my 2024 reads and see which one of them I think would make good book club selections, would make a good book club selection. Because, again, I don't have a criteria, like a list for what makes a good book club book. But in my opinion, they've got to be a little bit divisive. It's not really good to just sit around. And I've been to book clubs like this, but it's not really fun to sit around and be like I loved it. The end. That's not really interesting. Maybe that's good if you're trying to keep things low key, and certainly we've done that before.
[00:06:38] I also don't know that romcoms always make good book club books. I think sometimes they do, but I think that can be difficult. It's got to be a book that's got a little bit of meat to it, a little bit of things to discuss. So, again, I don't have specific criteria. I don't have a checklist that I look for when I'm looking for a good book club book. But when I went back over my 2024 reads, I thought, which of these would I discuss in a group? Which could hold our attention? What wouldn't be a pain for a young mom or a hard working single person? We have a lot of people in our book club with a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people who are quite busy. And so what book is going to pack a punch maybe in a short number of pages, these types of things.
[00:07:20] So all that being said, the first book that I thought of might not shock you, but it is What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci. Listen, memoirs I actually think make great book club conversations because frequently they're good in audiobook format. And for a lot of my fellow book club members, audio book is super helpful. People can listen to them on their commutes. They can listen to them while they clean their house, while they drive their kids to school, whatever. And so memoirs are often already on people's radar. They're relatively easy to read. And you can read them in very different formats and still, I think, get something out of them. One of my favorite book club selections over I guess the last couple of years was a book club conversation we had about the Jeanette McCurdy book I'm Glad My Mom Died. None of us in our book club really was super familiar with Jeanette McCurdy. We're all like a little too old to fully know who she was, but we had such a great conversation about that book.
[00:08:19] And then one of my other favorite book club books in recent memory was Taste by Stanley Tucci. And sure, you could just sit around and talk about how fun Stanley Tucci is, but this is what's very fun. I read What I Ate in One Year last year and loved it. If you're not familiar with Stanley Tucci, I'm so sorry. But he is an Academy Award nominated actor. You probably most likely, if you're listening this podcast, recognize him from The Devil Wears Prada would be my guess. But also The Hunger Games. He is a big foodie and kind of blew up, I think, during the pandemic with some of his food videos. He's always been a foodie. He's written some cookbooks, but he published Taste a couple of years ago, which was a beautiful memoir that also dealt a lot with his cancer diagnosis. He had cancer on his tongue. And so how that affected his sense of taste and how he ate and consumed food. His most recent memoir that released last fall, is a memoir literally detailing almost like a diary, well, like a diary, what he ate in one year. It's set up like his diary entries.
[00:09:25] I found it immensely compelling. But here's why I think would make a good book club. I read it and loved it. I had multiple people. Multiple people. Maybe you, dear listener, who DM'd me, wrote me an email, commented on Patreon and let me know Stanley Tucci is a snob. Which, yeah, of course he is. Guys, they're stars, they're not like us. They're celebrities. They're not like us. And that's the point. Do you really want your Hollywood star to be like you? I don't. That's the way we like them. The stars are not like us. Us Weekly lied to you. And so I got so many DMs that were like Stanley Tucci is pretentious. He's a snob. I felt like he namedrops too much in this book, which, again, that's what I'm here for. Please, please talk to me about how John Krasinski is your brother in law. I would love nothing more. But it made me realize, I thought, this would be just a book that you could sit around and just be like Stanley Tucci is so great. But that's not true because I will say I loved What I Ate in One Year. But there is no denying this man is slightly curmudgeonly. He is a bit of a snob and I find it fascinating.
[00:10:41] So when my book club read Taste, we did a whole meal around the book and that was super memorable to me. We were at my friend Miken's [sp] house. She's a wonderful cook. We gathered around her table. It was so lovely. I have nothing but fond memories of that book club meeting. And so I always think a food book is a good idea for book club. Because if you do the snacky thing, if you do the food thing, it's so easy to bring a recipe or to share something from the book itself. So that's one reason I think Stanley Tucci books would be really fun or any food memoir for that matter. You could do Ina Garten if you preferred. But I think in the case of Stanley Tucci, we also had a really interesting conversation when we read Taste about medical diagnoses, changes in perspective, changes in personal tastes. And I think with this book, you could actually talk quite a bit about do you keep a diary? What does your diary include? Would you ever publish your diary? I think you could have some really interesting conversations around that. You could speculate, is this really his diary? Who wrote this book?
[00:11:47] That's the great part about a celebrity memoir. Did he really write this? Did somebody write this with him? And then you could also talk about do you find name dropping or a little bit of snobbery interesting? Do you find that funny? Or do you find it humorous or do you find it off-putting? Why? These are interesting conversations that I love to have with my friends. And so I think at first glance you might think, ugh, a celebrity memoir for book club. But I actually think, gosh, you could do a whole year of celebrity memoirs. You might be sick of them by the time the year is done, but there are so many really good ones I think about. I've still not read it, but I think Jessica Simpson's could make a good book club selection. I think the Britney Spears book was super interesting. Not particularly the best written book I'd ever read, but still interesting. Cher has a relatively new memoir out, the Ina Garten memoir, Kelly Bishop. I think you could do a whole year of these and probably the Jeannette McCurdy and probably have some really rich conversations. Gosh, the new Riley Keough.
[00:12:44] Anyway, if I had to pick one, I would pick because of the foodie element, What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci. Again, you don't want to just sit around with your book club and talk about how great a book is. You want to really talk about, hey, did you like this author's perspective? This book is very much a travel book. He travels a lot for his work. And so you could talk about your most memorable meals. I love asking people their most memorable meals. I think this would make a great book club conversation. So that is what I ate in one year by Stanley Tucci. If you're a little eye-rolly about a celebrity memoir and if your book club is maybe more traditional, I would highly recommend Like Mother Like Mother by Susan Rieger. This was actually my November Shelf Subscription selection and I really liked it. It was a four star book for me about a woman who is a bit of a reluctant mother. And she winds up, I believe-- if I'm not mistaken, it's been a minute, but she ends up having three daughters, one of whom kind of takes her to task for maybe not being the most present mother. Her other two daughters kind of let things slide, but her youngest daughter, not so much.
[00:13:48] While that's going on, the mom also has a really lucrative and successful career as a newspaper journalist. And so, admittedly, this one was appealing to me because of how it talks about newspaper journalism. This is definitely a dysfunctional family story with ties to journalism and even some politics. When I read and think about a book club selection, I think immediately about what topics you could cover, what questions you could ask in book club. I loved Like Mother Like Mother. But part of the reason I would recommend it for a book club conversation is because in the span of one week, in the span of one week, I had two dear friends who also happened to be shelf subscribers messaged me about this book. And one said, "I really struggled with this. I think the pacing was a little bit off. The subject matter was good, but I'm not sure the storytelling was for me." This friend wondered if maybe her reading was affected or impacted by the recent election, the 2024 election. And my friend and I talked about it, we had a really interesting conversation about it.
[00:14:55] Then two or three days later, I had another dear friend who's a shelf subscriber text me and say, "I'm reading Like Mother Like Mother. I think it's going to be one of my favorite books of the year. And I immediately thought yes! Yes, I've done my job. Because to me shelf subscriptions are almost like a book club where I'm not necessarily discussing the book with all of you, but I am reading a book, typing up my thoughts and then sharing them with you and then you get to have your own thoughts. My real hope is that maybe you read a Shelf Subscription book and it makes you want to talk to your friends about it. And so I love sending out a five star book that everybody loves. I do love that. But there's something really cool and fun about sending out a book where one person's like I don't know about this. I struggled with this aspect of the storytelling. I struggled with the pacing. And then somebody else who's like this is one of my favorite books of the year.
[00:15:47] I really thought, yes, I did it. And so I think for that very reason, it could make a great book club book. I imagine there will be readers who hate this. It's not particularly plot-driven. It's got a lot about characters and motherhood. Speaking of kind of themes, you could talk about, you could talk about motherhood in all its forms. Plus, of course, a little bit of generational trauma. Of course, there's a reason our main character was a reluctant mother, and maybe her mothering looked different from her own mothers. So you could talk a lot about generational trauma depending on how vulnerable your book club wants to get with each other. And then I also think you could talk about how journalism has changed, how newspapers have changed. If you if you dared, you could talk a little bit about politics and how politics has changed. There's so much. This book really-- and I think this is going to sound weird. It did not remind me of a Nora Ephron romcom.
[00:16:40] It did not remind me of You've Got Mail or Sleepless in Seattle, but it reminded me of New York, Nora Ephron, Heartburn, a complicated marriage. It did remind me of that. It was almost like reading a book that could have been written 30 years ago. It was almost like reading a book from the 70s and I can't quite put my finger on why, but there you go. You could discuss that in your book club because there is a way in which it felt just ever so slightly out of date. If you're a local listener, this book-- and I searched and searched, this book makes a ton of references to Tallahassee. And I tried to figure out is Susan Rieger from Tallahassee? Did she get a degree from Florida State? Because some of it was deeply accurate and then some of it was so like this is so nit-picky, but she makes a reference-- this is for locals only. She makes a reference to Chiles High School. And I know for a fact that Chiles High School was built while I was in high school. It was like a new high school when I was in high school. And she talks about Chiles High School being around since like the 90s or 80s or something. And I was like, no.
[00:17:44] So no one would ever catch that in a million years. But I did wonder the whole time I was reading, I was like, why is this woman obsessed with Tallahassee? You do find Tallahassee referenced a lot in pop culture. I think it's because of how it sounds. I think Tallahassee is just a fun word to say. But anyway, so if you're local, you might enjoy a little bit of local flavor and you could discuss then what's accurate and what's not. She makes some funny comments about Tallahassee, some derogatory ones, which is fine. To me, it reminded me if your book club likes reading books about feminism, I think books by people like Meg Wolitzer. A book about newspaper writing that I loved years ago, backlist title, was The Imperfectionists by Tom Rockman. This book reminded me a little bit of that if you like Heartburn by Nora Ephron just because of the, I don't know, Washington of it all, the Washington, New York of it all.
[00:18:33] I think this could make a fantastic book club book. It's certainly more traditional. It's I would say a little bit literary fiction, a little bit slower paced. I think you could talk about the storytelling and the pacing. This book covers two perspectives, and I always think in a book club it's interesting to address that because sometimes multiple perspectives really work and really round out a story and then sometimes they're distracting and it's like too many cooks in the kitchen. And so I think your book club could easily talk about that. So that is Like Mother Like Mother by Susan Rieger.
[00:19:08] Okay. Hear me out. I think Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe would make a really fun book club conversation. But I'm going to put a caveat here. If my mom was in a book club, I would 1,000% never recommend this book. And I also think it's not just to do with the fact that if you're not familiar Margo is our 19 year old protagonist. She has just had a baby with her professor. Do with that what you will. She's 19. She has a baby, and she's now had to drop out of college. Professor, in my opinion, kind of a skeeze. And so she's trying to raise her baby and she surrounds herself with a really quirky group of people who help her raise her baby, including her dad, who is like an ex almost like WWE wrestler, like a performative wrestler. And then she, in order to bring in some extra cash, joins OnlyFans. And this book does not shy away from the sexual content. So I'm just being very honest with you. There is plenty of explicit sexual content in this book. And so that is part of the reason I would not recommend it for a Sussie Book club.
[00:20:23] I'd also say if your book club is primarily Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, I think you're going to enjoy this more. I really do. That's just the facts. I'm not ageist. I adore my mom. I adore the boomers in my life. I don't think this is going to appeal to a Boomer book club. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, and I know you will. I know you will tell me if I'm wrong. But I don't think this is for a Boomer book club. I think it's for Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X. I think that this book club is either loved or loathed. I've seen both. And again that is why I think it'd make a fun book club because I have friends who read this book who recommended it to me. I was not going to read this book. I just didn't think it was for me. And then I had two real life friends who were like, Annie, this is my favorite book I've read all year; you should try it. I listened to it on audiobook. Again, it's a fantastic audiobook. If you've got a bunch of readers in your book club who struggle with reading the book in a month's time frame, this might work for them. I believe Elle Fanning is the narrator and she does a great job.
[00:21:27] Here's the other reason. So not only would it make a good book club because there's so much you can unpack about Margo's decision making, about her mothering. Certainly, you could talk about who she includes in her little one's life. I think there's a lot in here about one generation's parenting style versus another's. You could talk about like Margot's relationship with her father is really lovely. He has previously not been super present in her life. So you can unpack all of these things. You can discuss all of these things that have to do directly with the plot of the book. But if you want to get real English majorly about it, one of my favorite parts of this book is the narration and the narrative perspective. Rufi Thorpe does something so, in my opinion, genius with how the story is being told and narrated. And honestly, I'd like you to go in blind. And so I'm going to not say too much more, but you could have a collegiate level conversation if you wanted to about perspective and the ways that Rufi Thorpe plays with perspective. The different glimpses we see of Margot. Thanks to how Rufi Thorpe chooses to write Margot.
[00:22:41] So certainly there's a lot to unpack in here. There's a lot of fodder here. Only fans, teenage pregnancy, college, college life, your college friends. Do your college friends stick around? If you had to create your own village to raise your child, who would be included in that village? There's a lot to unpack in the actual storytelling like in the plot and in the characters. But then there's also a lot to be said for the writing style of the book and how this book is told, how the story is told. So if you've heard of Margo's Got Money Troubles, but you've not been sure, maybe reading it in book club format would be really fun because my guess is half of your book club loves it. Half of them hate it. Maybe some of them don't quite understand it. I don't know. But I think there would be enough diverse opinions where it would be a really fun and lively book club conversation. That is Margot's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe.
[00:23:34] Okay, now we're going to go more traditional again. And I feel like I almost had a book club conversation about this book, and that is The Women by Kristin Hannah. Kristin Hannah books I do think make naturally good book club books. I don't see this from my own experience. This is my first ever Kristin Hannah book to actually read, which may be shocking to some of you, but I had not read her before reading The Women. But Nancy adores her. And Nancy's Book Club and other book clubs IN Thomas will read her books frequently. I'm thinking specifically of The Nightingale. But honestly, we sell a lot of backlist copies of Kristin Hannah frequently to book clubs. And so The Women makes a pretty obvious book club selection. Part of the reason I feel like I read this in a book club setting is because my mom recommended it. Nancy read and recommended it. Erin read it. A customer named Kathy read it and was like, "Annie, when you're done tell me all about it."
[00:24:37] One of my favorite things about bookstore life-- and I don't get to encounter a ton anymore because I'm frequently podcasting, paying bills, writing my own book. But when I'm on the floor of the Bookshelf, one of my favorite things is it feels like you're kind of engaged in a constant book club conversation because people are coming in, customers are coming in all the time, telling you what they read, whether they liked it, what they didn't like about it, etc.. And The Women-- I don't want to speak in hyperbole, so let me think about this. Okay, I think it is accurate to say that The Women was the most talked about book at The Bookshelf in 2024. So our in-store customers, this was the book they were talking about the most. It was one of our bestselling books of 2024. If you're not familiar, it's a story set in the Vietnam War era, specifically dealing with Vietnam War nurses and the fact that they are often hidden from memory, meaning they're not often talked about or discussed. The women who were present during the Vietnam War are not frequently acknowledged as having contributed to that war effort.
[00:25:43] Okay. Here's why I think it would make a great book club book. And if Margo's got money Troubles is just for Gen Z, Millennial, Xers, I actually think the women is for everyone and here's why. If you're a Millennial like I am, I would be willing to bet-- and I feel like I got a pretty decent education, with some caveats, with some complaints here or there. But, truly, by the time we got to the Vietnam War, in most of my history curriculum growing up, it was the end of the year. And the Vietnam War was like a blip and we did not talk about it very much. I knew some about it, but not a ton. If you're a Boomer, if you're like my mom or Nancy, then you have peers who went to Vietnam. I have two uncles who fought in Vietnam who never talk about it. Never talk about it. And so if you're a Boomer, you have a sibling or you have a best friend or you have an acquaintance who fought in Vietnam, you were alive during the Vietnam War era, you remember the protests, maybe you attended a protest, that kind of thing, it's very much alive in your memory, I think there is so much to talk about in terms of different-- I love a book club conversation that gently opens you up to sharing personal experiences.
[00:27:03] So not every book club is like this tight knit group of people. You might only talk to your book club members at book club and never any other time. But I think a book like The Women I learned so much about my mom because we sat at out back-- and my dad had not read this. He might have now, but my dad at the time had not read this. But I learned about my dad's history with Vietnam, my mom, stuff we had never talked about before. But this book made it possible, made a great entry point to talk about these things. And then we talked about them in relationship to current events. I obviously did not come of age during the Vietnam War era, but I did come of age during the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I have peers who watched the same TVs I did on 9/11, and different people responded and reacted differently. So I have some friends who joined the armed forces after seeing the events of 9/11. And so I just think there's so much you can talk about. And if you're in a multi-generational book club, first of all, how lucky you are. I think that is so fun and outstanding and interesting. I just don't think there are enough multigenerational spaces in this world. It's one of the reasons I like the bookstore.
[00:28:15] And so I think you can have some really great conversations about different generations, their different responses to war, current events, current protests that feel very reminiscent of the Vietnam War era. Also, listen, this was my first Kristin Hannah book, but my understanding is this was not unusual. Talk about your twists and turns and melodrama. My gosh! I think you know what? Keila might even have read this book. And then my friend Erin read this book. So many people read this book. So I wound up discussing it with all kinds of people. But I'm pretty sure Erin and Keila and Nancy, like, then I came to work and talked about it because so much happens in this book that you want to unpack honestly. It sounds silly to say, but the American film starring Kate Beckinsale and Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, Pearl Harbor, that had such melodrama to it. And The Women definitely has so much melodrama that I think weirdly you could have a lot of fun with this book. And then I know a lot of readers like me, my friend Suzanne, who read a book and it sends them on a deep dive into other things.
[00:29:24] So Jordan and I wound up watching the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary. We want to plan a trip to D.C. My friend Erin went to D.C. shortly after reading this book and saw not only the Vietnam War Memorial, but the memorial dedicated to the women who were present and fought and served in the Vietnam War. And so, anyway, I think it's a book that will send you on a natural deep dive. And I think the conversations are pretty endless. And I think you could have them about the book itself. But then I think you could also talk a lot about personal experience, personal histories in a pretty safe way. I loved this book mostly because the conversations I wound up having after it, and that is the mark of a good book club book. So that is The Women by Kristin Hannah.
[00:30:11] And then last but not least, if you came into the store and you were looking for recommendations from your book club, on top of the stack I would put Sandwich by Catherine Newman. I put this on your book stack or I put this on my list of recommended book club reads for a few reasons. The first is its length. This is not a long book. Again, I'm always keeping in mind how long a book takes to read. The Women's pretty long, but Sandwich by Catherine Newman is not long at all. Your book club might also prefer or be interested in her backlist title. Particularly We all Want Impossible Things. If your book club prefers paperbacks, that book is out in paperback. We All Want Impossible Things is about friendship. It's a beautiful book about illness, grief, friendship. I loved it. Loved it, read it and cried. And I think it'd make a great book club book. Sandwich, her new book-- okay, how do I want to do this? I want to SAT this. We All Want Impossible Things is to friendship as Sandwich is to motherhood.
[00:31:10] So the main character of Sandwich is Rocky. Rocky is spending a week at the beach with her friends and family-- mostly her family. She considers herself a part of the sandwich generation, meaning she has aging parents who she's caring for and then she also has adult children. She's just about to be an empty nester if she's not already. And so she has adult children, but she's still kind of sort of caring for them, too. And so she finds herself in this sandwich generation. I think if you like books by Kelly Corrigan, if you like books about middle age, if you and the women in your book club are approaching middle age, I think this book addresses that really well because Rocky is right there in the middle of it. I also love a book that is set over a certain span of time. So this book is set at a week at the beach. This would be a good spring or summer book club selection, I think. But it's set at a week at the beach. Again, Rocky is at this beach house that they've stayed at this place for generations, which I love. The house becomes a character that you can easily discuss with your book club members. I love asking people do you have a place where your family returns to year after year after year? And boom, you've learned so much about all the people in your book club.
[00:32:24] Anyway, so Rocky returns to the same place year after year after year. Now she's there with her husband and her adult kids. Her adult kids are super interesting and funny. One of them brings his significant other. Maybe they both do, actually. Now that I think of it. So they both bring their partners to the beach weekend or the beach week. Then at the weekend, her parents come and join. And so it's just this hot mess multigenerational group of people. And so you could have a great conversation about generations, about what it's like to be an empty nester, what it's like to be an adult child raising adults, but also taking care of adults. You can talk about aging. I think I mentioned this in my initial review last year, but this book does deal with miscarriage and pregnancy loss. So you'd, of course, want to handle this with care. I do think Catherine Newman handles it with care, but there is a lot in here that you could discuss. I'll also save this much like some other books on this list, I have had customers come back and tell me, my gosh, I loved that book. It's my one of my favorite books of the year. And then I also have had people look at me-- because this sometimes happens where I will recommend a book in store, like a customer will ask, she'll tell me what she likes and I will-- this happened last year.
[00:33:43] I handed this woman Sandwich and she looked at me and she said, "I hated that. I hated it." And so, again, I don't want a book club book where everybody sits around Kumbaya and is like this book is awesome. I want a book where some people are going to be like, "Why did we read this book?" Because often what happens is by the end of book club conversation, you might still hate that book. It may not be to your personal tastes, but you will have had a good conversation about it. And so I think Sandwich is in the running for a great book club book selection. So here's my stack. What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci. Like Mother Like Mother by Susan Rieger. Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe. The Women by Kristin Hannah. And Sandwich by Catherine Newman. As usual, you can find all of these books on our store website. That's bookshelfthomasville.com. You can just type 511 in the search bar and all of the books we talked about today will appear on our site easy for you to shop and recommend to your book club this year.
[00:34:51] This week I'm reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
[00:34:52] 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:
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, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell, Jennifer Bannerton, Gene Queens
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, Susan Hulings
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