Episode 523 || March Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in March. You get 10% off your books when you order your March Reading Recap. Each month, we offer a Reading Recap bundle, which features Annie’s favorite books she read that month.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 523), or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (releases June 3rd)
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
The Tell by Amy Griffin
When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris (releases April 15th)
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
Annie's March Reading Recap Bundle - $75
Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
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 Here: A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving by Lydia Sohn.
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Our Executive Producers are...Beth, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, Jammie Treadwell, 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]
“We know both things are possible — the glittering prize, the sudden fatality. We dare to imagine the former. Most of us deny the latter. Deny it, even when it confronts us.” - Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days [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 March. Before we get started, as usual, a thank you to everyone who’s left reviews for From the Front Porch. iTunes reviews and ratings are still the best way for new listeners to find out about From the Front Porch and — as a result — discover our indie bookstore, too.
Here’s a recent review: Thursday Joy I've been listening to Annie and her podcast for a few years now and I always am delighted to hear her book recommendations. When it's Thursday and I realize that a new episode has dropped, I can't wait to listen to it and see what joy she might bring to me for that day. Thank you so much! If you haven’t left a review, 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 then tell us what you think. Your reviews help us spread the word about not only our podcast, but about our small brick-and-mortar business, too. [00:01:54] Now, back to the show! Okay, March. Lions. Lambs. We're done. We're finished. We're recapping the books I read in March. It was actually a great reading month. I am pleased to say my audiobook slump finally came to an end. I think that has to do with my mental state. I also think it has to with being in the car a little bit and needing some audiobook material. So that certainly boosted my reading. I also read a couple of books on the Kindle as I prepped for spring literary lunches, spring literary first looks. So it was a busy month, but it was month where I felt like, yeah, my reading mojo is back, which was a good feeling. Maybe it was spring finally getting here after what felt like a long winter. I don't know if it felt that way to you, but it felt like way literally and metaphorically. And so it is my sincere hope that spring is here and we're feeling good. And yeah, I'm ready to talk about the books I read in March. So first up is the book I quoted at the top of the show, which was Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. At the very tail end of February, Jordan and I took a somewhat impromptu trip to Savannah. It's one of our favorite places to visit. We calculated and we think this was our seventh or eighth trip to Savannah, Georgia. It's a farther drive from Thomasville than you'd think. Just if you're ever coming to Thomasville, it's a further drive than you think.
[00:03:20] And if you keep that in mind, if you those expectations realistic, you'll be so pleased when you get here. It's a longer drive than would think, but it's beautiful city filled with creativity and beauty and we love going there. And I love the independent bookstore there. There's actually several, but the bookstore that I enjoy visiting the most is E. Shaver, perhaps you are familiar with it. I think they have such a well curated selection. I love all the nooks and crannies of the store. I am drawn to stores that I could not own. E. Shavers, Sundog Books, these are some of my favorite places, but I'm not sure I would be able to keep up with the inventory in stores like those; but I sure do love visiting. And when we traveled, when we were going to Savannah, I knew I wanted to wait and buy Memorial Days there. It's a book that had been on my TBR. To my knowledge, we did not receive advanced copies. And so I figured it would be a great book to pick up while we were in Savannah. And it was, and I read it the weekend we were there, which I guess to some folks would seem like a waste of money, but to me was a beautiful of my time and money.
[00:04:33] So, if you're not familiar, Geraldine Brooks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Hunter and I, many years ago, recapped or reviewed her book, March, which is a retelling of Little Women, but told from or through the father's eyes. It was fascinating. She is also the author of Horse, which my dad read and loved last year. I believe that was last year. It was one of his Shelf Subscription selections. So she's a prolific fiction writer, but this was, is her, I believe, first memoir. And it's a somewhat tragic story. It certainly, I think, would earn a well-deserved spot in the grief canon. This is Geraldine Brooks's reflections on the death of her husband, Tony Horwitz, who in his own right was a prolific writer, journalist. He had written a book, Spying on the South. Olivia and I both have vivid memories of this book. We sold several copies at The Bookshelf, and he died during the promotion of that work. So he died while on book tour. And I did not realize until this book was coming out that he and Geraldine Brooks were married. I had no idea.
[00:05:49] I also did not know that Geraldine Brookes is Australian. And so what I really loved about Memorial Days and perhaps what sets it apart from other grief literature is, yes, it's a memoir about the loss of Tony, and particularly what it's like to lose someone so suddenly and to lose some while they are far away from you. She was at home off the coast of Massachusetts and Tony was touring in DC. And so I'm sure this was Geraldine Brooks' intention. I don't know if it was her original intention when she set out to write this book, but you get actually a pretty gut-wrenching look at the processes of death and the American healthcare system, end-of-life care system, as Geraldine tries to navigate being far away, trying to identify the body, trying to get to DC. It's incredibly tense, actually, reading about those experiences. And I appreciate that she does not shy away from the difficulty of it. She is very open and honest with the difficulties she faced that only then delayed perhaps her true grief, her really being able to grieve. And that's what the book is a lot about. It's taking these experiences and having to kind of compartmentalize so that she could be the caretaker she needed to be not only to her children, but also just to Tony's end of life care, funeral planning, trying to get the body back, those kinds of things. Things that we don't like to talk about as Americans, I don't think.
[00:07:29] And so she juxtaposes that with a few years after his death realizing that she has not fully grieved and she decides to go back home to Australia, to a remote part of Australia, to decompress and to finally grieve the way she thinks she's built and meant to grieve. We do not, and I say we, the royal we, the American we. But maybe humanity, we, I don't know, we are not good at allowing ourselves time to grieve. I think that's pretty American. And so reading about her experiences in Australia, it's also got really beautiful. I was not expecting the beautiful nature writing. So it's got this great nature writing. She's obviously a fantastic writer, so I'm not surprised I fell in love with this book. If you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you know how much I appreciate grief literature, grief memoirs. I don't know why I am so drawn to them, except maybe sometimes I think I'm a wing four on the Enneagram. And I do find myself thinking about these things a lot. And I feel deeply comforted by somebody who's putting to words some of the hardest moments of our lives.
[00:08:45] And, I don' know, maybe I'm building up a stock pile of books I'll need one day. But this one I just thought is so gorgeously and well written. Poetic yet sparse. There's some, as I said, great nature writing, and yet this is not a long book. This is a short memoir. And she kind of goes back and forth between her time in Australia and then the early days of Tony Horowitz dying on Memorial Day. The early day of telling her children, of trying to get in touch with his friends, planning a funeral, trying to unpack the whys of Tony's death. He was in his, I believe, early to mid-60s in supposedly good health, and so she begins investigating that as well. I really liked this book. If you like books like Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley, of course, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which makes a pretty funny, actually, appearance in this book, I think you will appreciate, maybe even love, Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. I certainly did.
[00:09:57] While also in Savannah, I had packed with me Taylor Jenkins Reid's latest. That is Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. No, you haven't missed anything. This does not release until June 3rd. So this is a pre-order opportunity if you're a big Taylor Jenkins Reid fan. I am. I consistently like her work. I have not read all of her work, but I have read a lot of it, including some of the earlier stuff. When Atmosphere got delivered to the bookshelf, Kyndall graciously gave me the opportunity to read it first, and then I passed it on to Kyndall. And this is why I love our bookselling staff, our book selling team, because we do know which books are for which staffer. We know who's going to want to read this. It brings me a lot of joy. So Kyndall, thank you for letting me read Atmosphere.
[00:10:45] So Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid's latest. It is about Joan. Joan is an astronaut. This book is set in the '80s, back and forth between Texas, and maybe a little bit of Florida, but I think mostly Texas, as a group of astronauts prepares for a launch. So I loved all of the astronaut training, the space prep, the, I think, pretty well-researched, realistic discussion of the space race. This is set, like I said, in the '80s, and so Joan faces some discrimination as a woman astronaut. She's also, and I thought this was a really interesting choice, an astronomer. So she's a little bit different from some other members of her team who are scientists or members of the military. Her background is in astronomy. And what Reid does so well, which I think she does well in all of the books I've read by her, but particularly the books that are about these really ambitious women, is she takes their professional life and then also gives us glimpses into their personal life. So there's a really, I think, well-handled love story that is part of this book.
[00:11:56] I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a love story. I think maybe even actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the subtitle-- I don' know if that will stay the same, but I think on my copy the subtitle is a love storytelling. Like Atmosphere, a love story. And there is a romantic love story. There are other love stories as well. But the friendships among the astronauts I really loved. But really, to me, one of the most interesting parts of the book, other than the space part itself, the astronaut training part itself, was Joan's relationship to her family. And in fact, by the end of the book I wanted a bit more out of Joan's relationship to her sister, to her niece. So I loved those parts and that's not surprising. I am drawn to dysfunctional family stories and Joan has a dysfunctional family story as she reaching toward literal new heights in her career. I loved this. I say I loved it. It took me 100 pages to get into this, and that is because there are so many characters.
[00:13:02] And I looked, it really did take me 100 pages to get into the flow of who these people were and why I should care about them. Because the book goes back and forth between a current-- I say current, this all is set in the '80s. But a current mission that Joan and her team are on. A journey to space. So that's one part. And then it also flashes back to Joan getting her start as an astronaut and the initial training and the initially friendships and relationships. And I think that's great. I did not mind going back and forth, but because of that, it took me a minute to situate who these characters were and to figure out, wait, who do I care about? Why do I hear about them? What's their name? So it took me about 100 pages. But after 100 pages, I was hooked. This is not my favorite Taylor Jenkins Reid book, but if you like her, to me this is totally consistent with her work. And I don't know if it will be in the final edition, but there's an author's note that, of course, made me appreciate the book even more. I do always love getting some insight into why an author has picked their subject matter or why they've developed the characters a certain way. So the author's note really did push this maybe into the love category for me, but I think it's a solid four star read. And if you are a Taylor Jenkins Reid fan, I do think you will enjoy this. So this is Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Releases on June 3rd.
[00:14:36] I believe I have said this on this podcast before, but I do love picking books up on a whim. It does not happen often. It happens a little bit when I travel. It rarely happens at The Bookshelf. I'm reading ARCs. I'm reading for Shelf Subscriptions. I'm reading for a Literary First Look. I'm reading with a purpose. It doesn't feel like homework, but it is homework. But every so often, I will stumble upon a book or I'll take a book home on a whim. And I'm always delighted. I was going to say is that true? Is that being hyperbolic? But no, I am always delighted. And that was certainly the case for my next book, Broken Country. This is by Clare Leslie Hall. At this point, you have probably seen this book everywhere. I certainly have. It's part of the reason I picked it up. We were leaving a staff meeting at the beginning of this month and I saw this book on the shelf. I knew I had ordered a lot of copies. It's a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. And I saw a lot copies on the shelves, and so I did what I never do because I don't want to mess with inventory, but I took a copy without checking it out, without marking it as taken out of inventory because I just thought, I'm just going to see if I like this.
[00:15:51] I feel like one of the unsung personality markers of our time is which celebrity book club you are most like or your taste most align with. So, of course, you know mine most align with Jenna Bush Hager, but I think for other readers it's Oprah, it's Reese, it's GMA. Insert name here. And so, anyway, Reese books are not always for me. Occasionally, they are, but not always. And I'll also say this about Reese because Jenna Bush Hager's picks, you could maybe predict them. I think she's pretty consistent in the themes and the writers and the stories she's picking. Reese is all over the place in terms of genre. Maybe it skews a little more thriller. Anyway, this has the Reese sticker on the front. I knew it was a Reese pick, but I kept seeing it places. Again, you probably have too. I saw it all over the internet and I thought, "Let me just see if this is for me." So I took it, again, it's called Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall. I do want to shout out.
[00:17:01] The person I saw talking about this the most was Sheri [sp]. Sheri works for Zibi Books and she and I have followed each other online for years. And she posted about this back when it was in ARC format, I think even a different cover design. And so she is a reader I really do trust. So it wasn't just that I'd seen this everywhere, it's that I had seen Sheri talk about it. And I though, okay, if it's good enough for Sheri, I think it's going to be good enough for me. So Broken Country is set in the '60s in England, in the English countryside. I will tell you the '60's of it all is an interesting choice to me. It felt quite modern is what I will say. And so occasionally I felt like it was a little odd to be going back and forth from the '60 to the '40s. So we start with Beth. Beth is our main character. Beth and Frank live a quiet, even perhaps idyllic-looking life in the English countryside. They raise sheep together. They seem happy in their marriage.
[00:17:59] And the book immediately opens-- and this is not a spoiler. I am going to tell you what happens in literally the first chapter, which is Beth and Frank are with their sheep and a dog comes out of nowhere and begins attacking their sheep and frank and his, I believe, brother do what any shepherd would do, and they wind up shooting the dog. So I do need you to know that that happens. It is a relatively shocking opening act of violence. It's not a spoiler. It is the inciting incident to what unfolds next, which is the dog belongs to Gabriel. And Gabriel is Beth and Frank's neighbor, but he hasn't been their neighbor in years. He's a famous writer. Only stays at the house part-time, but he's back and we soon learn that Beth and Gabriel have a romantic history. They were perhaps each other's first loves. And so there is immediately a love triangle element to this book among Beth, Frank, and Gabriel. But then there's a flash forward to a murder trial. And you, the reader, are left wondering what? Why is there a murder trial? Who is on trial? What did they do?
[00:19:20] So there's immediately a courtroom drama and a mystery also unfolding. And then the book also flashes back. So I think if I'm right about this, there's about three timelines going on. I was never confused. I thought it was handled very well. The 1940s, 1950s storyline is flashing back to Beth and Gabriel's love story. Okay. So all of those things are happening. A murder, mystery, a courtroom drama, a romance. And that is why the blurb on the front of the book is from Delia Owen's Where the Crawdads Sing, because I can totally see why this would appeal to those readers. As a bookseller, you're constantly trying to figure out why was the book so successful? And, listen, I'm sure publishers are really trying to figure that out. That's why we have so many Daisy Jones. It's why we have so many Where the Crawdads references, because they're just trying to look for the next big thing and they're trying to predict why did this take off the way it did.
[00:20:27] And I think the reason why Where the Crawdad's Sing took off the way it did was because it crossed a variety of genres. I think Broken Country is the same way. Yes, there's a love story component. Yes, there's a murder mystery component. There's courtroom drama. And guess what? More beautiful nature writing. The way she writes about the countryside in England is really well done. You feel like you are there. In fact, I wanted to be there while I was reading this book. And so these characters I thought were really, really well drawn. I don't often do content warnings as we've discussed many times on this podcast. But I will tell you that Beth and Frank-- and again, this is not a spoiler. Beth and frank have been happily married. They do have a pretty heavy grief that they are dealing with in that their son died I believe two or three years previously. And so they are still kind of grappling with the loss of a child. And I do want to mention that because it does play a pretty significant role in the book.
[00:21:29] And if that is something that is difficult for you to read you may just want to know that it's there. I think it's handled beautifully and it did not bother me, but it may bother a more sensitive reader. I actually think my mom would really like this book though, so for what that's worth. Okay, so that is Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall. I really do think it is worth the hype. I thought it was fast. Oh my gosh, such a fast book. I finished it, I believe, in 24 hours. I took it back to The Bookshelf the next day. I took it back because I finished it so quickly, maybe two days later. And so if you're looking maybe for a book to get you out of a reading slump, I also think this one, if you are a seasonal reader, I think this is a great spring summer book. I could easily see you enjoying this at the beach this summer. So if you need to wait to read it, I totally understand. Maybe spring is a busy time for you. It would make a good summer read. So that is Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall. And Reese, well done. Reese doesn't need my approval, but I thought this was a great book.
[00:22:30] Then I returned to my roots, which is I picked up a weird little book by Marcy Dermansky. I'm so excited. I was so excited to read this because I loved her book Hurricane Girl. This is her new book called Hot Air. I don't even know where to start about this book. If you like weird-- I'm not talking about like speculative fiction, magical realism weird. That's not what I mean. If you like realistic fiction where the author makes unusual, unconventional choices and the characters do unusual, unconventional things, then boy do I have an author for you. I loved Hurricane Girl and Hot Air to me is more of the same in the best possible way. So in Hot Air, we meet Joanni. Actually we meet, we met Joannie, Johnny-- oh my gosh, they're all four J names. I'm going to focus on Joannie because Joannie kind of takes us through the whole book. It's a short little book.
[00:23:33] We're introduced to Joannie. She's on her first date for the first time in years. This is during the pandemic. She is a single mom. She and her daughter go to the home of this man and his son. So Joannie's daughter gets a play date and then Joannie gets a grownup date. And while Joannie and Johnny are having dinner, or maybe on the tail end of their date and Joannie's maybe thinking it's a bit of a bust, they watch as this hot air balloon drifts closer and closer to them before crashing into Johnny's pool. And it is as surreal and as weird as you might expect. And what unfolds then is the story of these four people, the two people in the hot air ballon and then Johnny and Joannie to some extent- Joannie mostly. Then we follow them throughout the course of the weekend. Like how does this hot air balloon crash affect the course of the weekend? And so it's like a bottle episode of TV. You know it's going to end as soon as the weekend's over.
[00:24:37] And it is the wildest and weirdest ride full of satirical thoughts about wealth. The man who is flying the hot air balloon is a billionaire with his billionaire philanthropic wife. Maybe their marriage is not all that it could be. We get some of his innermost thoughts, some of her innermost thoughts. Maybe there's some attempts at some partner swapping that is not really super successful. So all of it is so delightfully messy. I can't wait to tell Hunter about this book because he loves a mess. And this is a messy, messy book where people just consistently make decisions that have you scratching your head. But the way Marcy Dermansky writes them, is also with a real tenderness. Particularly Joannie, we really do feel for her as she is trying to navigate single motherhood during the pandemic. And she makes mistakes and decisions that hopefully you and I would never make. We would hope not to make them.
[00:25:40] But Marcy Dermansky really gives her characters a humanity where even though you don't like them, you do. You're still rooting for them. Many of the characters in this book are unlikable, and yet I found myself hoping that their lives would work out and hoping that they're decisions wouldn't too badly impact them. So if you like slightly weird books, I cannot recommend Marcy Dermansky enough. This is her latest. It is called Hot Air. I loved it. If you're a literary fiction fan, you will love it. Character-driven, but also very short. So plot driven as well because a lot happens in a short number of pages.
[00:26:22] All month long, I was reading and listening to Elon Musk, the biography by Walter Isaacson. Speaking of books on a whim, I was at The Bookshelf one Saturday and I saw we've had this on the shelf. It came out I believe late 2023. Anyway, so we've had it on our shelves and it was a New York Times bestseller. It may even have made its way back to the list fairly recently. But, anyway, we've stocked it for a long time. I had no intention of reading this book because I'm just not super interested. I didn't read the Steve Jobs biography either. It's just not the subject matter I was super interested in until this year. And I saw it on the shelves at The Bookshelf. And I thought, "Maybe I should read that." And I do want to say I'm an Enneagram five. I don't blame personality or identify personality as being responsible for every aspect of my decision-making or what I read or how I behave. But I do think as an Enneagram five, I like information. And I like information to be presented to me as calmly as possible.
[00:27:36] And There was just so much news and I have no doubt that once this episode releases into the world, there will continue to be breaking news, breaking headlines. And I just wanted a little bit more information. I knew nothing about Elon Musk except Tesla. That's literally all I knew. Tesla and SpaceX. And even that, I don't drive a Tesla. I'm sure you're shocked. I don't drive a Tesla, and so I just didn't know much about him. And then it became apparent that maybe I should know more about him. And this felt like a good way to get the information I was looking for. This is my first Walter Isaacson biography, and what I will say is I was super intimidated by the size, and I had no problem finishing it this month because I was so intrigued and hooked. The chapters are short. It's very readable. My understanding is the Steve Jobs biography is the same way. And so if you are looking for accessible, readable biographies, Walter Isaacson might be your guy.
[00:28:44] Like I said, I listened to this throughout the month, but I also read the physical copy. I became invested enough that I wound up downloading the audio book because I wanted to finish it even faster than I had originally intended. And you know what? I got the information I needed. I feel like I have a much better understanding of who is playing a pretty major role in our government right now, and I was able to consume it without rage, which was nice. It doesn't mean there's not stuff to get angry about, but again, I think it's perhaps my personality. And also just when you're reading a biography, it's a little bit different from reading a headline or a tweet or an Instagram post. You can take in the information, again, in just a calmer way. A sweet customer, reader, podcast listener knew I was reading this and made the comment that she just felt like she couldn't. And, listen, you don't have to. You do not have to. This is something I wanted to read and I wanted the information. .
[00:29:57] I know I've referenced that my family when we used to go to the beach annually together, we would all read and discuss together. This is the kind of book where I read it, my mom isn't going to read it. My dad might, but my mom isn't going to and my aunt isn't going to. And instead I read. My other aunt might though, I might give her my copy. Maybe I'll do that. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about my aunt Nina might really like this book. Anyway, she's a fellow Enneagram five. My point is my mom and my aunt, they're not going to this book. Instead, I get to read it and I get to tell them about it. And that is the beauty of all kinds of literature and all kinds books. There are whole genres that I don't really enjoy. They are not for me, but I love listening to people talk about it who do. And I love getting the information from them that way. And so, anyway, I appreciated this. I was also pleasantly surprised by the readability of it. I was super intimidated by the length and I needn't have been. I'm sure there is a reason besides just the current climate that this has been on the bestseller list for so long. It is a genuinely well-written, readable, accessible biography of an enigmatic figure in our current history and both our history in technology and in invention, and also now in our political history. So that is Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I thought it was a good audiobook as well if you need an audiobook listen.
[00:31:26] And I think it got me out of my audio book slump, actually, because after I finished it, I immediately was ready to listen to something else, and I downloaded The Tell. This is by Amy Griffin. This is probably the second book in March that I picked up in real time, rather than advanced reader format where I saw other readers reading it and I felt a little FOMO. And The Tell is like an Oprah selection. Did I imagine this? Oprah, Reese, and Jenna all got together to talk about this book. I knew literally nothing about it. I just kept seeing it in enough places that I thought, well, let me try it. And I listened to a snippet of the audio book and it was a short audio book. I think seven hours maybe, which is right in my sweet spot. So I was driving to the Atlanta area for a book event and decided that this would be a great road trip book. And it was. It's narrated by the author. So Amy Griffin narrates it herself. I was not familiar with her. I did not know who she was. She is a venture capitalist.
[00:32:30] This is her memoir about her childhood in Texas growing up as an overachieving kid, an ambitious kid who was drawn to leadership roles, who loved, for lack of a better term, a gold star. There were very familiar parts of this book to me. She talks a lot about her Southern upbringing, her Texas upbringing. And you know this perhaps if you've read more about the book than I had, I had not, but then the book becomes about her adulthood. And she's a runner. She's an avid runner, and she realizes that the real question isn't why do you run? Which is the question she got over and over again, but it's really what are you running from? and she had long buried memories of child abuse. And so content warnings abound. She gives content warnings at the very front of the book. So you do know what you're getting into, I guess. And it was brutal and also crucial to hear in Amy Griffin's own words, some of the memories that she uncovered with the help of therapy, MDMA.
[00:33:50] Anyway, I found the whole thing fascinating, heartbreaking. I just finished this one a couple of days ago and I saw that she had done an interview. She's done a lot of interviews, but she's done an interview with Kate Bowler, which I'm curious about. It feels so weird when you read a book like this to be like, oh my gosh, I loved it because it was brutally hard to listen to. But I appreciated it and I appreciated the bravery it took and the courage it took to write about these things. And I think one of my favorites-- I won't spoil anything, but throughout the book she is fighting so hard. And you can hear her put on her battle armor, and she's fighting so harder. And then you as the reader hear the armor slowly come off. And that to me was my favorite part of the book. It's what made the book most successful. Certainly, if you like Chanel Miller, Know My Name, if you appreciated that book I think this would make a good book club conversation. I can see why it was selected as a, I believe, an Oprah pick. Yeah, I really appreciated it and I'm grateful for authors who risk the vulnerability and the vulnerability hangover and the consequences of writing a book like this because the consequences are immense and we need their stories. This was The Tell by Amy Griffin. I listened to it on audiobook and it is narrated by the author as well.
[00:35:23] I was reading all kinds of books for our spring Literary First Look, which was held earlier this month or back in March. And one of the books I really wanted to read was When the Harvest Comes. This is by Denne Michelle Norris. She is the editor in chief of Electric Literature. So if you're big in the book world like Lit Hub, Book Riot, Electric Literature, then you are familiar with Denne Michele Norris. This is her debut and it admittedly caught my eye because I think the cover is so gorgeous. It does not release until April 15th, so you've got a couple weeks. But the book is about Davis and-- well, it's really about three characters. We're introduced to Davis first, and I do think he functions as maybe our main protagonist, our main character. Davis is a viola player. He is a young black gay man about to get married to his white boyfriend, his white fiancé, Everett. The book opens during their wedding weekend, so Everett and Davis are about to get married. They seem incandescently happy. They are deeply in love.
[00:36:37] Everett's family is throwing the wedding. They remind me of the Kennedys. They seem totally on board. The wedding is taking place on mother's vineyard. They It all feels at first like maybe a straightforward wedding weekend kind of story. But Davis, you soon realize, doesn't have anybody in his family coming. And we learned that his father is a Baptist pastor, a reverend, and certainly does not approve of Davis’s choices. So he's not coming to the wedding. He and Davis are estranged. Davis is close or was close with his sister, Olivia, and at the last minute she does choose to attend the wedding. And so that is where we get our three characters. Davis, Everett, his fiancé, and Olivia, his sister. So those are the three perspectives that we get mostly over the course of the novel. The first half of the book is set over that wedding weekend where some tensions bubble to the surface.
[00:37:35] Maybe Everett's family, maybe certain members of Everett family are not as happy about this arrangement or this relationship as we the reader thought they were, or maybe as even they thought they were. And then the second half of the book is in the aftermath of the wedding because-- no spoilers, this is not a spoiler; it's on the back of the book. But while they're getting married during the course of the wedding weekend, Davis and Olivia discover that their father has died in a car accident. So Davis and his dad never quite got the closure. They never got the closer, the redemption, the reconciliation maybe that they both were seeking. And so now Davis has to grapple with the consequences of that. And so does Olivia and perhaps oddly, so does Everett. Because this huge grief now, which Davis is at first dismissive of, comes a big point of contention in their marriage.
[00:38:37] So this book belongs to Davis, but it is also Everett's story and Olivia's story. I like a lot of things about this book. Yes, it's kind of some dysfunctional family literature. It's talking a lot about sex, gender and identity, familial bonds, familial relationships, what happens when we make choices that our families don't understand. The writing is beautiful. I mean, really beautiful. It's a little surprising that it's a debut. I really liked this one. I was trying to think of comp titles and the truth is I'm not quite sure. I'd have to think about it some more. But I'm really glad I read this. It is open door in terms of sexual content. There are some open door sex scenes to be aware of, but that is not the point of the story. Certainly I would classify this as literary fiction. And so for some reason, the sexual content and literary fiction it reads so differently to me. I think often because it's not maybe the point of what's going on in those pages. Anyway, this is a character-driven novel. What happens when we don't get the closure or the reconciliation that we maybe unknowingly long for? That is When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michelle Norris.
[00:39:54] And then last but not least, I finished out the month with another audio book. Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Did I intend to read this book? I really did not. I did not think that this would be for me, but I love John Green's narration. I trust John Green. I think he is one of the few authors, and I'm thinking I'd have to look at a full list, but I think I might be a John Green completionist maybe. I need to look. Anyway, I knew he was writing this book about tuberculosis. I follow him on Instagram. But I don't really think I had any intention of picking it up. And then I saw that it was available on Libro fm. John Green narrates it. I think he's a great narrator. And I started listening to it on the way home from that trip to Atlanta. And I was immediately hooked. I have said this line many times. I think I said it at literary lunch. I said to the store staff, but I thought it was so apt.
[00:40:48] Jordan overheard me listening to this book-- which is exactly, by the way, what it sounds like. It is a history of tuberculosis the disease. And Jordan said John Green is like the professor you take in college no matter what course they're teaching. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is so true. Didn't we all have those professors who you didn't maybe trust the class, like the class description, but you trusted the teacher. You trusted the professor. That is definitely how John Green is because this is a book about tuberculosis, the history of it, the realities of having a cure and not maybe utilizing it in the ways that we should. It's excellent. I think it's a five hour long audio book. It's short book. So if you have been on the fence about this one, I can't recommend it enough. I thought it was excellent.
[00:41:36] And I'm grateful for a voice like John Green's who is willing to write something a little different, a little outside what we might have called his typical genre. Although, certainly he's extended beyond young adult lit for a while now. But I love that he's doing something differently and he's it to success and perhaps, oh gosh, I hope, maybe make a difference in the health and medical world. I really liked this book. I feel like I could hand sell it to almost anybody, which is a weird thing to say about a book about tuberculosis. So that is Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. I listened to that in audiobook format. Narrated by John Green. And those are the books I read in March. As usual with our reading recap episodes, we are offering a reading recap bundle for this month.
[00:42:21] The March Reading Recap Bundle is $75, and it includes three hardback books, Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks, Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky, in case you're feeling brave and want to try something weird, and Everything is Tuberculosis. I listened to that book in audiobook format, but I wanted to include it in the bundle because there is this great video, go find it, of John Green on Instagram talking about the cover design for this book and the end paper design for the book, and I just think it's beautiful and I think the physical copy is worth owning. So you can find more details and the March bundle online through the link in our show notes, or go to bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number, that's 523, into the search bar.
[00:43:10] This week, I'm reading Here: A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving by Lydia Sohn.
[00:43:11] 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:
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Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell, Gene Queens, Beth, Jammie Treadwell…
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins
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